“A bill to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to harmonize the definition of employee with the common law.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section amends the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) definition of employee in two respects: (1) revising section 3(e)(1) to specify that, except as provided in paragraphs (2)–(4), an employee means any individual employed by an employer, as determined under the usual common law rules (previously, any individual employed by an employer); and (2) in section 3(g), inserting “an employee” after “permit” in the definition of employ (i.e., to suffer or permit to work). (Thus, the FLSA—which establishes federal minimum wage, overtime, and child labor standards—adopts the common law test for employee status, which generally focuses on behavioral control, financial control, and relationship type, potentially excluding more workers classified under the prior economic reality test.)