Lending your master electrician license to a company: what the rules make you responsible for

The thread is about price: a salary, a cut of revenue, or both. State rules settle an earlier question, which is what the qualifier owes in return. In Texas, the licensing department's rule for electrical contractors (16 TAC 73.51) makes the contractor and the master electrician it names on its license answerable for supervising every licensee who works for the contractor. A contractor may not use a license that has not been assigned to it, and it has 30 business days to tell the department after the master leaves.

Florida's statute for electrical contractors (section 489.522) goes further. Primary qualifying agents share equal responsibility for overseeing all of the company's operations, all field work on every site and its finances, and they must hold approval authority over its checks, payments and contracts. A qualifier who walks away has 60 days to move the license to a different company, take it in his own name or make it inactive, and still answers for matters from the period he qualified the company.

California's contractor law (Business and Professions Code 7068.1) spells out what supervision means: running construction operations, making technical and administrative decisions, checking jobs for workmanship and supervising on site. One person may serve as qualifier for at most three firms in any year. Breaking the section is grounds for discipline and a misdemeanor carrying up to six months in county jail, a fine of $3,000 to $5,000, or both. A responsible managing employee must be a permanent employee who works 32 hours a week or 80% of the company's operating hours, whichever is less.

Taken together, the rules describe a job with authority over money, crews and paperwork. A master who signs on without signing power, access to the jobs or the right to stop work keeps all of those duties with no practical way to meet them.