§ 780.331 Crew leaders and labor contractors.

(a) Whether a crew leader or a labor contractor is the employer of the workers he supplies is a question of fact. The tests here are the same as those used to determine whether a sharecropper or tenant is an independent contractor. A crew leader who merely assembles a crew and brings them to the farm to be supervised and paid directly by the farmer, and who does the same work and receives the same pay as the crewmembers, is an employee of the farmer, and both he and his crew are counted as such and paid accordingly if the farmer is not exempt under the 500 man-day test. The situation is not significantly different if under the same circumstances, the crew is hired at so much per acre for their work. This is in effect a group piecework arrangement.