From the AFL-CIO Now Blog: Obama Labor Dept. Stresses Law Enforcement—Big Change from Bush Era

The U.S. Labor Department is committed to stronger enforcement of labor laws and is determined to reverse a “culture of noncompliance’’ that developed during the anti-worker years of the Bush administration, Labor Solicitor Patricia Smith said.

Smith told a labor law conference at Suffolk University Law School last week that the Bush administration emphasized voluntary compliance by employers while investigations and enforcement of labor laws declined, according to the Daily Labor Report (subscription required).

They relied on trickle-down enforcement; it doesn’t work any better than trickle-down economics. [As a result of reduced enforcement] many employers developed a “catch-me-if-you-can” attitude. Our challenge is to change that attitude.

To strengthen enforcement, the Labor Department plans to step up criminal prosecutions against violators, file more actions across industries, especially for wage violations, and seek damages in wage and hour cases.

Another Labor Department agency, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), also is making enforecement a top priority, as the agency acts on its new tougher targeted inspection program for mines with troubling safety records.

Like MSHA, all Labor Department agencies also are working on potential cases that affect entire industries or enterprises, Smith said. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspections of U.S. Postal Service (USPS) operations prompted the Department of Labor to file the first-ever complaint seeking corrections at USPS workplaces nationwide. To date, OSHA has fined the USPS a total of $5.1 million for electrical safety violations at various facilities across the country.

OSHA also has launched a severe violators enforcement program and is vigorously pursuing egregious cases, Smith said.

Wage and hour enforcement “took a back seat to opinion letters’’ during the Bush administration, Smith said. Now the department is seeking damages in addition to back pay; focusing on industries, such as janitorial services, that are “prone to violations”; and considering a rule to require employers to furnish information on how pay is calculated, she said.

Other initiatives under way at Labor, Smith said, include:

• Working with states on efforts to curb employee misclassification—when employers treat workers as independent contractors to avoid paying benefits and following legal requirements.
• Resurrecting enforcement of the Family and Medical Leave Act, “which ground to a halt’’ in the previous administration.
• Lifting the Bush administration’s one-year limit on Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) lawsuits. The agency has filed six OFCCP cases in the past few months.

Good, and about time. My experience, those who see fit immediately push toward the least common denominator, taking advantage of whatever pennies can be gained by cheating workers of their wages, depriving employees of adequate safety protections, and burden shifting to compliant taxpayers. Under the Bush Administration, an employer could cheat workers, paying them sub-minimum wage or not at all, and when caught, still pay less then they would have if they had paid the proper wages on-time (also see recommendation 1 here).