Orange County Employment Lawyers Blog
Retailers have officially been put on notice by the California Labor Commission: If you hire trucking companies engage in unfair wage and hour practices against truck drivers, you too could be held jointly liable. Los Angeles truck driver wage and hour lawyers understand that to drive home the point, the agency posted a list of firms with outstanding court fines, tax liens and tax assessments can be held jointly and severally liable for future labor law violations committed by those companies. 
The companies in question have been deemed by the commission and/or the courts to have committed wage theft against their workers, failing to pay them what they are owed by law. In many cases, the truck drivers were intentionally misclassified as independent contractors (rather than employees), in turn cheating them of pay benefits like workers’ compensation and unemployment. (This, as well as attempts to shield the firms from liability, which can be expensive, if the drivers are negligent and cause a serious truck accident resulting in someone else’s injury). Additionally some of the trucking companies are accused of failing to pay truck drivers minimum wages, overtime or other expenses.
Misclassification of employees in California is a serious problem, one that widens profit margins for the companies at the expense of everyone else – including and especially the workers. The reason this is illegal has to do with unfair competition. The idea is that these firms shouldn’t continue to pass on that unfair advantage to their retail contractors at the expense of workers and taxpayers. Continue Reading ›