Welcome to AccelPro Employment Law, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today, we are featuring a discussion with Terri Gerstein about classification of workers.
Gerstein is the director of the NYU Wagner Labor Initiative. She’s a Harvard Law School graduate who previously spent 17 years in New York government, mainly for the New York Attorney General enforcing labor laws. She describes her work there as like “Law And Order” but pursuing abusive employers.
We talk about the rise of independent contractors in recent years, the problems of misclassifying them when they should be employees and the increase in enforcement at the state and local level.
Misclassification has long been a major issue that has become even more prominent in the last few years. “It makes it really hard for the law-abiding businesses to compete with those who are misclassifying people and enjoying savings but from an illegal manner of running their business,” Gerstein says. “And then it’s also really bad for the public coffers because there are unemployment taxes that need to be paid for the safety nets that are so important for everyone, and it ends up putting a burden on everyone.”
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