Employers Beware: The Department of Labor hires 250 more investigators

I have been saying for the last few months, employers need to wake up and take notice! The Obama administration is serious about compliance with wage and hour laws. The DOL is taking actions to identify violators and any company caught violating of wage and hour laws can be sure that stiff financial penalties will follow.
The decision to add to the staff of investigators seems to signal that the government thinks the information published in a recent study by the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago, The National Employment Law Project and the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment is accurate and represents real problems.
The study indicates that:
· 76% of employees who worked overtime were NOT paid time-and-a-half for the overtime hours
· 26% of employee are paid less than minimum wage
· 69% of employees entitled to meal breaks either were no given any breaks, had their breaks interrupted by management or worked through their break.
Given the nation’s current economic crunch, employers are leaving themselves exposed to increased risk of government audits and lawsuits by overlooking their duties under wage and hour laws in order to survive, using fewer employees to do the same amount of work regularly done by a large staff. Now, with the government cracking down and actively searching for violators of wage and hour laws with the addition of more investigators, the chances of an employer continuing to violate employee pay rights are becoming less and less.
Any employer who does not take this issue seriously runs the real probability that they will be found out, and if wage and hour laws have been ignored, their businesses can be in jeopardy. This is the time to conduct a HR audit to ensure that wage and hour laws are being complied with, that all the paperwork and documentation will withstand any investigator’s scrutiny.
Showing investigators, government agencies and courts that the employer made a legitimate effort to comply with the FLSA and Wage laws, and are actively working to meet all of their duties to their employees, may be the difference between fines & penalties that break the employer’s financial “back” and company survival with minimal fines.
All the press that wage and hour violations have gotten recently, along with this increase in government investigators should clearly establish that this issue is not be taken lightly or dismissed out of hand. Take action before it is too late and your business is targeted.