18. Department of Labor and Related Agencies · Notable
Restore the direct-and-immediate-control joint employer standard
Printed page 591 18. Department of Labor and Related Agencies
“DOL and NLRB should return to the long-standing approach to defining joint employers based on direct and immediate control.”
What has happened
- Partially done
The Wage and Hour Division proposed to restore joint-employer regulations to 29 CFR part 791, where they sat before 2021, and to apply the same standard under the FMLA and MSPA. A proposed rule only: DOL has had no joint-employer regulation at all since 2021, so this half of the ask remains undelivered.
- Partially done
The National Labor Relations Board revised its rules to replace the vacated 2023 joint-employer standard with the previous version of 29 CFR 103.40 — the 2020 rule, which requires substantial direct and immediate control over essential terms and conditions of employment. That is the standard the Quote names, restored on the Board's side of the ask. The Department of Labor's side was still empty on this date.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Two-object ask (“DOL and NLRB”) with one object delivered: partial under §3b’s two-object rule. The NLRB half is done by final rule; the DOL half is a proposal.
- The Board’s rule is formally a conforming amendment — the 2023 rule was vacated by the Eastern District of Texas in March 2024 and the 2020 text has been the operative law since — but the Board chose to codify that rather than re-propose, which is what makes the restoration final.
- Leveled with #1628, the statutory version of the same ask, which has not passed a chamber.
- Action
- reinstate
- Object
- Joint employer standard
- ID
- 1627