Reply #5: WITNESSES: BUSH LABOR DEPT. WAGE & HOUR ENFORCEMENT DROPS, WORKERS CHEATED [View All]

[Demeter]

http://www.ilcaonline.org/ht/display/ArticleDetails/i/70866


WITNESSES: BUSH LABOR DEPT. WAGE & HOUR ENFORCEMENT DROPS, WORKERS CHEATED
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Enforcement of wage-and-hour laws, to ensure workers get at least the minimum wage and the overtime pay they deserve, has dropped drastically under the GOP Bush government, impartial investigators and a low-income workers’ advocate told Congress. As a result, low-wage workers are routinely cheated.

In a contentious July 15 House Education and Labor Committee hearing, probers for the non-partisan Government Accountability Office revealed how the regime’s DOL Wage and Hour Division routinely didn’t count complaints, sent workers with legitimate gripes to private lawyers, and closed almost half of all complaints with perfunctory phone calls to employers to try to settle cases. The workers lost out, and lost money.

And Kim Bobo, executive director of the Chicago-based Interfaith Worker Justice
--which goes to bat in counseling centers for low-income workers nationwide--added that the wage and hour agency is so understaffed that does fewer probes than the year it was founded, 1941. “And wages are stolen,” she added.

The only witness who disagreed with the evidence was Alexander Passantino, acting administrator of Bush’s Labor Department Wage and Hour Division. He went so far as to call the GAO probe “wrong…wrong…wrong….wrong” on every point it raised.

But even Passantino admitted his agency doesn’t handle all the complaints it gets. He also said he repeatedly asked for “more resources”--more money to hire more inspectors--but was turned down. He didn’t say by whom, or how much more he sought. No lawmakers asked and he ducked out before reporters could quiz him.

The Wage and Hour Division’s role is important. It is supposed to enforce the 70-year-old Fair Labor Standards Act, the law that established the minimum wage and the right to overtime after 40-hour weeks. But low-wage workers are often victims of the lack of enforcement, GAO probers Anne Marie Lasowski and Greg Kutz testified.

And there’s another way that workers are cheated besides missed calls or referrals to lawyers whom they can’t afford, the GAO probers said. The agency is so understaffed with attorneys to follow up cases that many times the employer wins, and the worker gets nothing, because the statute of limitations runs out before DOL can file a complaint.....

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