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This paper aims to explain the rules and regulations for using independent contractors in a library setting.

The paper uses the personal expertise of the author who has been a professor of human resources management as well as a library consultant to all types of libraries for over 15 years.

The importance of treating independent contractors very differently from employees is emphasized. The paper provides a step‐by‐step guideline on the compliance issues by which every library and independent contractor must abide to guarantee a legitimate relationship in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service.

This paper helps the library director and the library department manager more intelligently use independent contractors within the operation of a library organization.

This paper presents a model and evidence regarding the incidence of independent contractors and the self-employed. It focuses on the rights to control the work routine as an important issue distinguishing employee and non-employee workers. The conditions under which it is optimal for the buyer of labor services to control the work routine (and use employees) and when is it desirable for the seller to have control are considered. The model emphasizes the costs of measuring worker output vs. monitoring worker effort, worker expertise, and worker investment and is tested with Current Population Survey data merged with the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. The empirical findings are broadly consistent with the approach. Independent contractors tend to be in jobs that are harder to monitor and having more worker expertise such as jobs involving more intellectual skills, having a greater variety of duties, and requiring more worker expertise and training. This is even more true of the other self-employed. We also review existing empirical research on self-employment, discussing how it fits into our baseline model and evaluating the arguments to explain independent contractors and self-employment. These include a desire to reduce fringe benefits, demand and staffing uncertainty, wanting to avoid lawsuits for wrongful termination, a desire to protect a reputation for not laying-off employees, credit constraints, and worker desire for flexibility. There is strong evidence that credit constraints have a substantial influence on self-employment status and likewise for worker desire for job flexibility. The literature suggests that the desire to avoid payment of fringe benefits, demand and staffing variability, and avoidance of potential wrongful dismissal lawsuits induces firms to use more temporary agency workers but does not seem to affect the use of independent contractors.

While staffing agencies are gaining importance in work relationships with the highly skilled workforce, their work relations with highly skilled independent contractors have not been investigated yet. Staffing agencies as labor market intermediaries charge a fee to help independent contractors as well as client organizations to create contracts for services while independent contractors remain self-employed. Besides their growing relevance, their exact role remains unclear. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of staffing agencies in work relationships with highly skilled independent contractors.

The authors applied a mixed-methods design comprising a qualitative interview study with independent contractors and staffing agencies’ representatives (n=29) coupled with a quantitative survey of staffing agencies (n=81).

The analysis shows that staffing agencies are important actors in work relationships with highly skilled independent contractors. However, the relationships can be differentiated into rather standardized ones on the one hand and individualized relations on the other hand. This seems to correspond with differences between sectors.

First, the authors discuss staffing agencies as new intermediaries and highlight their relevance in the negotiation of working conditions. Second, the authors emphasize variations of the role of staffing agencies in triadic work relationships of highly skilled independent contractors in relation to specificities of sectors. Third, the study also adds on organizational support theory and related research.

Classifying workers as either employees or independent contractors has significant financial consequences for the payer (usually a business) and the worker. The payer may be motivated more by the desire to avoid paying for employee benefits and employer payroll taxes than by doing the right thing and correctly classifying and paying the worker as an employee. Estimates are that the cost of such benefits and taxes may equal 20–30% of gross pay. When governmental regulations are unclear or enforcement is lax, many stakeholders suffer. This includes the workers, their families, their co-workers, and law-abiding employers as well as citizens (taxpayers) who must pay more than their fair share to provide adequate funding for related government programs and benefits. This is a global issue as evidenced by widely publicized lawsuits in many countries involving prominent defendants such as Microsoft, Uber, and Lyft. Software platforms used to distribute small jobs to temporary and part-time workers have resulted in the exponential growth of the gig economy. Such technology has also further enabled the misclassification of workers beyond what has occurred in years past. An ethical analysis to identify the many stakeholders and the impact of worker misclassification should be conducted to guide governments in developing and enhancing regulations for the pervasive issue of worker classification and to protect the rights of their workers and taxpayers.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

Bid/no-bid decision is a significant and strategic decision, which must be finalized at an early stage of the bidding process. Such decision-making may have significant impact on the performance of the contractors. Using Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) and Classification and Regression (CRT) decision tree algorithms, this paper aims to develop bid/no-bid models for design-bid-build projects for contractors.

The models in this study have been developed using CHAID and CRT algorithms. Thirty-four bid/no-bid key factors were collected via extensive research. The bid/no-bid factors were listed based on their importance index as a result of a questionnaire distributed among the construction professionals. These factors were divided into five main risk categories – owner, project, bidding situation, contract and contractor – which were taken as inputs for the models. Split-sample validation was applied for testing and measuring the accuracy of the CHAID and CRT models. Moreover, Spearman's rank correlation and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) tests were employed to identify the statistical features of the received 169 responses.

The key bid/no-bid factors in construction industry were categorized in five related groups and ranked based on the relative importance index. It was found that the top 6 ranked bid/no-bid factors were (1) current workload, (2) need for work, (3) previous experience with employer; (4) timely payment by the employer; (5) availability of other projects for bidding (6) reputation of employer in the industry. Matrix comparison between all bid/no-bid groups was performed using Spearman's correlation to measure the relationship between each of the two paired groups. It was concluded that all the relationships were positive.

Existing bidding models require many inputs and advanced understanding of mathematics and software to run the model. Contractors tend to use easy, fast and available support methods. Excluding a great number of the bid/no-bid factors may affect the final decision. This paper proposes a bid/no-bid decision tree models for contractors of different sizes. It is the first study in the literature, to the best of authors' knowledge, to study bid/no-bid decision with the proposed decision tree algorithm. The proposed models in this study overcome the shortfalls of most previous models such as avoiding the complexity and difficulties of applying the concept. The proposed model will provide the contractors with a bid/no-bid decision based on the input for the defined bid factor groups. The proposed models display the soft spots and hot spots between the independent and dependent variables, which leads to a better decision. The proposed models display the result effectively in visual terms, easy to understand and easy to apply. The proposed models are a form of multiple effect (or variable) analysis which allows the companies to explain, describe, predict or classify an outcome.

The paper seeks to consider the basis on which a management corporation can represent original and subsequent purchasers of units in strata developments in a representative action against developers; the significance of unit owners' share values when courts award compensation; vicarious liability; and developers' use of the “independent contractor” defence in relation to its liability for defects in common property.

The paper analyses cases from several common law jurisdictions, with a focus on Singapore Court of Appeal decisions.

The paper highlights the problems posed as a result of the doctrine of privity in relation to management corporations' claims against developers for defects in common property; the implications of unit holders' share values; and the circumstances in which developers can avail themselves of the independent contractor defence.

The paper will be instructive to developers, contractors, management corporations and both original and subsequent purchasers of units in strata developments.

The paper brings to focus the importance of due consideration by the management corporation before it commences a representative action on behalf of the subsidiary proprietors; and also highlights procedures and/or legislation that need to be implemented, failing which there may be financial implications that can render a “successful” litigation against the developer a pyrrhic victory.

Whether a worker is an employee of a business or an independent contractor with that business is an issue that can have many significant problems. Generally, an employee is someone who works for an employer. An employee is controlled by the employer and has little discretion in the timing and performance of his tasks. According to Wilson, on the other hand, “independent contractors contract to do work and have the ability to perform the work without being subject to the control of the employer as long as they meet the expected results required by the contract (Wilson, 1999).” In short, independent contractors are independent business people who are hired to perform specific tasks. They are just like any other vendor, except they perform services rather than provide tangible goods and basically are in the business for themselves. Thus, they are not the hiring firm’s employees. They are not eligible for unemployment, disability, or workers compensation benefits (California Chamber of Commerce, 1991). There is no certain and consistent definition to distinguish an employee and an independent contractor. However, there are a number of rules that govern whether someone is an employee or an independent contractor; and each of the rules has its own characteristic in determining the issue.

February 3, 1971 Contract — Procuring breach — Trade union — Dispute between drivers under contract, as independent contractors, with the plaintiffs to deliver concrete to customers — Union's recognition of drivers' refusal to work as being official “strike” — Whether union protected by Trade Disputes Act, 1906 — Meaning of “contract of employment” — Trade Disputes Act, 1906 (6 Edw. VII, c. 47), s.3.

This article attempts to bridge and contribute to three related lines of inquiry: the effect of economic organization on cultural diversity; the origins of career specialism; and the contrast between market and firm as alternative modes of governance. In particular, I use the natural experiment engendered by the transformation of Hollywood from the firm-based studio system to the contemporary market system to test the claim that typecasting-driven restrictions on generalist identities in an internal labor market are comparable in their significance to those found in the external labor market (Faulkner, 1983; Zuckerman, Kim, Ukanwa, & von Rittmann, 2003). Results support this claim and thereby suggest that incentives for experimentation by employers in internal labor markets counterbalance the greater control over work assignments enjoyed by independent contractors in the external labor market.