In September, ASA reported that the city of Denver had warned clients of online job platform Instawork of their potential liability for Instawork’s misclassification of workers as independent contractors (Staffing Today, Sept. 18, 2024). The city meant business.
On Nov. 27, the labor division of the auditor’s office of the city of Denver issued a “Liability and Penalty Determination” against Instawork client Great Events of Colorado, which provided event management and related traffic control and venue security services.
The labor division had previously found that Instawork had misclassified nearly 3,000 people as independent contractors and ordered the firm to pay thousands of dollars in restitution and fines. In a related investigation, the division found that its client GEC failed to provide paid rest breaks to one of the workers and illegally retaliated against him after he complained to a supervisor. GEC was ordered to pay back wages, damages, and penalties and reinstate the worker’s ability to work through the platform.
This is the second case (to the knowledge of ASA) in which a client has been charged with employment law violations based on its use of misclassified workers obtained through a job platform. Last year, certified nursing assistants sued a nursing home operator for back wages, alleging misclassification. The CNAs had been assigned to the nursing home as independent contractors by Shiftkey, which was not named in the suit. The case is pending—see Deleon v. Medicalodges Inc., U.S. District Court, Kansas, Civil Action No: 2:23-cv-2224.
In a separate action, in a conference call last week the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment advised ASA and the Colorado Staffing Association, an ASA-affiliated chapter, that the department had launched a formal misclassification investigation of Kare, an online health care job platform. The department said it also was looking at another health care platform, which it did not name because the investigation was in its early stages. The department said that clients of job platforms also might be the subject of enforcement activity.
At least one other jurisdiction has been aggressively targeting job platforms. San Francisco filed suit last year against Qwick, an online platform, for worker misclassification (Staffing Today, Feb. 26, 2024). The city recently advised ASA that it had filed another complaint against online platform WorkWhile, alleging that the firm “flouts the long-established industry norm whereby temporary staffing companies treat these types of workers as employees.” The city has not yet charged platform clients.
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