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Politics

: The Gavel

Education and Labor Hearing on Wage and Hour Law Enforcement

By Jesse Lee

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Today the Education and Labor Committee held a hearing, “Is the Department of Labor Effectively Enforcing Our Wage and Hour Laws?” The hearing examined the U.S. Department of Labor’s record of enforcing the nation’s wage and hour laws. The Government Accountability Office highlighted the results of two separate investigations requested by the chairman of the committee, U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), into the Labor Department?s failures to fully investigate and properly address violations of the law. Seventy years ago last month, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the landmark Fair Labor Standards Act into law. The law has provided generations of Americans with basic rights to minimum wages, overtime pay, and a ban on oppressive child labor. However, critics say that the Bush administration has failed to protect workers from a growing problem of “wage theft” by adopting weak approaches to enforcement and reducing funding and staffing levels of the Wage and Hour Division, the agency responsible for investigating complaints of wage, hour, and child labor violations.

Chairman George Miller gave opening remarks:

Chairman Miller: “This year in our country, many workers will be robbed of their hard earned wages. There are many ways? unscrupulous employers can cheat a worker out of the wages he or she earns. Employers might pay less than the minimum wage, refuse to pay overtime when employees work more than 40 hours a week, or require employees to work off of the clock. And, some employers never pay their employees at all. Simply put, this is theft. And it is illegal.”

Greg Kutz, Managing Director of Forensic Audits and Special Investigations for the Government Accountability Office, gave testimony:

Greg Kutz: “?[A] child labor complaint was closed because an employer could not be found. We easily identified this employer through a public records search and a telephone call. In another case an employer admitted that wages were due, but told the investigator to call back later. After subsequent phone calls were not returned, the investigator closed the case. One case was assigned to an investigator 17 months after it was received. After the investigator held this case for six additional months, it was closed. And finally, one case was closed after an employer represented to an investigator that their revenue was below the $500,000 threshold where federal law applies. In a subsequent civil case, these representations were proven false, and the employer settled with these employees for an undisclosed amount.”

Full post as published by The Gavel on July 15, 2008 (boomark / email).