DOL Budget Focuses on "Fissured Workplace" Enforcement

Employment Law

The Labor Department’s 2017 budget request released this week says it will take “a more coordinated approach to conducting enforcement across networks of businesses, supply chains, or contracting relationships” in order “to achieve system-wide impacts on employers that go beyond a single investigated establishment.”  Instead of just focusing on recovering back wages owed to workers at a particular establishment, Wage and Hour Division (WHD) investigations will focus on identifying “the players that are in a position to influence compliance” in order to increase “the likelihood that those at the top of the chain will evaluate the compliance practices of those below them and encourage compliance.”  The WHD is also shifting its approach from one that focused on single establishments and resolving complaints to one that proactively seeks to improve compliance across industries and “networks of business organizations.”  Importantly, WHD plans to spend 46 percent of its enforcement budget on directed investigations in 2017, up from an average of 27.5 percent from 2005 to 2009.  This means the agency doesn’t need an employee complaint to take action and can increasingly target enforcement on any employer it wishes.