Let’s hope those contract employees have been making their quarterly estimated tax payments…
From Bloomberg.com:
FedEx Corp. drivers were found by a judge to be independent contractors in a nationwide series of lawsuits claiming the company treats them as employees and owes them full benefits.
U.S. District Judge Robert Miller in South Bend, Indiana, yesterday threw out claims of drivers in 20 class-action cases in California, New York, New Jersey and other states alleging the company misclassified their employment status and owed them back pay, overtime and other damages.
“We are very pleased with today’s significant rulings from the federal District Court in Indiana,” Maury Lane, a FedEx spokesman, said yesterday in an e-mail. FedEx, based in Memphis, Tennessee, is the second-largest U.S. package-shipping company after United Parcel Service Inc.
FedEx saves money by using contractors because it doesn’t offer them the same benefits and vacation time as it does employees. The company has encouraged its contractors to consolidate routes and hire their own subcontractors in an effort to bolster its position that the workers are small- business owners and not employees.
The contractor model gives FedEx’s Ground unit a cost advantage of as much as 30 percent over Atlanta-based UPS, University of Pittsburgh business professor Marick Masters has estimated.
Miller found that the drivers are independent contractors in 20 of the 28 remaining group lawsuits, and ruled in favor of FedEx on some claims in the other eight class-action cases, Lane said. In three cases, the court ruled against FedEx on at least one claim, he said.