Legal Question in Employment Law in Arizona
My situation has several questions to be answered. I work for a start-up website company and am paid as a 1099 employee. My feeling is that I am not technically a contract employee, as the owner has a great deal to do with what I do and how I do it. He constantly micro-manages what I do and how I do it, and although I am to be paid a flat rate per week, he docks me for days I may not do anything and for holidays. We have no written agreement regarding pay; he just said he would pay me by the week. (He even provided me with business cards with the company name on it.)
If I am not a contract EE then the next question is moot, but I would like an answer to it.
One question is whether the spreadsheets I make to track what I do are mine or his? If I am a contract EE, then aren't those spreadsheets mine since they are tools I use to track what I do?
1 Answer from Attorneys
I can't put an hour consultation on these issues into five minutes but, briefly:
1. It sounds like you may be an employee. The acid test is whether you have other clients. Also, do your have your own company, your own Employer Identification Number? Contractors do; employees don't. Also important, as you mentioned, are the control and place of work/whose equipment used. If you are really an employee (designation as a "contractor" does not control the answer) your situation is a "nuclear bomb" for the employer who may face an audit by state and federal agencies for taxes due for you and others. If ever you are not paid your claim would be a wage claim (instead of just a contract claim) with mandatory attorneys fees and very difficult for the employer to defend. In that case you may want to come back and see us.
2. You seem to assume that if you are a contractor you then would own the spreadsheets. The answer is not that black and white. For example, work which may be copyrighted may be work for hire for and owned by the employer. In part it depends on who furnishes the specs for work and whether you were paid for work according to those specs. Generally, the way to protect your work product is to have a contract where you reserve your rights in the work produced and do not assign them to the company. We review and draft such contracts.
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