The answer to the question of who your employer is, and whether you have more than one employer within the meaning of various employment laws, is important when determining who to sue in any type of dispute and whether to include more than one entity, and it isn’t as obvious as it might look at first. In fact, this issue has been the subject of significant litigation in the context of discrimination and wrongful termination case. Below is the basic legal framework of how may be considered an employer in California and why.
An important California Supreme Court case that analyzes “employer” definition is Martinez v Combs (2010) 49 Cal.4th 35. In that case, the Court examined the California wage order definition of employer to determine whether farmworkers who complained of Labor Code violations could sue a produce merchant as a joint employer with the grower who had hired them. Although the Court concluded the produce merchant was not a joint employer, it acknowledged that several entities may be employers where they “control different aspects of the employment relationship. This occurs, for example, when one entity (such as a temporary employment agency) hires and pays a worker, and another entity supervises the work.” (see Duffey v. Tender Heart Home Care Agency, LLC (2019) 31 Cal.App.5th 232, 254 [definition of employment is “‘phrased . . . in the alternative (i.e., “wages, hours, or working conditions”),’ and thus control over any one of the three creates an employment relationship”. Further, joint employment occurs when two or more persons engage the services of an employee in an enterprise in which the employee is subject to the control of both. In-Home Supportive Services v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (1984).
Thus, the degree of control over the hours of work and manner of perofrmance of work of any worker appears to be of significant importance in determining whether employment relationship exist. The definition of employment relationship has traditionally been broad in California, and the fact that a worker exercises some control of his work doesn’t negate an employment relationship with those who have general control and supervision of that worker.