Undercover Investigation Reveals Labor Department Fails Workers: Listen to the Calls Here

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The House Education and Labor Committee is holding a hearing this morning on the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division — which has utterly failed in its mission to protect workers from discrimination and exploitation, according to an undercover inquiry by Congress’ investigative arm.

The inquiry, conducted during the Bush administration by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), involved a series of calls placed to Wage and Hour officials by GAO analysts posing as aggrieved workers. When the undercover GAO folks tried to seek help from the Labor Department to resolve employer issues, they were met with stonewalling … and in some cases, outright rejection.

You can listen in to six of the undercover calls in question — links are posted after the jump.

The first GAO call is here; the second call is here. You can listen to the third call right here, and the fourth call — a Labor Department official caught in a lie — is available here.

Check out the fifth call at this link, and the sixth at this link.

The good news is that Wage and Hour is working on hiring hundreds of more investigators under new Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, meaning that the era of dysfunction could soon come to an end. Here’s how Education and Labor Chairman George Miller (D-CA) put it during today’s hearing:

Today’s testimony will help inform Congress and the new leadership of Department of Labor on whether additional resources, better training or improved statutory language are needed.

We owe it to all hard working Americans to ensure that the federal government lives up to its responsibility to guarantee that families are not being cheated out of their wages by unscrupulous employers.

Ultimately, I believe that improving the Wage and Hour Division will come down to
strong leadership and a renewed commitment to enforce the law.

I am confident that the Obama administration and Secretary Solis are committed to
turning this egregious record around and ensuring that all workers are treated fairly by
their employers and their government.

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