Wage and Hour Enforcement policies and proposals ensure that employers pay workers the legal minimum wage, including appropriate pay for overtime work. Researchers find that employers in the restaurant, garment, and nursing home industries routinely violate the wage and hour laws. Barriers to enforcement include inadequate funding for enforcement agencies at all levels of government, and the misclassification of many jobs (in the health care and domestic sectors, for example) resulting in exclusion from wage and hour protections. Proposals to reduce these violations and expand coverage include worker-center organizing (particularly for immigrant workers who are often subject to pressure to accept below minimum wage rates of pay), encouraging collective action by employee groups, reducing illegal retaliation against workers, enforcing full repayment, and creating disincentives to reduce the economic rationale for sub-legal payments.

Resources

National Wage & Hour Clearinghouse: a project of the National Employment Law Project
The Clearinghouse contains extensive litigation materials, information on public agency wage enforcment, model legislative reforms, research, data, and practice guides, and information on different sectors and types of workers. NELP will also moderate a Clearinghouse listserve and notify members about important news and developments with e-newsletters.

Building Up New York, Tearing Down Job Quality
by The Fiscal Policy Institute
According to the report, at least 50,000 construction workers are employed off the books or misclassified as independent contractors. Costs of these employment practices were estimated at $489 million in 2005 and are likely to reach $557 million in 2008. These costs are then shifted on to the workers themselves, taxpayers, and other employers.

Made in L.A...in D.C. (10/12/2007)
by Emily Groene and Sarah Sattelmeyer, Inclusion and the Mobility Agenda
This is the blog description of the documentary screening that Inclusion and The Mobility Agenda co-sponsored. "Made in L.A." is a story of three Latina immigrants working in L.A. sweatshops and their struggle to win basic labor protections from a trendy retailer, Forever 21. The blog comments on the film and the panel discussion that followed, which featured Inclusion and the Mobility Agenda's director, Margy Waller.

FedUp with FedEx: How FedEx Ground Tramples Workers' Rights and Civil Rights (October 2007)
by Erin Johansson, American Rights at Work
Employer misclassification of employees as independent contractors denies workers’ rights and tax revenue/contributions to unemployment and workers comp funds. This report documents the widespread use of employee misclassification at FedEx Ground, which violates worker’s fundamental civil rights and workplace protections.

House Hearing on Katrina Shows Massive Wage Abuse by No-Bid Contractors (6/26/2007)
by Mike Hall, AFL-CIO Weblog
Ted Smukler from Interfaith Worker Justice testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Domestic Policy Subcommittee to expose the extent of wage abuse and poor working conditions imposed by contractors following the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. A link to a full copy of the IWJ report is available here Working on Faith: A Faithful Response to Worker Abuse in New Orleans.

Immigrant Rights Advocates Secure $1 Million in Unpaid Wages and Claims (4/30/2007)
by Coco McCabe, Oxfam America
Through the efforts of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA), 585 immigrant laborers have received back wages for construction and hospitality work following Hurricane Katrina. MIRA has increased pressure for these industries and state government to enforce labor law and provided support for newly arrived immigrant workers.

Holding the Wage Floor
by Cathy Ruckeshaus, Rebecca Smith, Amy Sugimori, and Prita Lal, NELP Immigrant & Nonstandard Worker Project
This policy update describes the growth of low-wage jobs and the prevalence of wage and hour abuses by employers. It promotes policies that would encourage enforcement and prevent future violations of wage and hour law.

Trends in Wage and Hour Enforcement by the U.S. Department of Labor, 1975-2004 (September 2005)
by Annette Bernhardt and Siobhan McGrath, Brennan Center for Justice
The Brennan Center for Justice published this economic policy brief to argue that while resources and activity of the Wage and Hour Enforcement Division have diminished, the number of workers and the likelihood of abuses have increased over the past couple of decades.

Protecting New York's Workers: How the State Department of Labor Can Improve Wage-and-Hour Enforcement

by The Campaign to End Wage Theft
This executive summary highlights six ways to improve hour and wage enforcement on the state level in New York to keep pace with the growing complexity of the workplace. The Campaign to End Wage Theft is an effort by immigrant and legal advocacy groups, coordinated by the New York Immigration Coalition.

US Department of Labor Employment Standards Administration Wage and Hour Division
This is the website of news and resources for the Department of Labor Employment Standards Administration Wage and Hour Division. It features a set of links on Wage and Hour Enforcement,

State Minimum Wages, Family/Medical Leave, Farm Labor, and Government Contracts with the relevant statutes for each. It is also available at http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd

2003 Statistics Fact Sheet: Wage and Hour Fiscal Year 2003 Enforcement Continues Record Climb (2003)
by the US Department of Labor Employment Standards Administration Wage and Hour Division
This is the most recent set of statistics provided by the Department of Labor on Wage and Hour Enforcement. It shows an increase in enforcement and a decrease in the amount of time necessary to process cases between 2002 and 2003.

Wage and Hour Enforcement in the News 

No Friend of the Workers (7/18/08)
Editorial, NY Times
The NY Times editorial staff highlights the recent controversy over the lack of competence by the Wage and Hour division of the Labor Department.  They suggest that President Bush's appointee to the head of the position, Elaine Chao, is failing to enforce the law not because of issues of competence but rather issues of ideology.
 

Workers Making Low Wages Must Have Rights, Too (6/24/2007)
by Albor Ruiz, NY Daily News
This article highlights the findings of a recently released report by the Brennan Center for Justice, Unregulated Work in the Global City. The report states that employee rights violations have occurred in all low-wage industries and at large, established businnesses and small, non-traditional operations. Ruiz explains the efforts of Make the Road by Walking, a grassroots organization of low-income workers, to expose Associated Food’s worker exploitation.