Hello, Thanks for reading my question. Any insight would be appreciated.

I have a friend of mine who works in the Oil and Gas industry as a sub-contractor. The company he's subcontracting to (or is it contracting to), pays him straight hourly time. He typically works 12 hours per day, 6 days a week, sometimes 7 days per week, with very little time off... not by choice, I guess. He's got a family to support.

Alas, he doesn't get paid overtime because he's a contractor. An acquaintance of mine performed the same type of work in Colorado, where the law states that even sub-contractors must be paid for overtime after 40 hours per week, at 1.5 time the regular hourly wage. He received around $40K because of this.

I've heard of a similar law in Wyoming, where if a person is a contractor (or subcontractor) and only subcontracts to one company during the fiscal year, the person must be treated as an employee by the company, and of course, be paid time and a half over 40 hours.

Does anyone know if this is true? If it is, I would like to pass this on to him so that he may request back pay for the past almost 2 years he's been sub-contracting to this company. Maybe then he'll be able to take a day off a week to spend with his family.

Again, thanks much for your insight if you have any. If you don't, well then... Thank you anyways.

Are taxes withheld from the payment? Is a 1099 or a W-2 received at year end?

Calling to ask.

Edit: He pays his own taxes. He gets a 1099 at the end of the year from the company he contracts to.

All workers are legally either employees or independant contractors.
- Employees have taxes withheld from the payment, receive W-2s at year-end and are subject to labor law. Overtime rules are a function of labor law.
- Independant contractors do not have taxes withheld from the payment, receive 1099s at year end, and are subject to contract law. Independant contractors have no legal right to paid overtime unless their negotiated contract says so.

The other obvious issue is that not all workers are correctly classified as independant contractors. I will include pointers to the classification rules.

http://payroll-taxes.com/articles/art2.html

http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/whdfs13.pdf

I thank you for that answer, Sir. Now, I am curios how the aforementioned acquaintance received all that back pay while working in Colorado. I know this is a fact, because i have seen the check he received. Incidentally, the person was a WY resident at the time he was working in CO.

I will research this further. Again, thank you.

Edit: This link isbroken: http://payroll-taxes.com/articles/art2.html

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/01/art1full.pdf

My buddy seems to fall into the employee status, because the company he contracts with dictates HOW he should perform the work, and not only let him perform the work his way and get the result the company expects.

IEdit: This link isbroken: http://payroll-taxes.com/articles/art2.html

Try the following. They apparently replaced the article with something similar last week.

http://payroll-taxes.com/articles/employee-contractor.html