CHRO Association Voices Support for Worker Classification Rule

The Association submitted comments in support of the Department of Labor’s Proposed Rule regarding independent contractor status, citing its potential to provide much-needed consistency to a historically opaque area of employment law.  

Background: The Proposed Rule, released by the DOL earlier this year, would make it easier for companies to classify workers as contractors, and provides a much clearer standard for all stakeholders.  

The Rule focuses on how much control employees have over their work and whether they independently have opportunity for profit or loss. (Read our original analysis of the Proposed Rule here).   

Our comments: The Association endorsed the DOL’s new rule, emphasizing the clear framework “that distills well-established common law principles of worker classification and decades of precedent applying the economic realities test (in various forms) into two primary factors of focus.” 

• Our comments also highlighted what each party – the contractor and the user employer -does during the working relationship, rather than theoretical possibilities drawn from contractual language or elsewhere.  

• The Association continued its longstanding advocacy of a safe harbor that enables employers to voluntarily provide contractors with benefits such as healthcare without triggering a change to full employee status. This approach is increasingly being adopted in the states and should be followed at the federal level.  

What’s next: The comment period closed this week, and a final rule can be expected by the end of the year or in early 2027.