Workmans Compensation for Independent contractors in Missouri

[Phillip Syrios]

We are having a very technical and difficult problem to solve involving workman's compensation for independent and sub-contractors.

First of all we have a staff of about 15 people and pay workman's compensation for all of our staff including our maintenance and construction staff.

We also have a lot of vendors, some of these vendors are independent or sub contractors or 1-man shows. Our cleaner for example works by himself as an independent contractor as well as a few people who are "handyman" and do turnover and make ready work for us.

We make all of our contractors carry liability insurance. It is hard enough to find someone who has that. Almost non of these contractors carry workman's compensation because as an independent contractor they are not required to by the sate of Missouri, but any insurer we find for r employee's workman's compensation is telling us they are going to charge us workman's compensation for all of these subcontractors if they do not have it. This doesn't even seem legal for them to do as they are not required to carry it. My question is how do people typically deal with this issue? Telling people they have to have workman compensation would cause us to lose 3/4ths of our vendors (who again are not doing anything wrong.)