Opinion ID: 71035
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Preparation of payroll and payment of wages

Text: 50 The next factor, which in this case is interrelated to the determination of pay rates, is the putative employer's involvement in the [p]reparation of payroll and the payment of wages to the workers. 29 C.F.R. § 500.20(h)(4)(ii)(E). This factor is probative of joint employment because of the likelihood that when a business undertakes to help an independent contractor prepare its payroll and pay its wages, it is likely that the contractor lacks economic substance on which the workers can solely depend. 51 Here, as noted earlier, the growers computed and segregated social security taxes and purchased worker's compensation to cover the workers. These actions certainly do not demonstrate that Turke was a truly independent employer. On the contrary, they indicate another way in which the farmworkers were economically dependent on the growers. See Griffin & Brand, 471 F.2d at 236 (finding dependence where contractors totally incapable of seeing that social security is paid in behalf of the harvesting crews). 52