This chapter
explains the numerous legal questions that arise under the common
law and under the many employment statutes as a result of these practices.
Most of the various federal (and state) statutes contain no detailed
definition of the terms "employer" and "employee." Thus
the job of defining these terms has been left to the courts. Considerable
authority developed however under the common law and under the early
statutes, particularly the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair
Labor Standards Act, both passed in the 1930s. The definitions developed
under those statutes have been adopted by the courts in interpreting
Title VII and the subsequently enacted statutes. The net result is
a broad interpretation of these terms, meaning that, for many purposes,
the leased or temporary employee will be regarded as an employee
of both the official employer and the company leasing his or her
services. What to do to deal with this possibility is given major
emphasis in this chapter.