The Pendulum Swings Back: DOL Proposes to Restore 2021 Independent Contractor Framework

The Department of Labor (DOL) proposal marks the latest shift in a continuing cross-administration debate over how workers should be classified under federal law. In January 2021, at the end of the first Trump administration, the DOL adopted a rule that emphasized two “core” factors in the economic reality analysis—control over the work and opportunity for profit or loss. That rule sought to provide greater predictability by giving those factors more weight than the remaining considerations.... By: Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP