Donald Trumps incoming labor secretary could put hourly workers at peril: Wage and hours chief [View all]

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Tuesday, Jan 3, 2017 5:10 PM UTC

Donald Trump’s incoming labor secretary could put hourly workers “at peril”: Wage and hours chief

The Obama administration's new rules recovered $1.8 billion in back wages for 2 million workers

Sophia Tesfaye

In 2015, for the first time since before the Great Recession, median household income rose — 5.2 percent according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The poverty rate also ticked down to 13.5 percent in 2015, from 14.8 percent a year earlier. Meanwhile, the share of those without health insurance dropped below 10 percent, marking the first time all three measures have improved in nearly two decades, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But with the incoming Trump administration set to take office in a few weeks, a leading Obama administration official is now warning that the Department of Labor will be “at peril” if it fails to enforce new rules that saw $1.8 billion in back wages paid to 2 million workers in recent years.

David Weil, the outgoing administrator of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, has offered perhaps the strongest warning of any Obama administration official aimed at the incoming Trump administration: Do not roll back protections for workers. Weil oversaw strategic enforcement initiatives that are now in limbo and could be withdrawn by a new administrator.

“What does making America great again mean?” Weil asked, expressing concern that Andy Puzder, the fast food executive President-elect Trump has nominated to be labor secretary, will undermine efforts to crack down on widespread wage violations. ... “I would offer the interpretation that we went from the post-war period, when there were productivity increases, those increases went not only to the owners of capital, they also went to working people. That started to fall apart in the 1980s, and continued to erode for decades,” Weil told the Houston Chronicle last month.

With incoming inequality on the rise and wage stagnation dragging the economy, Weil’s wage and hour division went after the practice of misclassifying employees as independent contractors, which deprives workers of certain legal protections and benefits, and also shorts states on payroll tax income. The agency’s average yearly wage theft recoveries under Obama, adjusted for inflation, have been stronger than those during the George W. Bush years and Bill Clinton’s second term, which is as far back as the publicly available data go. During the 2016 fiscal year alone, the Labor Department found that 10,300 fast-food workers were owed more than $5.4 million in back wages.