On December 16th, 2022, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry’s Joint Task Force on Misclassification of Employees (“Joint Task Force”) held its twelfth meeting of the year. The Joint Task Force was created when Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed Act 85 into law in October 2020, which called for the creation of a Joint Task Force to be composed of seven members (or their designees) and chaired by the Secretary of Labor & Industry. The organization is charged with evaluating the status of worker misclassification in Pennsylvania and developing recommendations to present to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Since its first meeting in January 2021, the Joint Task Force has considered many comments and presentations from interested parties representing workers, employers, and enforcement entities. It is chaired by Basil Merenda, Deputy Secretary for Safety and Labor-Management Relations.
Since this was the last meeting of the Joint Task Force and the Final Report was approved at the November 18th meeting, the only piece of business the committee had was to approve the minutes of the November 18th meeting. Chairman Merenda stated that in light of this, he consulted with legal counsel and decided to exercise his prerogative as chair to ask for a motion to approve the minutes of the December 16th meeting during the meeting itself. Chairman Merenda called for a two-part motion to (1) approve the minutes of the December 16th meeting, and (2) gavel the work of the Joint Task Force to a close. This motion passed unanimously.
Chairman Merenda thanked everyone for their contributions and accomplishments, and stated that the work of the Joint Task Force is now complete. He encouraged everyone to stay involved with the next phase of the process, which is the legislative effort to enact the fifteen unanimously approved, reasonable, and battle tested recommendations that the Joint Task Force put forward.
More information is available here. Updates will be posted to this blog as the matter progresses.
The legal team at Miller Shah LLP has extensive experience representing worker misclassification matters. If you have any questions regarding this subject or this post, please contact Chiharu Sekino (cgsekino@millershah.com). The Firm can also be reached toll-free at (866) 540-5505.
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