The Department of Labor terminated employees across at least six departments in recent weeks, potentially curbing the agency’s ability to conduct inspections and ensure fair pay and safety for workers, according to three sources familiar with the moves.
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The full scope of terminations and resignations at DOL is unclear.
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Any reduction in staff will affect the agency’s capacity to enforce labor laws and undertake the programs its tasked with administering, employment attorneys say.
Workers seeking unpaid overtime wages or to complain about unsafe conditions at their workplace may have nowhere else to go, especially given the rise of workplace arbitration agreements and collective and class action waivers, according to Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel and legal director at the National Employment Law Project.
“That just puts more onus on the Department of Labor to because in some cases, they’re the only game in town in terms of holding employers accountable for minimum wage and overtime,” she said.
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The Wage and Hour Division, which oversees minimum wage, overtime, and child labor laws, had only 650 investigators on board as of October, the lowest number on record since at least 2007.
“It sends a message to employers that accountability is going to be even less than it was before,” Ruckelshaus said.
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