The rule clarifies that for an employer to qualify as a “joint employer” it must “possess and exercise such substantial direct and immediate control over one or more essential terms and conditions of employment of another employer’s employees.”
A finding of joint employment is legally significant because each joint employer must participate in collective bargaining and each is jointly and severally liable for the other’s unfair labor practices.
What does this mean in the simplest and most practical of terms?
Franchisors are almost certainly not joint employers with their franchisees (as is the case with parents and subsidiaries, and contractors and subcontractors), while businesses, in most cases, almost certainly are joint employers with staffing agencies that provide temporary employees.
The final rule (all 53 pages of it), which goes into effect on April 27, 2020, is available to download here. The NLRB also issued a press release and published a fact sheet.
* Photo by Miltiadis Fragkidis on Unsplash