Excerpt Taken from the New Jersey Law Journal – A federal judge in Newark has denied the state’s motion to dismiss a suit challenging New Jersey’s classification of certain commercial truck drivers as employees, rather than independent contractors.
Currently, The New Jersey Unemployment Compensation Law classifies truck drivers as employees unless they meet the criteria of a separate state law, the Independent Contractor Statute. The Unemployment Compensation Law also provides an exemption from the Independent Contractor Statute for trucking companies whose vehicles weigh more than 18,000 pounds and that compensate drivers by a percentage of the gross revenue of the job, or by virtue of the weight of the load and the distance traveled.