Opinion ID: 71035
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Determining Joint Employment Status

Text: 21 In Aimable, this court recognized at least eight factors that can be analyzed to determine whether a farmworker furnished by a labor contractor was economically dependent on, and therefore jointly employed by, a grower: (1) the nature and degree of the grower's control of the farmworkers; (2) the degree of the grower's supervision, direct or indirect, of the farmworkers' work; (3) the grower's right, directly or indirectly, to hire, fire, or modify the farmworkers' employment conditions; (4) the grower's power to determine the workers' pay rates or methods of payment; (5) the grower's preparation of payroll and payment of the workers' wages; (6) the grower's ownership of the facilities where the work occurred; (7) the farmworkers' performance of a line-job integral to the harvesting and production of salable vegetables; and (8) the grower's and labor contractor's relative investment in equipment and facilities. Id. at 440-46. 9 22 In applying these factors, we are guided by several principles. First, the question in joint employment cases is not whether the worker is more economically dependent on the independent contractor or the grower, with the winner avoiding responsibility as an employer. As the term joint employment suggests, the AWPA envisions situations where a single employee may have the necessary employment relationship with not only one employer but simultaneously such a relationship with an employer and an independent contractor. House Report at 4553. Thus, rather than comparing the employment relationships in order to exclude one, [t]he focus of each inquiry ... must be on each employment relationship as it exists between the worker and the party asserted to be a joint employer. Id. at 4553-54. 23 Second, no one factor is determinative. Rutherford Food Corp., 331 U.S. at 730, 67 S.Ct. at 1477. As we explained in Aimable, the existence of a joint employment relationship depends on the 'economic reality' of all the circumstances. Aimable, 20 F.3d at 439 (emphasis added); see 29 C.F.R. § 500.20(h)(4)(i) (providing that determination of whether the employment is to be considered joint employment depends upon all the facts in the particular case) (emphasis added). 24 Third, the factors are used because they are indicators of economic dependence. See Aimable, 20 F.3d at 439. They are aids-tools to be used to gauge the degree of dependence of alleged employees on the business to which they are connected. It is dependence that indicates employee status. Each [factor] must be applied with that ultimate notion in mind. Usery v. Pilgrim Equipment Co., Inc., 527 F.2d 1308, 1311 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 826, 97 S.Ct. 82, 50 L.Ed.2d 89 (1976). Thus, the weight of each factor depends on the light it sheds on the farmworkers' economic dependence (or lack thereof) on the alleged employer, which in turn depends on the facts of the case, see Aimable, 20 F.3d at 440. 25 Fourth, a joint employment relationship is not determined by a mathematical formula. [T]he absence of evidence on any one or more of the criteria listed does not preclude a finding that an ... agricultural employer was a joint employer along with the crewleader. House Report at 4553. The purpose of weighing the factors is not to place each in either the contractor or the grower's column, but to view them qualitatively to assess the evidence of economic dependence, which may point to both. See Usery, 527 F.2d at 1311 (explaining that the collective answers to all of the inquiries [cannot] produce a resolution which submerges consideration of the dominant factor--economic dependence). 26 Fifth, in considering a joint-employment relationship, we must not allow common-law concepts of employment to district our focus from economic dependency. See Aimable, 20 F.3d at 439; House Report at 4553. Indeed, the suffer or permit to work standard was developed to assign responsibility to businesses that did not directly supervise putative employees. See Rutherford Food Corp., 331 U.S. at 728 & n. 7, 67 S.Ct. at 1476 & n. 7; People ex rel. Price v. Sheffield Farms-Slawson-Decker Co., 225 N.Y. 25, 121 N.E. 474, 476 (1918). Thus, our inquiry looks not to the common law definitions of [employer and employee] (for instance, to tests measuring the amount of control an ostensible employer exercised over a putative employee), but rather to the 'economic reality' of all the circumstances concerning whether the putative employee is economically dependent upon the alleged employer. Aimable, 20 F.3d at 439. 10 27 Finally, because the FLSA and AWPA are remedial statutes, we must construe them broadly. See A.H. Phillips, Inc. v. Walling, 324 U.S. 490, 493, 65 S.Ct. 807, 808, 89 L.Ed. 1095 (1945) (recognizing that FLSA must be interpreted broadly to effectuate its humanitarian and remedial purpose); Caro-Galvan v. Curtis Richardson, Inc., 993 F.2d 1500, 1505 (11th Cir.1993) (stating that [b]road construction of the [AWPA] comports with [its] humanitarian purpose to protect all those hired by middlemen to toil in our nation's fields, vineyards and orchards) (quotation omitted).