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CA Supreme Court Clarifies Who Cannot Be Sued by Workers

By Mike McKee

For 97 years, neither California legislators nor the courts ever clarified who qualified as an employer under the state Industrial Welfare Commission's (IWC) wage orders. That changed on May 20 when the California Supreme Court decided, in part, who does not qualify ' at least in business relationships where employees work for independent contractors.

Specifically, the court held unanimously that farmworkers could not seek unpaid wages from the two companies that marketed strawberries they picked for their boss, an independent contractor who went broke while they worked for him. The ruling in Martinez v. Combs, 10 C.D.O.S. 6119, shot down the hopes of not only thousands of farmworkers, but janitors, food service workers and others dependent on jobs in which employers contract with third parties for services.

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