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by throwaway09223 1516 days ago
Yes, but at scale and in a lawsuit, the court will look at the totality of the situation.

Many companies hire through staffing companies, rather than hiring 1099s directly. But when the contracting company only provides a service to you, and their 1099s are only contracted to your offices, you may find that the employees of this other company are considered to be employees of your company instead. Courts can decide to pierce these abstractions. The most notable example is the Microsoft permatemp lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp

If your company has so much piping that the local plumber hires staff dedicated to you for years on end, then it's conceivable that a court would decide that the plumbing company's employees are actually your employees.

Personally, I've always wondered whether government contractors could win a lawsuit to be considered government employees. The US government is by far the biggest "permatemp" employer and seems to itself regularly flout these kinds of laws.

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>Personally, I've always wondered whether government contractors could win a lawsuit to be considered government employees. The US government is by far the biggest "permatemp" employer and seems to itself regularly flout these kinds of laws.

Maybe if this nonsense was actually addressed and made strict, the US government would finally be forced to provide just compensation for it's employees instead of always just shoving piles of money at external contractors and allowing untold grift