Wage & Hour Counsel : Wage & Hour Lawyer & Attorney : Littler Mendelson Law Firm : Employment Law, Labor Relations

The fiscal year 2011 federal budget (pdf) released on Monday contains provisions to combat misclassification of employees as independent contractors. Included in this $3.8 trillion spending measure is a proposal to be jointly administered by the Departments of Labor and the Treasury to eliminate legal incentives for employers to misclassify their employees. Continue reading about this development on Littler's Washington D.C. Employment Law Update blog.

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On August 21, 2009, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court unanimously ruled that a worker who has been misclassified as an independent contractor may seek damages from his former employer even if the employer establishes that the worker would have been paid less had he been classified as an employee.

The plaintiff in Somers v. Converged Access , 454 Mass. 582 (2009) worked for a software company as a quality assurance engineer. He was classified as an independent contractor and, as a result, did not receive overtime, vacation pay, or benefits. The company paid him at a rate of $65 per hour. The plaintiff initially agreed to work for a sixty-day term. He later agreed to a ninety-day extension of that term.

The plaintiff subsequently applied for a permanent quality assurance engineer position. After the company did not select him for the position, the plaintiff brought suit claiming, among other things, that he had been misclassified as an independent contractor.

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