A general contractor hires an unlicensed "subcontractor" who brings their own crew to the job site. If one of that crew is injured, who is most likely treated as the employer for workers' compensation purposes?

Explanation

§2750.5 creates a rebuttable presumption affecting the burden of proof that a worker performing services for which a contractor's licence is required — or performing them for a person who is required to hold one — is an employee rather than an independent contractor, and the section ends by making a valid licence a condition of independent contractor status for that work. An unlicensed person therefore cannot be a subcontractor at all, so he and the crew he brought are the hiring contractor's employees, and §3351 makes a person an employee whether lawfully or unlawfully employed. That is why (a) is exactly backwards: the injured worker's rights are the reason the presumption exists. (b) has no basis, because an employee never self-insures. (d) reaches too far — an owner who hires unlicensed workers directly can become their employer, but owning the land does not make the owner the employer in every case.