[LoSboccacc]

well that's the whole point. if they dictate the contractor work hour, work environment or workload outside the contract deliverables it's employment masked as contract work and there are hefty fines and the possibility to be forced to hire the person.

[ccajas]

As someone who has had non-trivial contract experience, how much leeway is given to independent contractors in the US to work on-site, with the in-house employees? I'm almost 100% sure I was mis-classified as an independent contractor while getting employee-like wages. I was told to show up from 9 to 5 on the premises.

I don't think anyone really punished the company though. They were a pretty small and insignificant web agency just hiring a couple local people but tons of off-shore work.

Does that mean that ICs generally work remotely? Or what is actually the deal with company offices and ICs?

Moving ahead, I wish I could help out the industry by shielding the naive new workforce from mis-classification and similar forms of work exploitation.

[LoSboccacc]

I’m unsure about US law so I can’t help with concrete advice for your situation. Anyway, it is not something it will be investigated without the employee initiating the action and documenting it in a lawsuit, which is going to strain your relationship and generally makes sense only if a large amount of the workforce is missclassified and takes collective action.

Game theory and all that applies. Best recourse is not to fall into one such firms.

In broad terms the contractor vs employee test is similar across the world, because is derived from the same forces (tax and welfare avoidance for the employer, better cashflow for the employees that don’t care about welfare yet)

You really need to check in your jurisdiction but in general: you have work hours vs contracted goals, you have no agency to work for multiple clients concurrently, you work on employee machinery.

Work remotely locally etc is a consequence of those general tests. It help thinking that it’s a contract between to business. Would you ask a cake shop exclusive work, to be at your house 9-5 and to work on your oven? That’s not a cake shop, that’s a baker.