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GAO: Labor Department Failing Miserably in Enforcing Wage Laws |
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UPDATE: Labor Secretary Hilda Solis announced the department’s Wage and Hour Division will add 250 new investigators, a staff increase of more than a third. The agency already has begun the process of adding 150 new investigators to its field offices. In addition, another 100 investigators will be hired to ensure that contractors on economic recovery projects comply with the applicable laws. This is a big step in the right direction to rebuild the agency, which lost more than 200 investigators during the Bush administration.
The federal agency that is supposed to protect workers and enforce minimum wage, overtime and child labor laws is failing miserably, leaving low-income workers vulnerable to wage theft. In a report released today, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division “has left thousands of actual victims of wage theft who sought federal government assistance with nowhere to turn.”
GAO investigators posing as fictitious complainants filed 10 common complaints with Wage and Hour district offices across the country. In one case, the division failed to investigate a complaint that underage children in Modesto, Calif., were working during school hours at a meatpacking plant with dangerous machinery.
In another case, a Labor Department investigator lied about looking into the case at all. And when a GAO investigator posing as a dishwasher called four times to complain about not being paid overtime for 19 weeks, the Miami field office failed to return his calls for four months. When it did, the report said, an official told him it would take eight to 10 months before they would even begin investigating his case. (See video.)
The GAO also identified 20 cases affecting at least 1,160 real employees whose employers were inadequately investigated. For example, GAO found cases where it took more than a year for the Wage and Hour Division to respond to a complaint, cases closed based on unverified information provided by the employer, and cases dropped when the employer did not return phone calls.
At a hearing today on the GAO report, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said there is a pattern of inaction in properly addressing thousands of cases involving overtime, minimum wage and child labor violations. According to Miller:
These violations of the law are not trivial. Those most vulnerable to wage theft are likely bearing the brunt of our nation’s economic crisis. Families where a breadwinner has his or her wages stolen still have rent to pay, mouths to feed, children to clothe and medicine to buy. They can’t afford to be paid less than what the law says.
Simply put, when a business pockets wages due to its workers, it is theft. And it is illegal.
Such wage theft is an epidemic in the country, says Kim Bobo, executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice and author of Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid—And What We Can Do About It.
If the question is whether the Wage and Hour Division is doing important work, the answer is “yes.” If the question is if the Department of Labor is effectively enforcing the wage and hour laws, the answer must be a resounding “no.”
There are several ways to solve the problem, Bobo says, but the first priority has to be getting more wage and hour investigators.
There are less than 750 wage and hour investigators for 130 million workers. It’s just not enough. They can’t possibly do the job.
Last year, the GAO reported that under the Bush administration, the number of wage and hour inspectors dropped from 942 to 732. At the same time, the number of investigations into employers’ refusal to pay minimum wage, overtime or even any wages at all has dropped from 47,000 in 1997 to 30,000 last year.
In a statement, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis says she is boosting the Wage and Hour Division investigative staff by more than one-third.
I am committed to ensuring that every worker is paid at least the minimum wage, that those who work overtime are properly compensated, that child labor laws are strictly enforced and that every worker is provided a safe and healthful environment.
Click here to see an ABC News investigation based on the GAO report and here for a New York Times article on wage theft.
4 Comments
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Just asleep on wages, hours and conditions? What about the bad advice to Union Fund Trustees re: how to invest workers individual and 401k accounts? Who is going to stop the highway robbery of workers retirement funds that they get taxed for the minute the take those funds out to spend them? Do we get any tax relief or tax deferment for when those accounts lose money?
If the trustees did not do what the previous Dept of Labor Heads said to do, they would have faced receiver-ship from the federal government and then the government would have made us lose even more!!!
Our elected trustees WE put in should run the show and not some pencil pushing stock broker who knows only how to make bad investments not protected in the secured bond market!
Lets talk about that for a change!!!!!!
Without citing particular political parties as responsible for the rape of the American people and the abdication of their public duties to the American people, I think we can safely say that the politicians we blindly elect to office are responsible for the mess. Both major parties have played a very, very significant role. Of course, they have done this by disemboweling our regulatory agencies by appointing cabinet heads and agency heads willing to serve the evil aims of the party in power in servitude to corporate america and/or by NOT raising a hue and cry so the public could be aware of what was happening. Although the deregulation of the filth that needed to be regulated might have begun with Reagan and his ilk, and been further expanded by the ilk that followed his administration, the minority parties serving over these periods did nothing to challenge and change this trend. Thus, in my mind, they are also guilty of contributing to this mess.
What we fail to recognize is that “Party Think” is “Stink Think”; i.e. we let the party power structure of amoral and immoral sycophants do our thinking for us. Under the ruse of participative democracy, the party hacks choose the ego-maniacal power brokers who are looking for wealth, fame and power and we vote from the meager offering. And we do it because we want “OUR” party to win. When did any of us take a serious look at the candidates offered by parties other than the divine “TWO” let alone vote for them?
On rare occasions, we inadvertently elect an honorable, moral, intelligent person to office who is truly interested in the welfare of the people and not the welfare we give to corporate america (note the small “a”). At first appearance, it looks like this is one of those rare moments with the election of President Obama. I am hopeful that under his leadership we will see a social market system emerge instead of the unbridled laissez faire capitalism that relies on “individual responsibility” rather than a societal responsibility. After all, the greedy do not exercise “individual responsibility”. They are sociopaths with no sense of responsibility for the welfare of others; thus, they are the ones whom we need to regulate.
I guess this is a long winded hurrah for Hilda Solis’s actions to beef up the regulatory capabilities of the Labor Department; particularly the Hours and Wage Division.
I also want to see special prosecutors used to investigate the actions of our Federal government and the Financial industry to identify and prosecute those who abdicated their responsibilities to the American people and those who engaged in fraud and deception to enrich themselves at our expense. Then I want to see assets seized and their families thrust into poverty. Along that line, how will we get the money these execs earn on the bailout money bonuses before it is taxed back to us?
Wage thieves should be subject to laws like RICO with simular penalties–triple damages and jailtime, loss of gains made from such activities and on. Throwing a few bosses in jail and seizing their property would make a difference. A few of these folks doing the “perp walk” in chains on television would help raise workers spirits.
Let a few top executives explain to the stockholders why some of the bosses are in jail and the loss of revenue for triple damages.
That would make interesting stockholder meetings for sure.
E-Verify NOW!!! WE must stop and prosecute the employers of illegal alliens those jobs are being stolen form U.S. Citizens and legal immigrants who comply with U.S. labor laws.