Opinion ID: 71035
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Investment in equipment and facilities

Text: 57 Finally, one must consider the relative degree of investment in equipment and facilities by the independent contractor on the one hand, and the putative employer on the other. See Rutherford Food Corp., 331 U.S. at 730, 67 S.Ct. at 1477; Ricketts v. Vann, 32 F.3d 71, 74 (4th Cir.1994). This factor is probative because of the workers' economic dependence on the person who supplies the equipment or facilities. 15 58 In this case the growers owned virtually all the equipment and facilities used by the farmworkers: the picking boxes, the lids and wire used to close them, the pallets on which the boxes were placed, and the trucks used to transport the boxes to the packinghouse. Unlike the contractor in Aimable, who made significant investments in equipment and facilities, including trucks, tools and a labor camp, Aimable, 20 F.3d at 443, Turke had no equipment or vehicles of his own. Thus, his role was more like that of the contractor in Rutherford Food Corp., who provided no equipment and had no real business organization. Rutherford Food Corp., 331 U.S. at 731, 67 S.Ct. at 1477. Just as the workers in Rutherford Food Corp. could not realistically depend on their crew leaders for other work if the slaughterhouse shut down, id., the farmworkers here could not depend on Turke alone for their economic livelihood.