Senators can’t say they don’t know David Weil because he had the same job in the Obama administration and used his regulatory power to squeeze freelancers, gig workers, and small businesses.
President Biden’s legislative agenda isn’t moving forward on Capitol Hill. The fallback is to make his appointees do what they can by law. That’s clear enough from the fact that the Labor Department went to great lengths to get David Weil to run the Wage and Hour Division of the Labor Department, even tho he did a lot of bad things in the Obama administration.
Controversial lessons did not move forward last year because of a deadlocked Senate Committee on Health, Training, Labor, and Pensions. This month, Vise President Biden nominated him again. Committee Chair Patty Murray recently used a Republican absence to get David Weil thru, 11-10. This was a victory for Mr. Weil.
In 2015, he wrote a guideline that told most workers to give up their “independent contractor” status, concluding that “most workers are employees.” This meant that union organizers could play a fair game. David Weil kept up his campaign even tho he wasn’t in charge. He helped Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey fight against Uber and Lyft, both of which have independent contractors as drivers.
David Weil might not like the business model of a franchise. He worked with the Obama administration to change the “joint employment” custom. It now says that more people who work for a company should be thought of as “direct employees,” which includes people who work for a franchise or a subcontractor. He also used his enforcement officers to fight against non-union franchise businesses.
As a result, David Weil changed the extra time rule in 2016 to make it more than double the wage threshold for staff who could get extra pay. When a federal judge ruled against the rule in 2017, he said that it didn’t follow Congress’s rules about extra time for certain white-collar workers.
All this and more could happen if Mr. Weil had another chance. Marty Walsh, the Labor Secretary, has already canceled the Trump Administration’s rule that made it easier for businesses to read. The Administration doesn’t have enough votes in Congress to pass the Pro-Huge Labor PRO Act, but David Weil is willing to put its parts into place and fight for them in court.
The companies that are already having a hard time finding enough workers to meet rising demand could be hurt by all of this. Advisor MBO Companions recently said that the number of people who work on their own will rise by 34% in 2021, and that 87% of those people say they’re happier working on their own. Franchises are a great way to start a business, especially for women and minorities. This year, the business is expecting a lot of growth. Mr. Weil’s history has made it possible for big and small businesses to work against him at the same time.
Wages before inflation are going up for workers of all skill levels because there has been a long-term shortage of workers. Companies are willing to pay more if they can get the right people to work for them. However, they don’t want a regulator whose main goal is to use coercion to raise prices for businesses trying to get back on their feet after a pandemic like this one.
