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Independent Contractor Supervising Company Employee--Any Liability Issues or Concerns

bragawbragaw 36 Posts
in HR & Employment Law Vote Up0Vote Down
My company will be hiring an individual who satisfies all of the requirements of an independent contractor. Are there any concerns/liability issues with having this individual supervise one of our employees?


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  • Don DDon D 9,834 Posts
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    Assuming you've fully ensured he meets the test of being an independent contractor, I would wonder why you would have him 'supervise' a company ee. Surely he won't have full supervisory authority over your company ee. Perhaps functional supervision on a temporary basis might be what you intend to happen with his supervisory role. I think if the contractor is indeed importing his contract business or expertise into your operation on a contract basis for a defined time period and it meets all the tests, you would be safe temporarily assigning one of your company employees to work at his functional direction; but, would not confuse the employee or the contractor by defining it as a supervisory relationship. In a prior job at a nationwide trucking company, we employed a whole unit of independent contractors, with one of them as supervisor, with their job being tracking driver movements and auditing driver logs. We even had some regular ee's reporting to the lead contractor. We got so deep off into the violation we could have had some real serious repurcussions. In no way did the contractors meet the 'tests' imposed by the IRS. We told them what to do, what hours to work, how to do the job, provided the tools to do the job, controlled their pay, and still called them contractors. I don't know if they still do that there or not since I'm not there. It got pretty blatant. It was a violation just begging to be reported! The supervision part of it was the very least of the considerations though.
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  • B_JacksonB_Jackson 23 Posts
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    The first consideration is that you used the term hire. One does not hire an independent contractor. You contract with the contractor. You should have your language checked regarding adding the supervision of company employees to the contract.
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