Democrats Seek to Bolster Wage and Hour Enforcement

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workforce.com/section/00/article/25/65/10.php

The Government Accountability Office releases a study showing that enforcement actions by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division have fallen by more than one-third in the past decade—from 47,000 in 1997 to 30,000 in 2007.

July 15, 2008

Democrats Seek to Bolster Wage and Hour Enforcement
House Democrats want to put more teeth into the federal agency that helps workers collect pay that has been wrongly denied by their employers, but the thrust of their efforts probably won’t come until next year.

At a House Education and Labor Committee hearing on Tuesday, July 15, the Government Accountability Office released a study showing that enforcement actions by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division have fallen by more than one-third in the past decade—from 47,000 in 1997 to 30,000 in 2007.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, asserted that the agency is short-staffed, fails to effectively utilize resources available for investigations, poorly targets industries where wage violations are likely to occur and does not properly assess its own performance.

A separate GAO case study stated that the division “inappropriately rejected complaints, failed to adequately investigate complaints or neglected to investigate until it was too late.”

Alexander Passantino, acting administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, charged that the GAO study was flawed. He touted his agency’s success during the past 10 years in collecting back wages—an increase from $96.7 million in fiscal year 1997 to $220.6 million in fiscal 2007.

The division enforces the Fair Labor Standards Act. Most of its activity focuses on situations where employers violate minimum wage and overtime standards or withhold a final paycheck.

FULL story at link.