Feb. 26 the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finalized its joint-employer rule. The rule returns to a commonsense joint-employer standard that existed for decades before the Board’s 2015 decision in Browning-Ferris Industries. Under the rule, “an entity may be considered a joint employer of a separate employer’s employees only if the two share or codetermine the employees’ essential terms and conditions of employment, which are exclusively defined as wages, benefits, hours of work, hiring, discharge, discipline, supervision, and direction”.

IWLA raised concerns in comments filed in response to the previously proposed version of the rule, which had left some ambiguity on the scope of the essential terms and conditions of employment. The final rule provided added clarity on these “essential terms,” and the rule overall is being welcomed as protecting employers from wrongful liability. Additionally, IWLA was successful in responding to alternative proposals that would have made the definition of the “essential terms” overly prescriptive and possibly burdensome to the 3PL industry.

The rule is scheduled to go into effect on April 27, 2020, and the NLRB has released a fact sheet on the rule as well.