Undercover Investigation Reveals Labor Department Fails Workers: Listen to the Calls Here
The House Education and Labor Committee is holding a hearing this morning on the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division -- which has utterly failed in its mission to protect workers from discrimination and exploitation, according to an undercover inquiry by Congress' investigative arm.
The inquiry, conducted during the Bush administration by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), involved a series of calls placed to Wage and Hour officials by GAO analysts posing as aggrieved workers. When the undercover GAO folks tried to seek help from the Labor Department to resolve employer issues, they were met with stonewalling ... and in some cases, outright rejection.
You can listen in to six of the undercover calls in question -- links are posted after the jump.
The first GAO call is here; the second call is here. You can listen to the third call right here, and the fourth call -- a Labor Department official caught in a lie -- is available here.
Check out the fifth call at this link, and the sixth at this link.
The good news is that Wage and Hour is working on hiring hundreds of more investigators under new Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, meaning that the era of dysfunction could soon come to an end. Here's how Education and Labor Chairman George Miller (D-CA) put it during today's hearing:
Today's testimony will help inform Congress and the new leadership of Department of Labor on whether additional resources, better training or improved statutory language are needed.We owe it to all hard working Americans to ensure that the federal government lives up to its responsibility to guarantee that families are not being cheated out of their wages by unscrupulous employers.
Ultimately, I believe that improving the Wage and Hour Division will come down to
strong leadership and a renewed commitment to enforce the law.I am confident that the Obama administration and Secretary Solis are committed to
turning this egregious record around and ensuring that all workers are treated fairly by
their employers and their government.
Josh
Elana
Matt
Eric
I need some review on the laws covering this wage issue. If the employer says they can't pay more than the sub-minimum wage they're currently paying, then that's OK? Doesn't sound right. As far as timelines, what's the story there?
As a stand-alone the complaint about minors working at the meat packing plant was outrageous! I wonder if the dept. receiving the complaint had one or two workers for the whole country, because that call should have provoked immediate outrage. Was the packing plant a real entity? If not, it's possible someone checked for it's location and decided it wasn't on record so dismissed it. Still, it's theoretically possible for a functioning packing plant to not be in the phone book, on the IRS records, or have whatever governmental OKs needed by a packing plant. That should have warranted an investigation all on its own just to track down the facts! Can you say E-coli?
March 25, 2009 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Heckuva job there, Mrs. McConnell!
March 25, 2009 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, it's worse than that. "Brownie" got the FEMA job because the Bushies didn't give a damn about disaster response, and if anything, thought ignoring it would help "prove" their dogma that government is incapable of helping people (a line that Jindal apparently still believes people will buy.)
For Labor, they wanted someone who would actively undermine the statutory purpose of the Department, and put it in the service of the people it's supposed to be protecting against.
March 25, 2009 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're absolutely right. Brownie = incompetence. Chao = malevolence.
Little wonder the DoL staff had a huge party to celebrate her departure.
March 25, 2009 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
The headline to this article must tickle McConnell's old lady no end. She will feel she succeeded. From Chicago's Future's Market to the Enron board to the Labor dept. Could anyone be more qualified to do the Chamber Of Commerce or Big business' bidding? Did she EVER talk turkey with a labor group? Isn't that what the Labor Dept is for?
March 25, 2009 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink