West Virginia Senate Bill 1073 was introduced, which would directly impact worker classification within the state.

The bill would utilize federal IRS standards for determining whether a worker is an employee or a contractor, eliminating current state rules on the matter. The classification between employees and contractors has been a significant debate for many years, as the rise of the gig economy has created many ambiguous employment situations, making it difficult to classify workers.

This has been an issue because employees are entitled to certain rights, such as minimum wage, unemployment, and workers’ compensation, while contractors are not entitled to those benefits.