The position could expose more putative employers to potential
liability under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
In an Administrator's Interpretation (AI) issued on January
20, the US Department of Labor's (DOL's) Wage and Hour
Division has again sought to expand employers' potential
liability under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Following its
July 2015 AI, which sought to limit who can be an independent
contractor and thus create more employee-employer relationships,
the DOL now seeks to significantly expand the circumstances under
which companies can be joint employers. Specifically, even in
situations where little or no traditional indicia of control can be
shown to exist between two entities, the DOL would require an
analysis of the "economic reality" of the situation using
factors created decades ago in the context of farm laborers. The
DOL does not explain how many of those factors are relevant to a
joint-employer inquiry in the 21st century economy. However,
