Had Microsoft done this, it might not have had to provide coverage to its misclassified workers. If you're a worker and believe you have been misclassified as an IC when you are really an employee, the Microsoft case shows you can fight back. You don't have to wait for the IRS to conduct an audit.
You can also complain to your state unemployment and workers' compensation agencies. All will investigate whether you have been properly classified as an IC, but don't expect an automatic economic windfall.
Independent Contractors vs. By: Stephen Fishman. Published: Mar 31, Topics: Workplace Issues. When hiring, don't let what happened to Microsoft happen to you.
Related Articles. New Year's Resolutions for Lawyers. View More. This past year, so many employees experienced workplace burnout. Many people were overworked and felt Zoom fatigue, and many also suffered from the lack of time management skills—and put off work until the last moment.
GoodHire, a leader in background check technology, recently released a new report on the meaning of work. GoodHire surveyed 4, full-time workers—an equal number of Boomers, Gen-Xers, Millennials, and Gen-Zers—to better understand the differences in the workplace by generation, the impact age has on workplace happiness, and feelings about a potential four-day workweek, among other things. It might not seem like it, but self-confidence is something we all have—we just need to find it within.
So, here are five tips to help you find and grow your self-confidence, which will help you boost your career. View All. Their decision, which was issued in Spring , largely affirms the prior decision, meaning that Microsoft owes a small fortune to its misclassified workers.
For starters, it once again shows that merely having a worker sign an agreement that he or she is an IC will not make him or her one in the eyes of the law. Rather, the worker must be treated like an IC on the job. ICs are independent businesspeople who must be treated as such. This includes stock option, vacation, sick leave, health insurance and retirement plans. Had Microsoft done this, it might not have had to provide coverage to its misclassified workers.
Editors Choice Updated. While there were multiple appeals, including one to the full court of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals the " en banc " court , which vacated an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel of that court, this article will focus only on the ultimate holdings, and only on those issues that pertain to the design of k , stock purchase and stock option plans. The Microsoft k plan provided that common law employees who were "on the United States payroll of the employer" were eligible to participate in the k plan, pursuant to which Microsoft matched a portion of employees' contributions to the plan.
The first question presented to the Ninth Circuit was whether it was an abuse of discretion for Microsoft's Plan Administrator to determine that the freelancers were ineligible to participate in the k plan because they had waived such participation by signing Microsoft's independent contractor agreement. The court concluded that the IRS determination that the freelancers were common law employees, coupled with Microsoft's concession that this determination was binding in the freelancers' lawsuit, nullified the agreements.
The court reasoned that since Microsoft and the freelancers had assumed that the freelancers were independent contractors when they entered into these agreements, and since the IRS's determination had revealed that this assumption was incorrect, there was a "mutual mistake of fact. Notably, the court did not hold that this meant that the freelancers were entitled to participation in the k plan. Instead, the court ruled that this was a determination for the Plan Administrator to make in the first instance, not the Court, and it remanded the case to the Plan Administrator to make this decision, subject to judicial review in the event of an appeal.
When the case was returned to the Plan Administrator, the Administrator determined that since the freelancers were paid through the accounts payable department rather than from the payroll, there were not "on the United States payroll of the employer" even though they were common law employees. Therefore, the Plan Administrator concluded once again that the freelancers were ineligible to participate in Microsoft's k plan.
At the time of this writing, the subsequent settlement agreement in Microsoft was available only in media accounts. However, none of those accounts reveals that the k plan claims were specifically negotiated, and it appears that the settlement was limited to the ESPP claims. Whether or not this is the case, what we do know is that Microsoft settled before any judicial opinion on the Plan Administrator's action was rendered. Hence, it appears that notwithstanding the publicity that attended the Microsoft case, that case did not vitiate the principle that a Plan document's exclusion of temporary workers or independent contractors from eligibility to participate in an ERISA-governed pension or welfare benefit will be honored if that exclusion is clearly expressed and if the Plan Administrator properly exercises his or her discretion to construe that exclusion in accordance with the terms of the Plan.
The Microsoft court's analysis and disposition of the freelancers' ESPP claim was a lot less complex than its handling of the k plan issues, albeit a great deal more troubling. However, in light of the unique circumstances that were presented by Microsoft e. Briefly, unlike Microsoft's k plan, which was governed by ERISA, the entitlement of the freelancers to participate in the ESPP, its stock purchase plan, was governed exclusively by state contract law.
The majority of the Microsoft court concluded that the "mutual mistake" it had found in the independent contractor agreement between the freelancers and Microsoft nullified that agreement in its entirety, as a matter of Washington state law.
Since the freelancers were not actually independent contractors but, rather, common law employees, the court concluded from the fact that the ESPP was available to all "employees" of Microsoft that it was available to those "employees" who happened to have been called freelancers pursuant to a mutual mistake.
0コメント