DOL Worker Status Enforcement Undermines New Rule, Critics Say

The Biden administration’s wage arm is following through on its promise to police worker misclassification, but some opponents of the stricter approach say the enforcement spree could weaken an argument for a new rule on the issue.

The US Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division has touted six cases since May that collectively found nearly 1,000 workers who were wrongly labeled as independent contractors when they should have been classified as employees.

At the same time, the DOL has been working on a new regulation to outline how it will define who is an independent contractor or employee under federal ...