New York Expands Independent Contractor Task Force

Author: Michael Cardman, XpertHR Legal Editor

July 29, 2016

A wide variety of new enforcement personnel - from state police to liquor investigators - will be joining New York's labor department in the fight against the misclassification of independent contractors.

New York Gov. Mario Cuomo recently signed an executive order establishing a Joint Task Force on Employee Classification and Worker Exploitation.

This new task force merges a previous independent contractor task force established in 2007 -- comprising the state attorney general and the state's tax, labor and workers' compensation agencies -- with other task forces created to address exploited workers and nail salon workers, which were staffed by several other state agencies like the police, the liquor authority, the state department and the agriculture department.

Target industries will be:

  • Airports;
  • Car washes;
  • Childcare;
  • Cleaning;
  • Construction;
  • Farming;
  • Home health care;
  • Janitorial services;
  • Landscaping;
  • Laundry;
  • Nail salons;
  • Restaurants;
  • Retail;
  • Supermarkets;
  • Trucking and waste disposal.

In addition to sharing information and resources among its own agencies, New York also is cooperating with the US Department of Labor to investigate independent contractor misclassification. New York is one of 26 states that have partnered with the feds in recent years.