OPINION
Thе questions presented center on whether Appellant bears liability for workers’ compensation benefits as a statutory employer of an injured truck driver employed by an independent contractor.
Pursuant to Section 302(a) of the Workers’ Compensation Act, 1 certain “contractors” bear secondary liability for compensation to injured workers employed by their “subcontractors,” as follows:
A contractor who subcontracts all or any part of a contract and his insurer shall be liable for the payment of compensation to the employes of the subcontractor unless the subcon *618 tractor primarily liable for the payment of such compensation has secured its payment as provided for in this act.
77 P.S. § 461.
See generally McDonald v. Levinson Steel Co.,
Appellant, Six L’s Packing Company, Inc., (now Lipman Produce) grows, harvests, processes, and distributes tomatoes and other produce. The company owns and leases various farms and distribution and processing facilities in North America.
In April 2002, Appellant contracted with F. Garcia & Sons (“Garcia”) to perform various services, including transporting tomatoes between a warehouse in Shickshinny, Pennsylvania, and a processing facility in Crisfield, Maryland. Claimant, who was employed by Garcia as a truck driver, suffered injuries in a vehicle accident on a Pennsylvania roadway while transporting Appellant’s tomatoes between the above locations. Claimant filed claim petitions against Garcia and against Appellant, and it was determined during the course of the ensuing litigation that Garcia did not maintain workers’ compensation insurance. The present proceedings are centered on the claim against Appellant, pursued, inter alia, on the theory that Appellant was Claimant’s statutory employer, *619 per Section 302(a) of the WCA, and, accordingly, is secondarily liable for the payment of workers’ compensation benefits.
In the proceedings before a workers’ compensation judge (the “WCJ”), Appellant submitted evidence to establish that it did not own trucks or employ drivers, but, rather, utilized independent contractors, such as Garcia, to supply transportation services. Appellant thus took the position that it was not Claimant’s employer. With regard to Claimant’s assertion that Appellаnt was a statutory employer per Section 302 of the WCA, Appellant asserted that Section 302 liability on the part of an entity may be established only where a Claimant proves the following five elements set forth in McDonald:
(1) the entity is under contract with an owner or one in position of an owner; (2) the entity occupies or is in control of the premises [where the injury occurred]; (3) the entity entered into a subcontract; (4) the entity entrusted a part of its regular business to the subcontractor; and (5) the injured party is an employee of such subcontractor.
Gann v. WCAB (MBS Mgmt./Wellington East Dev.),
The Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board (the “WCAB” or the “Board”) affirmed, although, given that Claimant’s injury occurred off premises, the Board did not agree that the McDonald test was met. Rather, the Board reasoned that McDonald simply does not pertain to statutory employer *620 status under Section 302(a). See Williamson v. Six L’s Packng Co., No. A07-0437, slip op. (WCAB Mar. 17, 2009).
In this regard, the WCAB explained that McDonald concerned Section 203 of the WCA, see 77 P.S. § 52, a provision which confirms that certain entities deemed to be statutory employеrs enjoy the same immunity from liability in tort as one who is an employer in fact. In this regard, Section 203 prescribes:
An employer who permits the entry upon premises occupied by him or under his control of a laborer or an assistant hired by an employe or contractor, for the performance upon such premises of a part of the employer’s regular business entrusted to such employe or contractor, shall be liable to such laborer or assistant in the same manner and to the same extent as to his own employe.
77 P.S. § 52 (emphasis added). 4
The Board further observed that Section 203 dovetails with Section 302(b) of the Act, which provides for liability of a statutory employer to pay workers’ compensation benefits, as follows:
Any employer who permits the entry upon premises occupied by him or under his control of a laborer or an assistant hired by an employe or contractor, for the performance upon such premises of a part of such employer’s regular business entrusted to that employe or contractor, shall be liable for the payment of compensation to such laborer or assistant unless such hiring employe or contractor, if primarily liable for the payment of such compensation, has secured the payment thereof as provided for in this act.
77 P.S. § 462 (emphasis added).
5
See generally Vandervort v. WCAB (City of Philadelphia),
The WCAB emphasized that Section 302(a), by contrast, contains no language analogous to that found in Sections 203 and 302(b) to suggest a similar on-premises-injury limitation. See Williamson, No. A07-0437, slip op. at 7. Moreover, the Board highlighted, Section 302(a)’s approach to statutory-employer status was added via amendments which post-dated McDonald. See id. at 11. Given the textual differеnces and this history, the WCAB did not believe that courts and administrative tribunals should engraft the McDonald elements, derived from a previous statute, onto the later-enacted Section 302(a).
The WCAB did recognize that there are decisions of the intermediate appellate courts which have not distinguished
*622
between Sections 302(a) and (b) in terms of
McDonald’s
application.
See id.
at 10 (citing
Gann,
The WCAB recognized the tension between its analysis and the application of
McDonald
in the Commonwealth Court’s decision in
Williams,
According to the WCAB, the evidence and the WCJ’s findings established that Appellant contracted with Garcia to have work performed of a kind that was a regular part of Appellant’s business. Therefore, the Board regarded Appellant as a contractor under Section 302(a) of the Act and Garcia as a subcontractor. Because Claimant was an injured emplоyee of Appellant’s uninsured subcontractor, the WCAB concluded that Appellant was Claimant’s statutory employer. For this reason, the Board agreed with the workers’ compensation judge’s conclusion that Appellant bore secondary liability for the payment of workers’ compensation benefits. See Williamson, No. A07-0437, slip op. at 12-13.
On further appeal, the Commonwealth Court affirmed on essentially the same reasoning as that of the WCAB.
See Six L’s Packing Co. v. WCAB (Williamson),
Finally, Appellant had argued that, as a property “owner” (as opposed to an entity contracting with such an owner), it could not be deemed a statutory employer, per the following admonition from McDonald:
Where an owner contracts with another for work on his premises in furtherance of his regular business, the employment is an independent one, establishing the relation of *624 contractee and contractor and not that of mastеr and servant or statutory employer and employee, and a workman injured on that work is not entitled to compensation from the owner as statutory employer or master unless the relation of master and servant is established by the contract reserving control over the means of accomplishing the work as well as over the result to be accomplished.
McDonald,
Presently, Appellant contends that
McDonald
has been applied by the intermediate courts to all statutory employer determinations for the last thirty years.
See
Brief for Appellant at 12. While otherwise acknowledging that the
Delich
court found
McDonald
to be inapplicable to Section 302(a), Appellant urges that
Delich’s
effect should be restricted to scenarios involving movement of soil, rocks, minerals, or timber.
Id.
at 11 (“It is reasonable to assume that the Legislature was looking to the future in order to cover situations similar to soil excavation or timber removal not at that point foreseen, when it drafted Section 302(a).”). Appellant also emphasizes that, soon after
Delich,
the Commonwealth Court returned to its prior approach of couching Sections 302(a) and (b) as homogeneous.
See id.
at 17 (“The Commonwealth Court’s foray down
[Delich’s
] extremely restrictive legislative analysis of Section 302 was short-lived.” (citing indications from
Williams, Gann,
and
Leibensperger
to the effect that
McDonald
applies across Section 302)). Appellant also points to this Court’s statement, in broad terms, that “[the
McDonald]
five-part test has consistently been cited by the courts below as the test which should be applied when determining statutory employer liability.”
Fonner v. Shandon, Inc.,
Appellant also believes that a broad interpretation of Section 302(a) would eclipse Section 302(b), rendering the latter’s provisions meaningless.
Accord Wright,
Finally, Appellant maintains that, under the decisional law, a property owner simply cannot be a statutory employer.
See, e.g., McDonald,
Claimant, on the other hand, advances the reasoning of the Board and the Commonwealth Court. According to Claimant, permitting Appellant to evade responsibility to provide workers’ compensation benefits as a statutory employer per the plain language of Section 302(a) would contravene the intent of the General Assembly to provide security for injured workers.
Accord
Brief for
Amicus
Commonwealth of Pa., Dep’t of Labor & Indus., Bureau of Workers’ Comp. at 11 (citing
Hannaberry HVAC v. WCAB (Snyder),
As rewritten forty-four years after McDonald was decided, Section 302(a) ... evinces the General Assembly’s unmistakable intent to create a class of statutory employers to be broader than that described in Section 302(b) — oftentimes principal contractors in construction cases involving injuries *627 sustained by employees of subcontractors on premises controlled by the principal contractors. The broadening, rather than contraction or containment, of the class of statutory employers is consistent with the legislative objective, creation of such a class for the protection of injured workers who otherwise would not receive compensation on account of their primary employers’ lack of workers compensation insurance.
Brief for Claimant at 20; accord Brief for Amicus Pa. Ass’n for Justice at 10 (“Should this Court apply the language of Section 302(b) and the rationale of McDonald and its progeny to this case, the Court would effectivély eliminate Section 302(a) from the Act and render it meaningless.”).
Claimant further criticizes Appellant’s proposed confinement of Section 302(a) to the soil/rocks/minerals/timber setting. Such a limiting construction, Claimant contends, would contravene the express legislative direction that Section 302(a) also applies to activities involving regular or recurrent aspects of an alleged statutory employer’s business. See Brief for Claimant at 20 (“Use of the disjunctive clearly means that the work undеr contract must entail either (1) activities pertaining to soil, rock, minerals or timber, ‘or’ (2) activities involving a regular or recurrent part of the alleged statutory employer’s business, and not both, in order to come within the ambit of subsection (a).”).
Claimant’s arguments place strong emphasis on Delich’s reasoning, stressing its consistency with Section 302(a)’s plain terms. Further, Claimant observes that many of the decisions relied upon by Appellant, such as Wright and Leibensperger, entailed fixed-site work injuries. Although Williams was not such a case, like the Commonwealth Court, Claimant distinguishes this decision on its facts (albeit that certainly the Williams court regarded McDonald as applicable across Section 302).
Additionally, Claimant contends that Appellant’s position that, as a property owner, it cannot be held liаble as a statutory employer is based in neither fact nor law. In the *628 first instance, Claimant notes that Appellant’s claim to the status of a property owner is in the abstract, since Appellant plainly was not the owner of the relevant premises, i.e., the public roadway where Claimant was injured. Moreover, whatever the merits of a per se property owner exclusion (for those who do own the premises on which an injury has occurred) as may have evolved under the terms of Sections 203 and/or 302(b), Claimant asserts that such an exception is fundamentally incompatible with the plain terms of Section 302(a). See, e.g., Brief for Claimant аt 35 (“That the General Assembly did not intend to base the rights of workers on ownership of property as a disqualifying factor is evident in Section 302(a), which makes no reference whatsoever to ‘occupancy and/or control’ of the premises as in Section 302(b).”). Moreover, Claimant advances the following policy-oriented perspective:
Nothing in the Act indicates that the General Assembly intended to deprive injured workers of their right to compensation based on the mere fact of ownership of property. If all property owners were absolved from liability for compensаtion as statutory employers under the Act, then there would be no reason for owners to ensure that their contractors are financially responsible, and nothing to stop an owner from evasion of compensation responsibility by placing an irresponsible contractor between itself and the contractor’s injured worker.
Brief for Claimant at 36. 10
Acting as an amicus in support of Claimant’s position, the Department of Labor and Industry, Bureau of Workers’ Com *629 pensation, offers the following overview remarks, centering on providing a response to Appellant’s position that Claimant’s reading of Section 302(a) renders Section 302(b) meaningless:
Section 302(b) refers to the “classic statutory employer situation” in the construction industry, where a property owner hires the general contractor, who hires a subcontractor to do specialized work on the jobsite, and an employee of the subcontractor is injured in the course of his employment. In this regard, Section 302(b) takes into account the common realization that construction is not a regular part of the premises’ owner’s business, which is why the owner hires a general contractor.
In contrast, Section 302(a)(2) addresses the subcontracting of a “regulаr or recurrent part” of the contractor’s business — a scenario unlikely to be present in construction type situations covered by Section 302(b). The fact that so-called “mischief’ is rendered, ie., general contractors get a “free walk”, if they do not require their subcontractors to carry workers’ compensation insurance — is the same for both situations, and does not render Section 302(a) redundant of Section 302(b). Rather, the subsections properly complement each other; one cannot be disregarded as mere [surplusage] of the other.
Brief for Amicus Dep’t of Labor & Indus., Bureau of Workers’ Compensаtion at 10-11 (citations omitted).
The parties’ arguments implicate matters of statutory construction, over which our review is plenary.
See Commonwealth v. Gilmour Mfg. Co.,
As Claimant and his amici emphasize, Section 302(a), by its terms, is not limited to injuries occurring on premises occupied or controlled by the putative statutory employer. Rather, the statute extends to any scenario in which a “contractor *630 ... subcontracts all or any part of a contract,” within the scope of the work delineated in Section 302(a)’s specialized definition of “contractor” (including work of a kind which is a “regular or recurrent part of the business” of the putative statutory employer). 77 P.S. § 461.
In terms of Appellant’s invocation of
stare decisis,
as the WCAB observed, the decisional law does convey “mixed signals” concerning whether the
McDonald
factors, derived from Section 203, extend to Section 302(a). The vast majority of the decisions Appellant references, however, are those of the intermediate courts which have no binding effect upon this Court.
See Maloney v. Valley Med. Facilities, Inc.,
We accepted review in the present case to determine the Legislature’s intentions via principles of statutory interpretation upon a focused and developed consideration of Section 302(a). There is nothing in the decisional law to impede us from giving effect to Section 302(a)’s plain terms, consistent with the decisions of the Commonwealth Court and the WCAB in the present case. Along these lines, we agree with Claimant and his amici that a soil/rocks/minerals/timber limitation is inappropriate, given that Section 302(a), on its terms, also pertains to contractual delegations of aspects of an employer’s regular or recurrent business activities. See 77 P.S. § 461. See generally 1 Pa.C.S. §§ 1921(a) (“Every statute shall be construed, if possible, to give effect to all its provisions.”); 1922(2) (embodying the presumption that “the General Assembly intends the entire statute to be effective and certain”).
In terms of Appellant’s contention that a plain-meaning interpretation of Section 302(a) obviates Section 302(b), the argument ignores that Appellant’s own position contemplates the mere reversal of the statutes’ relative treatment in this regard, so that Section 302(a) would be eclipsed by Section 302(b). The Legislature has made clear, however, that tension between statutes enacted on different dates is generally to be resolved in favor of giving the greatest effect to later-enacted prоvision, here, Section 302(a). See, e.g., 1 Pa.C.S. § 1936.
We do recognize a degree of ambiguity inherent in the overall scheme for statutory employer liability, arising out of differences in the definitions for “contractor” as used in various provisions of the WCA; the idiosyncratic conception of subcontracting fashioned in Section 302(a); the substantial overlap between Sections 302(a) and (b); and the apparent differences in the depiction of the concept of statutory employment as between the Act’s liability and immunity provisions. Viewing the statutory scheme as a whole, however, and employing the principle of liberal construction in furtherance of the Act’s remedial purposes,
see Hannaberry,
For similar reasons, we agree with Claimant and his amici that the broad owner exclusion which has arisen in the context of Section 302(b) has no applicability in the Section 302(a) setting, given the materiаlly different terms of the statute.
We hold that neither the McDonald test, nor a per se owner exclusion, applies under Section 302(a) of the WCA. 12
The order of the Commonwealth Court is affirmed.
Notes
. Act of June 2, 1915, P.L. 736 (as amended, 77 P.S. §§ 1-1041.1; 2501-2626) (the "WCA” or the "Act”).
. The statute excepts owners and lessees of agricultural lands which contract for timber removal, who are not covered employers under the Act. See 77 P.S. § 461.
. The WCJ also found that Appellant had agreed to procure workers’ compensation coverage for drivers employed by Garcia while supplying transportation services for Appellant. This conclusion was not the basis for the later rulings on appeal and is outside the scope of the present allocatur grant.
See Six L’S Packing Co. v. WCAB (Williamson),
. The provision appears in Chapter 2 of the Act, which addresses "Damages By Action at Law.” 77 P.S., Ch. 2 (title).
. For purposes of Section 302(b), "contractor” is defined in a way that excludes independent contractors, other than those in the business of supplying a labor force, who contract with others. See 77 P.S. § 25 (setting forth a partial definition of "contractor”), 462 (incorporating such partial definition into Section 302(b)).
. Some decisions of the Commonwealth Court suggest that Sections 203 and 302(b) may not, in all instances, be interpreted coеxtensively, since, given their different purposes, they are subject to differing rules of construction.
See, e.g., Vandervort,
. The meaning of this remark is not clear, since the
Williams
court applied
McDonald
to hold that the alleged statutory employer was not,
*623
in fact, a statutory employer under either Sections 302(a) or 302(b).
See Williams,
. The Court recognized an exception, however, where the contract reserves control over the means of accomplishing the work and the result to be accomplished.
See id.
at 297,
. Appellant also argues that, despite its representative’s description of it as a "farming, packing and shipping company,” N.T., April 24, 2006, at 5 (deposition of Appellant’s compliance manager), and the workers’ compensation judge’s finding that transportation of produce between facilities was a necessary part of Appellant's regular business, its operations entail only farming, whereas the business at issue in Claimant's case is "trucking.” Brief for Appellant at 25-28. This argument, however, is beyond the scope of the issues accepted for our review.
. Accord Brief for Amicus Pa. Ass’n for Justice at 11 ("To find against Claimant in this matter and find that [Appellant] is not a Statutory Employer would do nothing but to frustrate the aims and purposes of the Workers’ Compensation Act for the bеnefit of an employer who had every opportunity to ensure that its subcontractor provided the appropriate insurance coverage, which would have protected it from liability, but, for whatever reason, declined to avail itself of its right to do so."); Brief for Amicus Dep't of Labor & Indus., Bureau of Workers’ Compensation at 11 (asserting that Appellant's "complaint that the Commonwealth Court engaged in an unworkable construction of Section 302(a) glosses over the fact that Section 302(a) does not even apply if the principal contractor made sure that its subcontractors carried workers’ compensation insurance.”); id. at 12 ("[Appellant] advocates a con *629 struction of the Act that places the consequences of its failure to make sure its subcontractor had insurance onto the injured worker.”).
. In this regard, it is noteworthy that Section 302(a) is reposited in an independent section of the Purdon’s Pennsylvania Statutes compilation (77 P.S. § 461), separate and distinct from Section 302(b)’s location (77 P.S. § 462). This arrangement, coupled with the fact that Section 302(b) is, by far, the more common subject of litigation, tends to explain why Section 302(a) is sometimes overlooked or conflated with Section 302(b) in the courts’ broader statements cоncerning statutory-employer status.
See also Peck v. Delaware Cnty. Bd. of Prison Inspectors,
. It must be borne in mind that some of the
McDonald
factors are similar to facets of Section 302(a), including the contractual delegation of a regular part of the putative statutory employer's business to another.
Compare
77 P.S. § 461
with McDonald,