BuzzFeed Continues Report on Joint Labor: Trump Administration Helps McDonald’s and Uber Franchise industry celebrates changes in interpretation

According to Buzz Feed, reported in an article by Cora Lewis yesterday (found here ) the Trump administration withdrew an Obama-era legal interpretation that said millions of Americas should be treated as employees of the corporation they work for.

The International Franchise Association has advocated against this, as franchise owners are clearly defined as independent from the franchisor. The IFA has strongly stated that general politicians don’t understand the fundamentals of franchising, thus, when creating law or lobbying ideas, the strategies are not fully baked. The article stated that:

One of the interpretations, written by the Department of Labor in 2015, said workers should be considered employees of a company if they are "economically dependent" on it — a definition that would include the independent contractors that power the gig economy. Another said fast food workers hired by franchise owners should be considered jointly employed by the food giants themselves.

Today, after announcing their withdrawal, the Labor Department removed the text of each guidance from its website. They're still available online here and here.

When the Obama Labor Department first released the new definition of employees, it was seen as an attempt to rein in the trend towards classifying workers as independent contractors — a practice popular among startups like Uber, Lyft, Instacart and Postmates.

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