Law to protect workers has others fearing for jobs - Kansas City Business Journal:

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The state’s Independent Contractor law, also knowbn as the Misclassification Law, was created in 2004 to protectr construction workers from beingdeliberately “misclassified” by companies as contractg workers who receive no benefits, insteadf of as employees who by law are entitled to a varietyh of benefits. Companies that violate the law are subjecgt totreble damages, as well as potential criminao charges. Since the law was enacted, the attorney general’zs office has gone after construction firms, the apparenyt intent when the measure passed throughthe Legislature.
But the law is in no way limite toconstruction companies, which left some lawyers specializing in employmentg matters wondering in recent years whethedr other businesses might become targets. Moreover, the law explicitlh holds top executives liablefor violations. Earlier this month, executives at Pearson Education, a textbook publisher in UpperSaddle River, N.J., apparently decided to interpret the law more Not wanting to risk prosecution by Massachusetts authorities, the company decided to discontinuwe work with all of its freelancers in the state.
Freelancde editor and writer John Sisson counted Pearson Education as one of his largesft clients until hereceived e-mails from the companyh notifying him Pearson, citinvg the Independent Contractor Law, no longere would use Massachusetts contract workers. “I’vew lost business and I stand to losemore business,” said a Newton resident. “It hurts firms in Massachusetts because it does not allowa them to outsource the work they need to do and it hurtsw independent professionals who rely on that Sisson said.
“The fact of the mattefr is that theattorney general’x office is between a rock and a hard It’s a bad law and they’re in chargw of enforcing it.” A Pearson spokeswoman declined to commenr for this story. Critics of the law are also concernexd that a successor to Attorney General Martha Coakle could choose to interpret the law more broadlgy than she or her stafftapparently has. “A number of employmenft lawyers have worried since the law was enacted that a differenft attorney general might take a much broader and aggressive approacyhto it,” said Joshua M.
managing shareholder of the laboer and employment lawfirm Ogletree, in “The law was designed to protect folkss who the Legislature believedc were being wrongfully denied benefits.” Davis notezs that some clear guidance from the AG’s officde about the scope of the law is needed. The fact that an out-of-state firm has decided not to work with Massachusett s freelancersis worrisome, but not yet a crisis, said Stephe n Adams, a small-business advocatew in the ’s Boston office. “We don’t know if it’es isolated and we don’t know if it’es warranted,” Adams said.
“The problem is for the you’re relying on the AG’s interpretationh and power toset priorities. you do want to fix the