Trump Law and Order Campaign Skips
the Workplace
The Trump Administration has left
little doubt that one of its main missions is to roll back the regulatory initiatives
of the Obama years, especially the Clean Power Plan and the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau.
Although Trump has been less overt
about it, his corporate-friendly approach also includes weakening rules that
have been around for decades.
An important case in point concerns
the Fair Labor Standards Act, the key federal wage and hour law that was signed
into law 80 years ago by President Franklin Roosevelt.
The culmination of decades of
struggle over excessive workweeks, inadequate pay levels and child labor, the
FLSA put the federal government in the business of combatting wage theft and
other forms of workplace exploitation.
It accomplished that through a
system of workplace investigations and the imposition of financial penalties on
employers large and small.
In a move that has received limited attention, the Trump Labor Department is seeking to replace rigorous enforcement with a system called Payroll Audit Independent Determination (or PAID) that puts employers on the honor system.
In a move that has received limited attention, the Trump Labor Department is seeking to replace rigorous enforcement with a system called Payroll Audit Independent Determination (or PAID) that puts employers on the honor system.
Beginning with the dubious premise that wage and hour violations mainly derive from inadvertent mistakes made by managers, PAID will encourage employers to report irregularities on their own. When they do they will still have to pay back wages but will not be assessed damages or penalties.
Such a system makes a mockery of
real enforcement.
What makes matters worse is that
PAID, which is being billed as a pilot program for now, is being pursued right
after the U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous Epic Systems ruling.
That decision affirms the right of
employers to compel workers to sign mandatory arbitration agreements that would
severely curtail their ability to bring collective action lawsuits.
As my colleagues and I at the Corporate Research Project and Jobs With Justice Education Fund showed in a recent report, these lawsuits have allowed workers to recover billions of dollars from large corporations.
As my colleagues and I at the Corporate Research Project and Jobs With Justice Education Fund showed in a recent report, these lawsuits have allowed workers to recover billions of dollars from large corporations.
PAID was featured in a recent NBC News feature on how the Trump Administration is relaxing regulatory
enforcement in numerous areas. This prompted a group of Democratic Senators
to express concern
about PAID to the DOL, whose spokesperson responded that it was “premature to
comment” on the program.
The controversy over PAID comes amid
growing concern about the prevalence of wage theft. Some of those abuses
apparently exist right inside the federal government. The Labor Department,
which has not yet left the investigation business, is reported to
be examining the practices of a company called Seven Hills, which manages the
food court at the Pentagon.
Faced with the prospect of
diminished DOL enforcement and restrictions on lawsuits, activists are looking
to other solutions.
Some of the most encouraging work is
happening at the local and state levels. For example, Centro de Trabajadores
Unidos en la Lucha (Center for Workers United in Struggle) is pressing Minneapolis
Mayor Jacob Frey and the City Council to pass an ordinance dealing with wage
theft.
In some parts of the country, law
enforcement officials are taking the term wage theft literally and treating it
as a criminal offense.
For example, after a joint
investigation by the Washington State Attorney General’s Office and the
Department of Labor & Industries, a construction company and its
owner pled guilty last month to a criminal charge of first-degree theft.
Earlier this month, the New York
Attorney General and the Inspector General of the Port Authority announced the
arrest of a contractor for failing to pay prevailing wages at a publicly-funded
construction project at LaGuardia Airport.
While it would be terrible to see
DOL’s wage and hour enforcement system dismantled, there are other ways rogue
employers can be brought to justice.