[author: Mikella Wickham]
They say location is everything in business. How about classification of workers?
In certain industries, workers have a unique combination of specified skills and relative freedom to do their job. As a result, small businesses are stuck between a rock and a hard place when deciding whether their workers are employees or independent contractors. Of the many small businesses that want to pay their workers fairly and legally, it is becoming harder to do so without going out of business altogether.
Take fitness companies, for example.
Fitness instructors are not the average employees. They may have input on their schedules (because they only want to work mornings or weekends). They may work at several different studios, or work more than one job. Often they teach in their own style, and even impact how many customers attend the classes. Very often customers are loyal to a studio based on their rapport with a particular instructor. Does the fitness company pay that person as an employee or as an independent contractor?
Let’s say the employer pays the instructor as an employee, on an hourly basis. That worker becomes much more expensive for the business because she is covered by workers’ compensation insurance, gets paid sick leave, is paid at least the minimum wage (which keeps going up), and gets overtime, meal breaks and paid rest breaks. Given all of that, how does the employer incentivize the instructor to bring more customers in the door to offset the additional costs incurred?
Alternatively, if a company pays a fitness instructor as an independent contractor (as many do), but still controls aspects of what the instructor does (such as what she wears, the music she plays, or the moves she teaches), it risks a misclassification claim. Defending such lawsuits can mean death to a small business.
With no law designating a “dependent contractor” middle ground category, businesses are left to choose from a pick-your-poison set of options.
Standing next to larger brand name fitness companies, smaller fitness companies who can afford to pay employees well, or eat losses at smaller studios for the larger corporate good, can find themselves disadvantaged in a David and Goliath battle to simply have a place in the market..
As we have suggested, perhaps the law will carve out an exception for businesses in this category. The future will tell. In the meantime, small businesses have a tough decision to make: pay up now, or, perhaps, pay more later.
Mikella P. Wickham is a summer associate, based in the firm’s Los Angeles office.
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