A recent decision by a federal district court in Maryland highlights the dangers in classifying individuals as independent contractors instead of employees. (Randolph v. PowerComm Construction, Inc.) In this case, the defendant, a construction company, entered into a contract to provide flaggers to an electrical utility company. Instead of placing the flaggers on payroll as employees, the construction company treated them all as independent contractors. The flaggers sued for overtime pay under federal and state law. The court conditionally certified the case as collective action, and last week granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs on the issue of whether the plaintiffs were employees of the construction company and entitled to overtime pay. By granting summary judgment, the court necessarily found that the issue of employment was not in sufficient dispute to require a jury to make that determination. Although the court found that providing flaggers was not an integral part of the company’s business, the court found that the plaintiffs met all the other factors pointing toward employment. Specifically, the court found that the construction company had sufficient control over the manner in which the work was performed for the plaintiffs to be employees as the company hired and fired the plaintiffs. trained them, kept track of their hours, and told them where to work each day. The court also found that the plaintiffs could not make the type of strategic business decisions that would be associated with an independent business (e.g., the equipment to use, the types of jobs to take, hiring of assistants, and whether to advertise or adjust prices), only had a negligible investment in equipment or material, were not highly skilled workers, and were not free to find other work or come and go as they pleased, all of which were factors the court held pointed toward an employment relationship.