I've got input, for sure.
REALITY: Whether the legislative/policy motive is to attack enclaves of wealth or not, AND whether THE MOST SPARTAN LAW in regards to what employee classification is made of caddies, tips, hours worked is in place, now or in the future...or not...
NO EFFECT, especially an adverse one to a club, is ever going to happen. No club is going to need to cease their caddie program because of it...another solution, another method of reporting what exists will always be available.
BECAUSE the nature of the thing is inscrutable. What taxing or governing agency is going to devise a test, and implement a test in the field, that cannot be altered in a day, once the criteria is published and notice given?
The moment that criteria is known and quickly sized up by the professional people on the Board, Legal, or Managerial committee, what club is NOT going to alter their visible policy with regards to their caddies, while all the while maintaining their invisible structure?
I assure you, the reaction, though particular to any one individual club and their mores is going to be unanimous in that -- curiosity of curiosities! Wouldn't ya know it, Club Xs policy now has its caddie policy right at the envelope of the new law/tax/non-employee relationship. Go figure!
All the things that MIGHT be perceived as gaining legal traction make the caddie-independent contractor relationship into a employee relationship (uniforms and bibs, direction of assignments, caddie yards and sanitary facilities, pay system, OSHA, lightning policies, etc) can so very easily be retailed as something that DOESN"T violate the new edict.
And if, even if, a club was willing to honor both the letter (easy) and spirit (not as easy) of rigorous, bureaucratic system, there is no way for it to be monitored and for strident policies in May become flaccid policies by September.
On the caddies side of the ledger...
The best of us are going to do and pretend exactly what the club fathers say to do and pretend. We have never wanted an employee relationship with the club and we don't want our good and sustaining thing substantially altered for some as yet unrealized benefit. To the caddie, it smells like a lot of extra trouble just to fix something that isn't broken. In this way, we are in perfect alignment with members and the clubs who would resist such alterations to the caddie-club relationship.
For many, this is the second job, the one you drift in and out of as fortune and events transpire. When things get better in Life #1, you do less with Life #2. At the same time, high schoolers and college kids refresh and replenish and mature and then leave in short cycles of 2 and 3 seasons....it is needed and valued for all parties, but its hardly the environment where Bolsheviks like me are looking for their rights and bennies.
So debate as much as you want about the whys, the whatfors, and the who's the victim and the perpetrator, but as long as the private club golfer wants his/her environment of caddies, they will have them, with no discernible impact on the way they have always satisified that desire. The system is too provincial, too varied, too micro-organic, and the participants too disinterested in change to not pay it visible lip sevice with diffident field policy.
cheers
vk