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New Labor Dept. Drive Sets to Stop Wage Theft
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In a 180-degreee turn from a Labor Department under the Bush administration that tried to gut overtime rules for millions of workers, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has unveiled a new campaign to inform workers about their pay rights and to put a stop to wage theft.
In Chicago last week before a group of union, community and faith activists, Solis said:
I have a message for those employers who break this nation’s labor laws and prey on vulnerable workers: It ends today. I’m here to tell you that your president, your secretary of labor and this department will not allow anyone to be denied his or her rightful pay—especially when so many in our nation are working long, hard and often dangerous hours.
The Labor Department’s “We Can Help” multi-lingual campaign is aimed at low-wage and vulnerable workers with a special focus on reaching employees in such industries as construction, janitorial work, hotel/motel services, food services and home health care. It also will address such topics as rights in the workplace and how to file a complaint with the Wage and Hour Division to recover wages owed.
Last year, an investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the department’s Wage and Hour office, under former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, had failed miserably in enforcing minimum wage and overtime laws. The division’s failure to act, says the report,
left thousands of actual victims of wage theft who sought federal government assistance with nowhere to turn.
A 2008 GAO report found 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 in 2008.
Since taking office, Solis has added 250 new inspectors to the wage and hour division, bringing the total to 949.
Solis said the We Can Help effort will work with unions, faith groups and community groups to get the information into work places and neighborhoods. Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) also offers a Wage Theft Online Resource Center, which includes a list of resources and information about the wage theft crisis. Says Solis:
If someone is stealing your wages, you can and should call the Department of Labor….We can help, and we will help. If you work in this country, you are protected by our laws. And you can count on the U.S. Department of Labor to see to it that those protections work for you.
There are also efforts on the state and local level to put halt to wage theft. Earlier this year, the Miami- Dade County Commission approved a country-wide wage theft ordinance. In New York State, a bill to toughen penalties for employers who steal workers wages is before the legislature.
In a column in today’s Albany Times Union, Amy Traub of the Drum Major Institute (DMI) and Andrew Freidman of Make the Road New York write:
Enforcement of workplace laws is so inadequate, and penalties are so low, that corrupt businesses often come out ahead. Unscrupulous employers simply factor the risk of getting caught breaking the law into their cost of doing business. Responsible business owners are put at a competitive disadvantage by rival companies that cut costs by cheating their employees.
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11 Comments
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It’s been a long time for working men and women. After being “lost in the woods” for so many years (1995-2007) it’s encouraging to see that we–through our union household votes–are turning things around.
But we need to inform our family, friends and neighbors, also.
I’m the Moondog, and that’s the way it should be.
You people are such anti-American hypocrites, what about the $200 billion in wages being stolen every year from American by foreign illegal alien criminals? That’s OK with you because you profit from it, you are just as criminal as the illegal aliens are.
Wow Bowman———I think the real thief’s are the employers of illegal aliens. They get away with not paying taxes and benefits and exploiting them. The undocumented workers don’t dare do anything about it.
Both the illegal aliens and their employers are the thiefs, the employers increase their profits, the illegal aliens earn much more than they would in their home country. Since illegal aliens use fake or stolen ID to get a job, most of the time employers don’t know they are illegal, in the rare cases where employers do know and pay illegal aliens less than minimum wage or with hold workers comp payments the illegal aliens have successfully sued and collected.
This is fantastic news. Finally, workers have a Labor Secretary who sounds like she is going to take on the greedy employers. I’ve been waiting for this news since the day I joined a union and stepped foot into the U.S. Postal Service at the Air Mail Facility in Kennedy Airport in 1963 at the wage level of $2.23 an hour with a mandatory 10 hour work day but no overtime compensation. I hope it starts in Manhattan to pay a livable wage to all the waiters and waitresses, dishwashers and cooks working off the books and the foreign immigrants hired by construction contractors to do plumbing, electric and renovating work. Did I leave anyone out? Michael Zullo, Upper Eastside, Manhattan.
Yeah Right!
If this is true, why haven’t they at least looked at the references I sent them in this article?
http://keepamericaatwork.com/?p=8007
Could it be just another session of appease the peasants?
Virgil
http://www.KeepAmericaAtWork.com
Some of the cynicism is appropriate, I suppose…
the new staff has just been hired. Let’s give them a chance to get up to speed.
I welcome any efforts to help ANY workers who need to earn a living wage.
I have to ask just what those who are complaining have done to make wage and work issues better for the US population, have you called, filed reports, contacted your union officials each time you see or hear of violations even if it doesn’t affect you directly?
LOL, I don’t quite see what your point is in bringing up statistics from almost 50 years ago, Michael.
Bowman, nobody STEALS 200 billion dollars from US workers who are here we give it away every time we run to Walmart to buy items that will need to be replaced in a year because it appears to be more affordable, every time we hire a roofing company that employs cheap labor so we can save a couple hundred dollars on the job.
Pay enough to support American workers and American workers will have jobs.
To finish, I relish seeing that this initiative may help. I hope that they don’t leave out salaried employees who have their right to certain OT pay ignored.
Those folks work in just as much fear as hourly workers.
From your mouth to GODS Ears!
Jelun,
The only way to stop those “roofing companies that employ cheap (illegal) labor” is mandatory e-verify for all companies and better federal oversight. Richard Trumka opposes that unless the 12 million plus illegal aliens currently in the US are allowed to keep the jobs they stole from Americans, and their 50 million relatives are allowed in to take more jobs from Americans. Obviously he is not working for Americans but for anyone who is able to break into the US and steal a job from an American. He should remove the “American” in the AFL-CIO name and replace it with “World”, because that is who he is working for.
How exactly do you report abuses? What protection does a worker have to prevent employer from Firing a worker who reports them?
Hooray for Solis, but I’ll betcha’ she won’t look at illegal employers because that would remove illegal immigrants who will take a job for whatever pay just so AFL/CIO can ultimately have their union dues and have sympathizers say, “Oh, he works so hard to support his family!” Which one? The one here in the U.S.A. or the one in Mexico, India, Guatemala, or you name it. How about Kenya?