With the Employee Free Choice Act's path through Congress held up for the foreseeable future, Democrats and the administration will likely look for other ways to help workers gain a greater voice in the workplace. One key area is reforming the Department of Labor itself, which has serious authority to help out workers -- if only that authority were used and regulations were enforced.
Folks have probably seen this article on the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour division -- if not, read it -- which stunningly screwed up 9 out of 10 cases brought to its attention, costing workers hundreds of thousands of dollars. The workers in question are often those with minimum wage jobs and little ability to use the legal system to their advantage, and rely on the government to help them get what they've earned. But more often than not, the employees at DOL wouldn't even pressure employers to pay workers their rightful wages. The good news, though, is that new Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis says she's going to hire 250 more investigators; hopefully she'll work to change what is obviously a bankrupt institutional culture.
But as long as she's checking out the agencies under her authority, I'd suggest Solis revist the Occupational Safety and Health administration as well, which is in a similar position to the Wage and Hours division after years of underfunding and lack of attention during the Bush administration. I examined some of the options for putting OSHA to good use in a piece last month:
OSHA needs to target high-risk industries for inspection. Identifying low-wage sectors, like the garment industry, where abuse of minimum-wage and overtime laws is frequent, will allow enforcement actions to be more effective. Edward Montgomery, a former Department of Labor official, recommends performing several "high-impact enforcement actions" within the first year of the new administration to send a sector-wide message that OSHA will be using its authority to protect workers.
-- TIm Fernholz
