March 17th, 2016
Founder of SOLDIERFIT Fitness Company Fights for His American Dream
Testifies before House Small Business Subcommittee On Impact of NLRB’s “Joint Employer” Decision
WASHINGTON, March 17—Danny Farrar, CEO and founder of Frederick, Maryland based SOLDIERFIT Fitness Company testified before the U.S. Small Business Subcommittee on Investigations, Oversight and Regulations on behalf of the Coalition to Save Local Businesses. Farrar, a 9-year veteran of the U.S. Army, shared his small business story and asked the Committee to take action to reverse the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision to alter the definition of “joint-employer.”
The NLRB declared Browning-Ferris Industries, a California-based recycling company, to be a “joint employer” with Leadpoint, a staffing services company. This decision ignored more than 50 years of regulatory and legal precedent and retroactively adopted a far broader definition of “joint employer” than had ever been contemplated. Since the NLRB’s ruling, thousands of small business owners and members of the Coalition to Save Local Businesses have engaged their members of Congress in an effort to educate them about the impact on locally owned businesses.
Farrar is a co-founder and CEO of SOLDIERFIT, a fitness company committed to the ideals of community, patriotism and the pursuit of the American Dream. Farrar’s journey to realizing his dream took him down many of life’s most difficult roads. After graduating nearly last in his high school class, Farrar lost nearly all of his family by the time he was 20, was tasked with the duty of taking the first Army team into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, served the U.S. Army in Iraq where he saw combat and 700 convoy missions, and ultimately survived a suicide attempt while battling PTSD. Farrar, with the help of mental health professionals and mentors, began the next chapter of his life as a small business owner. In just over five years, the award-winning company has grown to three corporate locations and two franchise locations with more growth planned for this year. Most recently, SOLDIERFIT was named the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Eastern regional finalist for the 2016 DREAM BIG Small Business of the Year Award.
“I am here today because one of the most important lessons that I can share from my life experiences is, when we refuse to fight, our failure is assured,” said Farrar. “With the NLRB’s vague joint employer liability standard based on ‘indirect’ and even unexercised, ‘reserved’ control, no one can assure me that my business – or anyone else’s business – may not run afoul of such an unclear standard.”
Farrar urged the committee members and Congress to fight for locally owned businesses and exercise its Article I power to provide a check on an overreach by a federal agency like the NLRB’s joint employer activism. “Regulators are attempting a corporate takeover of Main Street by changing the definition of a joint employer. Local business owners may effectively be demoted from entrepreneur to middle manager, as they are gradually forced to forfeit operational control of the stores, clubs, inns or restaurants they built.”
“These small business owners are on the front line of the economy,” said Executive Director for the Coalition to Save Local Businesses Michael Layman. “Each member of the House can stand up for their local business constituents and support H.R. 3459.”
The Coalition to Save Local Businesses is a diverse group of locally owned, independent small businesses, associations and organizations. The group is dedicated to protecting and strengthening all sectors of small business, which are now under attack by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
To view the full testimony, click here.
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The Coalition to Save Local Businesses represents thousands of local businesses and millions of American jobs through its membership and partner organizations. The coalition’s goal is to inform Members of Congress and others about the negative consequences decisions by the National Labor Relations Board to expand the definition of who can be held as a joint employer would have on local businesses and their employees across the country. The coalition is asking Congress to support legislation that would make permanent the long-standing and widely accepted definition of joint employer.