On February 10, 2022, CDW filed an amicus brief in the NLRB’s Atlanta Opera case, in which the Board is considering changing its standard to determine whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor. Our brief is one of 39 briefs filed in the case, highlighting the importance of (and controversy surrounding) this issue.

In our brief, we highlighted the Board’s two failed attempts to rewrite the standard for determining independent contractor status under the National Labor Relations Act and criticize the Board for “proposing again to disregard judicial authority by reinstating the Board’s discredited FedEx standard, or some version of it.”

We call on the Board to keep in place its 2019 SuperShuttle independent contractor standard, which “correctly explained how the Board’s prior rulings in FedEx I and II ‘fundamentally shifted the independent contractor analysis, for implicit policy-based reasons, to one of economic realities…’, thereby violating the Act and multiple court rulings.” We caution the Board against overruling SuperShuttle, which we explain “would violate the Act and binding judicial precedent, inevitably subjecting the Board to overruling by the courts, and perhaps even judicial sanctions… destabilizing a number of industries represented by the amici, and depriving many independent contractors of their preferred flexible work methods and entrepreneurial opportunities.”

Joining CDW on its brief were the American Association of Advertising Agencies, American Bakers Association, American Trucking Associations, Associated Builders and Contractors, HR Policy Association, Independent Bakers Association, Independent Electrical Contractors, National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, National Federation of Independent Business, and Nation Retail Federation.