Monday, February 23, 2009
Employee Misclassification Focus of High Level Meeting
At the request of Maryland Secretary of State John McDonough, members and staff of the Maryland Chamber met last week in his office to discuss HB 819 Workplace Fraud Act of 2009. The bill is one of the Governor’s legislative priorities and would impact construction, landscaping and package delivery service businesses who misclassify employees as independent contractors.
While much improved over last year’s bill which the Maryland Chamber opposed, the Chamber’s Employment Issues Committee is still concerned about components of the bill as drafted. Committee co-chairs Craig Ballew of Ferguson, Schetelich and Ballew, P.A. and Fiona Ong of Shawe Rosenthal LLP joined President/CEO Kathy Snyder and Vice President of Government Affairs Allyson Black at the meeting. The Chamber representatives met with Secretary McDonough, along with Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation Secretary Tom Perez.
Among the Chamber’s chief concerns are:
- The presumption that anyone who works for an employer is an employee, with testing requirements for independent contractor status being more stringent than other employment laws such as worker’s compensation, discrimination, tax, and labor relations.
- The provision of a right to private action (the ability to sue) with a damages provision that would create a tremendous incentive for plaintiffs to bring lawsuits directly rather than proceeding through DLLR, which would have a significant negative impact on small businesses in particular.
- There appears to be no administrative remedy for dispute resolution prior to court action.
- The timeframes for providing employee information to the Labor and Licensing Commissioner are too short and the document production requirements are too burdensome on business.
The Secretaries generally agreed with some of our recommendations and asked that the Chamber representatives put their specific concerns in writing. We’ll post our written response later this week. The Chamber’s Legislative Committee will review the bill at its March 2 meeting in preparation for a March 3 public hearing. Please contact Allyson Black at 410-269-0642 or 301-261-2858 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) to provide insights on how this bill would impact your business or for more information.
Here is a video update from Maryland Chamber Employment Issues Committee Co-Chair Craig Ballew:
