Traveling Sales Crew Bill Gutted by Assembly Small Business Committee

by State Senator Jon Erpenbach

The Assembly Committee on Small Business voted along party lines on Tuesday to so dramatically alter Senate Bill 251, the Traveling Sales Crew Bill, that it renders the legislation virtually useless.

I introduced the bill to regulate traveling sales crews after the horrific 1999 van crash near Janesville that took the lives of seven young people. It’s intent was to require companies employing traveling sales crew workers to register with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development and follow our standard labor laws. It would also give state authorities at the Department of Agriculture, Trade & Consumer Protection and the Department of Justice the tools to prosecute companies that violate our laws.

In order to protect one out-of-state company that does door-to-door business in Wisconsin, the Assembly Small Business Committee Republican members acquiesed to the demands of this company and their high priced lobbyist, approving an amendment that effectively guts the bill.

The amendment creates a subset of workers, who will be called “independent temporary resident direct sellers”. This group of workers will not be required to register with state authorities, instead they will only be required to procure a permit from a town, village or city clerk. The criteria to get the permit is very minimal, and will allow the fly-by-night entities that invade our state each year to manipulate this new provision in the law. The bottom line is that this amendment creates a loophole that the truly bad outfits will find a way to manipulate, and ultimately weakens the protections for residents and workers of Wisconsin.

The amendment is really all about the Southwestern Company of Nashville, Tennessee desperately wanting to avoid having to comply with Wisconsin’s labor laws. The company accomplishes this by their “business model”. It’s ingenious, really. They call their employees “independent contractors”, and label their summer of selling door-to-door an “internship”. What it does is allow them to manipulate young people into jobs walking door to door all summer long.

Their policy is to not allow students to work in their own state. They isolate the students from friends and family by requiring that they relocate to a different part of the country. Once located in a metropolitan area far from home, they are instructed to hit the streets from 7:30 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. Each night they are to check in with a supervisor and relay the days activities. This is expected 6 days a week. On the 7th day of the week, they are expected to attend sales meetings, where they are instructed on techniques for working their way into people’s homes and convincing them to purchase Southwestern products. A company representative even arranges carpooling to Nashville and their subsequent state assignment. At the public hearing in the Capitol in February one of the students actually testified that they live in groups of four – three inexperienced sellers with a more veteran seller to help keep an eye on the three new recruits.

That doesn’t exactly sound independent to me.