Court Opinion

ID: 9727113
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:20:24.395646+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:33.675697
License: Public Domain

Smith, J.
(concurring). I concur in the reversal of this case and its remand for new trial. In view thereof I will comment upon the test to be employed in the determining of the crucial issue in the case.
The broad problem here presented is one coming to our Court with increasing frequency as the social legislation continues to phrase obligations, or lack thereof, in terms of the employer-employee relationship.
The earlier cases tested this relationship through application of the “control” factor, originally a test for tortious liability, having its roots in the relationship of the apprentice to his master in early English industrial society. As applied to today’s complex economy of the assembly line, of dispersed industrial operations, of concentrated operations but with semi-autonomous “departments” or branches, and of general contractors who, in turn, employ subcontractors and sub-subcontractors, the “control” test is often meaningless, usually ambiguous, and always suscept*33ible of paperwriting evasions. Consequently we have abandoned it. Tata v. Muskovits, 354 Mich 695. The test is now one of economic reality. Powell v. Employment Security Commission, 345 Mich 455, dissent, 462, 478; Salmon v. Bagley Laundry Company, 344 Mich 471, dissent, 475; United States v. Silk (Harrison v. Greyvan Lines, Inc.), 331 US 704 (67 S Ct 1463, 91 L ed 1757). This is not a matter of terminology, oral or written, but of the realities of the work performed. Control is a factor, as is payment of wages, hiring and firing, and the responsibility for the maintenance of discipline, but the test of economic reality views these elements as a whole, assigning primacy to no single one. See, also, Pazan v. Unemployment Compensation Commission, 343 Mich 587, dissent 592.
The determination so to be made, the relationship as a matter of economic reality, cannot, in the usual case, be made upon pleadings and affidavits alone. In this respect the closing words of my Brother Black’s opinion herein are much in point.
I concur in reversal and remand.
Edwards, J., concurred with Smith, J.