It’s not all bad employment news this week. Nor is it bad news for workers who have a grievance against their employer and plan to file a wage related complaint. The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division is hiring . . . in fact they will be adding 250 investigators, a staff increase of more than a third, announced U.S. Secretary of Labor, Hilda L. Solis.
Solis made the announcement after the release of a Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) report that found the department’s system for receiving and responding to wage and hour complaints is ineffective and discourages wage-theft complaints.
Of the 250 new investigators, 100 will focus on contractor compliance under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the economic stimulus package.
“As secretary of labor, I am committed to ensuring that every worker is paid at least the minimum wage, that those who work overtime are properly compensated, that child labor laws are strictly enforced and that every worker is provided a safe and healthful environment,” Solis said.
The department’s Wage and Hour Division has already begun the process of adding 150 new investigators to its field offices to refocus the agency on these enforcement responsibilities. In addition, under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the agency will hire 100 investigators to ensure that contractors on stimulus projects are in compliance with the applicable laws.
For the report, the GAO posed as fictitious complainants and filed 10 common complaints with the department’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD). The complaints centered on violations related to child labor, minimum wage, last paycheck, and overtime.
The GAO found that WHD successfully investigated only 1 of the 10 fictitious cases, correctly identifying and investigating a business that had multiple complaints filed against it by the fictitious complainants. In 5 of the 10 cases, WHD failed to record the complaints in its database. In 2 of the 10 cases, WHD recorded that the employer had successfully paid the employees back wages when in fact the fictitious complainants reported to WHD they hadn’t been paid.
Source: HR.BLR.com
