According to the GAO report, the WHD “frequently responded inadequately to complaints, leaving low wage workers vulnerable to wage theft.” The GAO came to this conclusion after conducting a broad undercover investigation in which it filed 10 fictitious worker complaints in WHD district offices throughout the country.

“The undercover tests revealed sluggish response times, a poor complaint intake process, and failed conciliation attempts, among other problems,” the report states. The GAO also documented one case in which a WHD employee lied about investigating a claim when actually no work at all was done to investigate the fictitious claim.

One of the investigations was filed by a fictitious secretary in Virginia who complained that she was not being paid the minimum wage. The GAO’s fictitious employer did not refute the receptionist’s claim, but refused to pay the back wages owed anyway. The WHD investigator “accepted the refusal without question and informed the fictitious employee of his right to file a lawsuit.” The fictitious employee then asked why the WHD couldn’t be of more help and was told to contact his Congressman.

Another fictitious claim stated that children were using heavy machinery at a California meat packing facility. But 4 months later, the WHD still had not taken any action. In fact, the complaint was never recorded in the WHD’s database, even though the WDH claims that child labor complaints are its top priority.

It’s bad enough the workers in labor intensive jobs often find themselves preyed upon by unscrupulous employers. Add to that a bad economy in which some employers take desperate (and illegal) cost-cutting measures and top it off with an ineffective government bureaucracy, and you have to wonder:  why does the Fair Labor Standards Act exist if our Department of Labor won’t take even the smallest measures to enforce it? What recourse do workers have?

At the end of its undercover study, the GAO was still waiting for the WHD to begin investigating 3 of the fictitious claims, all of which had been delayed by months. During the course of the study, the GAO also exposed many real cases involving hundreds of workers whose employers the WHD never investigated.

According to the report, the “GAO found cases where it took over a year for WHD to respond to a complaint, cases closed based on unverified information provided by the employer, and cases dropped when the employer did not return phone calls.”

“GAO’s overall assessment of the WHD complaint intake, conciliation, and investigation processes found an ineffective system that discourages wage theft complaints,” the report states.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Department of Labor fails to uphold and enforce FLSA regulations

The Capital

According to the FLSA, workers such as the school secretaries must be paid for the number of hours they work each week. Because some secretaries work fewer hours in the summer months, the county averaged their pay so that they would receive consistent checks throughout the year. The county stopped averaging the secretaries’ pay recently in order to comply with FLSA standards.

But the school secretaries’ union doesn’t like the change, which it claims is a violation of the secretaries’ employment contract. The union filed a lawsuit against the county in circuit court last December. The school board has asked the judge to dismiss the case.

An attorney for the school board told The Capital that the courts would likely side with the FLSA. “You can’t generally have a contract of any kind that goes against the law,” he told The Capital. “The law always trumps the contract language.”

Although the change doesn’t alter the secretaries’ total compensation, some advocates claim that it makes budgeting a lot more difficult. To steady any financial swings that FLSA compliance would create for the secretaries, the school board has offered to deposit a percent of each check into a savings account in an effort to mimic averaging their pay.

The union has a month to respond to the school board’s motion to dismiss the case.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › FLSA compliance creates difficulties for Annapolis school secretaries

Bobo is the founder and executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, an organization that appeals to the shared convictions of all religions in protecting the rights of the everyday worker, especially low-wage workers.

Bobo alleges that in meat processing plants, retail businesses, restaurants, garment assembly plants, the construction industry, and several other occupational settings, “workers are having their legal wages stolen by unscrupulous employers trying to gain an advantage over their law abiding competitors.”

In 1996, Bobo established the national Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) organization, having spent many years previously advocating for worker justice. Since its founding, IWJ has grown into a network of more than 50 religious labor groups and 20 worker centers. In 2007, the organization’s worker centers scattered throughout the country recovered $1,249,052 in wages for workers.

The organization also funds and operates numerous programs, including one that pairs seminary and rabbinical students with labor unions. “Too often the religious community and the labor communities have worked in isolation from one another,” the IWJ website states.

Raising awareness of wage theft is a formidable task, but it can be tackled effectively with the power of faith-based conscience. Bringing attention to the problem of unethical corporate practices is like shining a spotlight in a dark basement where creepy things lurk.

Bobo’s new book, Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Americans Are Not Getting Paid – And What We Can Do About It, is another way that the activist is shining light on the “crime wave no one talks about.” According to Bobo, between two and three million people are paid less than minimum wage for their work every year. Misclassifying employees as independent contractors is also a trick many companies use to avoid payroll taxes and overtime pay.

IWJ’s website provides a wealth of information and resources pertaining to workers’ rights and the issue of wage theft, including an expanded definition of the term and answers to many questions about the problem. Some interesting facts surrounding wage theft, borrowed from IWJ’s website, are listed below.

• Wage theft covers a variety of infractions that occur when workers do not receive their legally or contractually promised wages.
• Wage theft consists of employer violations of the Davis-Bacon Act, Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and Housing and Urban Development Act Section 3.
• Wage theft is endemic across the labor market, and especially in the low wage labor market.
• Agriculture, poultry processing, janitorial services, restaurant work, garment manufacturing, long term care, home health care and retail are the industries with the most reported cases of wage theft.
• The number of Department of Labor (DOL) wage and hour investigators dropped by 14 percent between 1975 and 2004.
• The number of compliance actions declined 36 percent in that time.
• The workforce covered by the FLSA grew 55 percent in that time.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Woman crusades against epidemic of wage theft

The Company plans to continue to defend its position in this case, and, at this time, does not believe an adverse resolution will have a material effect on the Company’s financial statements taken as a whole. The Company presently does not know whether the plaintiffs intend to challenge the ruling.

About Dollar General

Dollar General is a Fortune 500(R) discount retailer with 8,164 neighborhood stores as of July 28, 2006. Dollar General stores offer convenience and value to customers by offering consumable basic items that are frequently used and replenished, such as food, snacks, health and beauty aids and cleaning supplies, as well as a selection of basic apparel, house wares and seasonal items at everyday low prices. The Company store support center is located in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. Dollar General’s Web site can be reached at www.dollargeneral.com.

SOURCE: Court decertifies class in Dollar General wage and hour lawsuit, by Business Wire

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Court decertifies class in Dollar General wage and hour lawsuit