Open Left

Administration not that into wage-hour enforcement

Crappy enforcement of the wage/hour rules in FLSA is not exactly a revelation (though the study is obviously valuable).

You can well understand why Bush would have let it slide (there's a GAO report from March on the inadequacy of processing complaints about violations).

But, if Obama had wanted to ballyhoo his fighting for working people, a crusade against minimum wage violators would have been a way to do it.

It would have been cheap, and could have been actioned on Day 1 - no new legislation needed.

An oversight that it never happened? Hardly.

According to this from last year, the Wages and Hours Division of the DOL only has 750 investigators for the entire country. Another 250 (if they arrive) won't exactly flood the zone.

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by: skeptic06 @ Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 14:27:44 PM CDT