North Dakota § 43-55-01 - Definitions

§ 43-55-01. Definitions

As used in this chapter: 1. "Administrative fee" means the fee charged to a client by a professional employer organization for professional employer services. The term does not include any amount of a fee which is for wages and salaries, benefits, workers' compensation coverage, payroll taxes, withholding, or other assessment paid by the professional employer organization to or on behalf of a covered employee under a professional employer agreement. 2. "Client" means any person that enters a professional employer agreement with a professional employer organization. 3. "Coemployer" means either a professional employer organization or a client. 4. "Coemployment relationship" means a relationship that is intended to be an ongoing relationship rather than a temporary or project-specific relationship, wherein the rights, duties, and obligations of an employer which arise out of an employment relationship have been allocated between coemployers under a professional employer agreement and this chapter. 5. "Covered employee" means an individual having a coemployment relationship with a professional employer organization and a client, who has received written notice of coemployment with the professional employer organization, and whose coemployment relationship is under a professional employer agreement subject to this chapter. An individual who is an officer, director, shareholder, partner, or manager of the client is a "covered employee" to the extent the professional employer organization and the client have expressly agreed in the professional employer agreement that the individual is a covered employee and if the individual meets the criteria of this subsection and acts as an operational manager or performs day-to-day operational services for the client. 6. "Licensee" means a professional employer organization licensed under this chapter. 7. "Professional employer agreement" means a written contract between a client and a professional employer organization which provides for the coemployment of a covered employee, for the allocation of employer rights and obligations between the client and the professional employer organization with respect to a covered employee, and the assumption of the responsibilities required by this chapter. 8. "Professional employer organization" means a person engaged in the business of providing professional employer services. The term does not include an arrangement through which a person that does not have as its principal business activity the practice of entering a professional employer arrangement and does not hold itself out as a professional employer organization and that shares an employee with a commonly owned company within the meaning of section 414(b) and (c) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986; an independent contractor arrangement through which a person assumes responsibility for a product produced or a service performed by the person or the person's agents and retains and exercises primary direction and control over the work performed by an individual whose services are supplied under the arrangement; or the provision of temporary help services. 9. "Professional employer services" means the entering of a coemployment relationship under this chapter. 10. "Temporary help services" means services consisting of a person recruiting and hiring its own employees; finding another organization that needs the services of those employees; assigning those employees to perform work at or services for the other organization to support or supplement the other organization's workforce, to provide assistance in special work situations, such as an employee absence, skill shortage, or seasonal workload or to perform a special assignment or project; and customarily attempting to reassign the employees to another organization when the employers finish each assignment.