The Department of Labor: A Damage Assessment

Labor Day is a time to reflect on the achievements of the American worker and our nation's commitment to helping all families pursue the American Dream. But for millions of Americans there is little cause for celebration. While workers' wages have fallen, the cost of living has skyrocketed, the unemployment rate has soared, fewer workers have health coverage, and good retirement plans are increasingly scarce.

Nearly a century ago, Congress established the federal Department of Labor to be the advocate and champion for working Americans. Specifically, the department was created to advance three core goals: "to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners of the United States, to improve their working conditions, and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment."

However, under the Bush Presidency, these goals -- and the interests of workers -- have been under direct assault.

From day one, Bush's Department of Labor has actively worked to undermine workers' rights to organize, to fair pay and decent benefits, and to safe working conditions -- rights that are essential to growing and sustaining a strong middle class. U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and other high-level appointees came to their posts determined to weaken the agency.

Under Chao's leadership, the department has repeatedly torpedoed rules designed to help workers. One of her first actions was supporting the repeal of a rule that would have protected workers against repetitive motion injuries, the leading cause of workplace injuries.

Chao went on to severely weaken the department's Wage and Hour Division -- which enforces overtime, minimum wage, and child labor laws. Wage theft has skyrocketed at the hands of this administration: An ongoing U.S. Government Accountability Office investigation has uncovered repeated cases where the agency refused to go after scofflaw employers who admittedly owed their workers back wages.

Chao also consistently refused to support increasing the minimum wage, allowing it to erode to its lowest value in fifty years. It wasn't until Democrats took over Congress in 2006 that the minimum wage was finally raised for the first time in ten years.

Time and again, Chao has proven her loyalty to a different constituency. She has expended boundless energy making sure unscrupulous employers have a ready supply of exploitable labor. Just recently the department proposed new regulations that will cut the prevailing wage rates for agricultural guest workers and make it easier for employers to hire cheaper, temporary guest workers from overseas instead of qualified, available American workers.

And while the administration dragged its feet to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina, it moved quickly to slash wages for Gulf Coast workers in the hurricane's aftermath.

After President Bush tapped a mine executive to lead the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, the agency immediately set about withdrawing vital proposed health and safety rules. By the time a slew of mining accidents hit in 2006, nearly 200 staffers had been cut from the coal mine safety enforcement division alone -- a move that helped cripple the agency. When Congress finally acted in the wake of many tragic miner deaths, MSHA acted with little urgency to implement the law. More recently, when the House of Representatives passed additional much-needed mine safety protections, the administration threatened a veto.

It's the same story with Chao's U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Remarkably, the agency has not approved a single new health standard for workers in eight years, aside from one that was ordered by a court. Even in the face of solid scientific evidence documenting workplace dangers, Chao has turned a blind eye to growing health and safety risks.

Take, for example, the department's failure to address hazardous combustible dust. In 2006, the Chemical Safety Board -- an independent government agency that investigates industrial chemical accidents -- reported that a string of deadly explosions caused by combustible dust are a serious and preventable national problem. Although the CSB urged OSHA to quickly issue a new safety standard, Chao refused -- and continued to refuse even after a sugar dust explosion killed 13 workers last February.

The tragic results of the department's fatal failure to act continue to mount -- on crane and construction safety, popcorn lung disease, silica, beryllium and more.
And in one of its most telling -- and insulting -- moves to date, the department is now rushing to enact last minute "secret rules" that would make it even harder for health and safety agencies to issue future protections for workers and that would jeopardize workers' retirement savings.

Our nation's workers, battered by unfair global competition, stagnant wages, declining benefits, and poor employer compliance with labor laws, deserve a Department of Labor that lives up to its name, led by individuals who believe in its mission.

A Secretary of Labor that actually fights to help and protect hard working Americans - now that would be a reason to celebrate.

U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), is the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee

Follow Rep. George Miller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/askgeorge

Comments

[FreedomCorpse]

All the lies about free trade and massive spending on the war machine to "keep us safe" is killing America...­.slowly, painfully and accelerati­ng...

[TankerRat]

Check the record and you will find that Bill Clinton was far friendlier to "Big Business " than even the chimp we presently have in the WH. Ross Perot told you in 92 that Clinton was going buy NAFTA with YOUR money. Clinton did exactly that. If you think Obama is going to change anything then you live in a dream world. The Dems are just as much controlled by corporate America as the Republicans are. Check the record and weep for there it is.

Draft Perot/Ventura-08

[Chavez08]

It's a war against working people, the Right wing has escalated the violence in this war (Bush/Congress sponsoring assassinations of union organizers in Colombia and elsewhere)

We need the Democrats to fight as hard or harder for working people as Republicans do for the corporate criminals.

[Rule Of Law]

Even more Chavez, it is a war against the POWER that well paid, home owning workers with a vested interest in the country wield when they vote. They hypnotize us with American Idol and stupid tech toys, divide us with fear of each other and the manufactured terrorist threat (anyone remember the "cold war?") destroy our jobs, our currency and our economy All in order to impose a rigid control over the people they fear the most--Us!

[mcostello]

This is class warfare plain and simple.

[KCFreedom]

Something that affects my profession, software engineering, is U.S. corporations put out job advertisements and collect resumes from U.S. citizens (and others), pretend they looked at them, then just apply for an H1-B worker, saying "they couldn't find an American who could do the job". This is a loophole in U.S. law or the Dept. Of Labor is looking the other way. This practice should be stopped. H1-B Visas should be reserved for only very special cases, not just used as a corporate welfare tool.

I know many out of work engineers these days who just cannot find jobs, many are going to have to leave the profession. Age plays a big factor, too, as anyone over 40, and especially 50 are having a real hard time getting hired anywhere.

So much for any "technical edge" to compete with the rest of the world, at this rate.

[DuganS1]

Do you have any proof of that? About engineers, we all know that the term "engineer" is a very broad one and encompasses many different fields and numerous niches within those fields. I've known many "engineers" whose knowledge and experience was obsolete and thus they were no longer commander much value in the market place. Just because someone, for example, is a computer "engineer" doesn't mean they're capable of doing any job in the category of computer engineering. The truth of the matter is that H1-B visas are vitally important for the future of this country because most engineers brought in to work in the US in this manner are some of the best and most talented engineers in the world.

[KCFreedom]

"vitally important for the future of this country"?

You sound like someone from inside one of these corporations doing this.

I was told by someone I know in middle management at a large big-name corporation they do this.

H1-B visas are being mis-used as a tool of corporate welfare, and a wage-breaker of the middle class.

Perhaps YOUR job needs to be outsourced?

[BBackSoon]

I work for a major US Manufacturing Corporation and we have/are implementing Oracle as our main MRP (Manufacturing) system. Early on we had a few US Contractors to teach us the ways of Oracle. These voices of reason and understanding of US business were quickly replaced by Indian contractors, many of whom had only 1 or 2 implementations under their belts and NONE had real world business experience.

We once had a conversation on why we would need to be able to update customer information. They could not fathom the fact that mistakes are made and info changes. We also had an ‘EDI Guru’ come in and we were shocked that he had no idea what an 810 transaction was. For those that don’t know it is one of the more common EDI formats. And Indian English is not the same as American English. Schedule is pronounced Sche-Dool and Vendor is Wendor.

My company had contracted with one of the major Indian IT companies to get the staff. They, at times send us kids, just out of school with no real world experience. But they are cheaper than fresh US grads.

I am all for bringing in the big guns when you really need them but in our case is not what is going on. They have found the cheapest talent and have to only pay cash with no benefits and no job security. Maybe we should Offshore CEO’s?

[annieR]

Thank you, Congressman. I live in Arizona where we sorely need unions. Senator John Kyl opposes any legislation that would facilitate unions, saying that all unions do is take money out of employee pockets. Meanwhile, nurses who work 12-hour shifts have their lunch break scheduled at the end of their shift to avoid 1/2 hour of shift differential pay, etc..... My dad was president of the union in a 300-employee company in a small Nebraska town in the 1950s. The company and the union collaborated on agreements that were win-win for everyone. The company is still in business, as strong as ever.

Please continue your earlier efforts to have US labor laws enforced in the US Marianas, where, thanks to Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff, women are indentured servants and forced into prostitution.

[heal57]

I also live in Arizona and tried to get rid of Senator Kyl to no avail. I wrote to both of them on the Terry Schiavo matter expressing my disgust. My sister and a lot of people out here just keep voting for McCain and Kyl; it's awful. I don't know what it will take. As more and more younger people come in, maybe we can get rid of these two wack republican conservatives.

[iralarry]

Actions speak louder than words. Take action and vote against the last eight years of business as usual, business as first and foremost. Yea, yea, business is the engine that runs this economy, or is it the engine that ruins this economy if all that matters is cost/benefit analysis? People are more complex then simple market economics. What can't be supported by profits and returns should die? Are we now this pathetic?

[DuganS1]

A major problem within the economy over the past decades is that unskilled and semi-skilled manufacturing workers have been overpaid. This has resulted in thousands of companies having to go out of business and many units of companies becoming simply uncompetitive and unprofitable. Hundreds of thousands of these workers have been put out of work over the last decades by automation and robotics, which has also helped to bring these wages back to reasonable levels, but many operations are still in business that haven't been able to do this and continue to struggle now. Unions have only made the problem much worse. For example, workers at American Axle earlier this years chose to walk out on a strike which last nearly a few months. But since the company is in a struggling industry and losing a large amount of money this year, these American facilities will likely be shut down with the production picked up in their Mexican and Chinese facilities. Increasing safety and environmental standards makes the problem even worse as these companies become even more uncompetitive and unprofitable.

[Bladernr1001]

I would not be so easy on labor unions as you were in this post. I think the demands of labor unions of the 40's through the 70's the stage for the deterioration of many of our industries. Chief example would be the auto manufacturing business. If union leaders and liberals really want to llok themselves in the mirror and know the real reason that only a small percentage of private sector workers are unionized (and it decreasing still). This fact would be chief amoung them.

Unions artificially increase wages above natural market rates for labor. That can never be sustained.

I always laugh when I see those stickers that say "Live better/Work Union". Unions do not create wealth, they do not increase productivity. Unions simpy redistribute the wealth a little (mostly into the bosses pockets). The economy grew because productivity grew not because we were ever unionized.

[LeftRight]

And yet the real reason why union membership is decreasing is due to the fact that the republicans and business leaders have done everything in their power to STOP people from joining unions!

Now then, I'm not saying that unions are perfect, nor are the the best thing since sliced bread, but they are the ONLY reason that we have 40 hour workweeks, weekends, FMLA, and various and sundry other protections that ALL of us take for granted!

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

Nope workers pay increased because they FOUGHT for it. One of the major factors of the present economy is that wage increases have been disengaged from productivity increases. Merely increasing productivity will NEVER increase wages without mechanisms to balance out corporate power. Unions are one of those mechanisms.

[Assassin]

"Unions artificially increase wages above natural market rates for labor. That can never be sustained.­"

Get a clue. Who are you to declare what are and aren't "natural market rates"? I bet that when one or two companies corner the market for a given product, you and your ilk won't be complaining that these monopolist­s/duopolis­ts are driving wages "unnaturally low" or making consumers pay "unnaturally high" prices. No, it doesn't faze you when the corporatists twist people's arms and walk all over them. But when the workers assert themselves, why, that's as unnatural and twisted as a goat giving birth to a two-headed hawk!

Supply-side zealots have a very narrow view of what are "acceptable" forces within the market.

[DuganS1]

Absolutely, unions raised wages and benefits to levels of uncompetitiveness throughout the late 60s and 70s, and brought about their own demise. It's almost inconceivable to me now that workers just three to four decades ago could drop out of high school and work in factories doing un-skilled labor and be part of the "middle-class" , or sometimes "upper-middle" class if they were in the auto or steel industry. I don't see how people find it surprising that those folks saw their jobs replaced by automation, robots, or by workers abroad or that their wages had stagnated or been lowered since.

[heal57]

The only reason we ever had unions was the greed and corruption of business owners There was a time in America before unions when people worked six days a week, and children were forced to work.....i­t's starting to get like that again with mexicans here illegally working for the lowest wages possible.
My wedding was in a fancy Sheraton Hotel in Florida. All the cooking and work and serving were done by people who did not speak English. We paid a fortune for that wedding, the special dinner, etc; and the corporation [in this case Sheraton]made out like bandits. The service was inferior because there was no communication with these workers. They charged many thouands of dollars and paid paltry wages to non-English speaking people cause they work for less money and I doubt taxes were paid by the employer.

[LeftRight]

I will grant the possibility that skilled labor has been overpaid, but as the corporations are removing that skilled labor they are NOT bringing the prices down, and thus we STILL need to have those high wages, in spite of us not having them!

[DuganS1]

Corporations have been removing "un-skilled" and "semi-skilled" labor, not "skilled' labor. Corporations have also been lowering prices as evidenced by the continual disinflation in the rate of the core consumer price index over the past 15 years.

[TankerRat]

Overpaid skilled labor? Exactly WHAT do you mean by that ignorant crack. I'll give you a good example LeftRight. Just what is your ignorant a-- worth? Take an aircraft mechanic who is the only kind of mechanic in the country that holds a FEDERAL license. Assign him/her to repair modern high performance jet passenger aircraft, and pay him/her like a field hand and see what you get. I wouldn't fly on one of those planes if I was you. You've got a good chance of becoming a smoking hole in the ground. At 35,000 ft there isn't any place to pull over, pop the hood, and call AAA. As to productivity, what you see is the result of people working far more hours than before. I don't care how "smart" you work or how efficiently. You CANNOT compete with people who will work for poverty like pay.

The Tanker Rat
33 years as Aviation Mechanic and Instructor

[gevan]

"Impeachment is off the table." The Democratic Congrssional leadership has given a free pass to the criminal conspiracy that inhabits our national government. Wouldn't it be nice (as well as just) to see the administration that takes office on next January 20th to pursue the miscreants who flout our nation's laws? Not something I'm expecting to see, but it would serve the public interest if it did happen.

[LunaNik]

Congressman Miller,

You've missed the most insidious practices perpetrated by the Department of Labor: the illegal denial of benefits to federal employees injured on the job. The laws governing how the DoL functions are worthless for two reasons: (1) should the DoL violate these laws, the employee has no civil recourse; and, (2) the Secretary and his representatives (i.e., claims examiners) have the final word.

I am a former postal employee who suffered a disabling on-the-job injury. While, at first, my claim was accepted, when my diagnosis was amended to include a permanent disability, my benefits were terminated illegally. I went through several appeals and, four years later, was finally approved. Meanwhile, I nearly lost my house to foreclosure, as I was without income and physically unable to work.

The DoL illegally weighed the opinion of a physician on its payroll as more credible than my own physician's opinion, which violates federal law. Despite the fact that I was finally approved, the damage to my health and financial status as the direct result of the DoL's illicit actions was considerable. Of course, no reparation was made; they did not even have to pay interest on the monies I was owed.

I beseech you, as Chair of the House Committee, to investigate this situation. I am certain that many federal employees in similar situations to mine do not have the resources to effectively fight the illicit actions of the DoL and, therefore, suffer unduly. Thank you.

[DuganS1]

A huge number of workers "feign" injury this year. In the military it's called malingering, but in the real world it is all too common an occurrence and hard to get recourse from.

[BubbaC33]

No department has been safe during the Bush debacle.

[labormuscle]

You really want to help workers Congressman? Repeal Taft-Hartley and start all over again whrn it comes to labor law.

[WASanford]

Thank you Representative Miller for informing us about what this administration has been doing to us. It’s a shame that this information is only available on the Huffington Post, a liberal blog site.

Just last week while the nation was watching the Democratic Convention, would have been a great time to bring this and other misdeeds of the Bush Administration into the daylight. Instead, what our audience saw, was our party trying to heal the schism that was caused by its poorly run primary.

I’ve just finished reading Thomas Frank’s “The Wrecking Crew.” Everyone should consider it to be required reading. Once you realize how determined these folks are to destroy our country, then maybe you’ll try to find ways to avoid doing business with them.

[Bladernr1001]

Liberals constantly misinform the public about the effects of minimum wage.

-First off the minimum wage is earned mostly by recent immigrants or young entry level workers. Very few of those raising a family earns the minimum wage.

-Raising the minimum wage does not raise the living standards of those earning it. Why? Because costs of goods and services rise right along with the increase in labor costs.

- Raising the minimum wage can reduce the availability jobs. Thus hurting the very people it was designed to help.

It is too bad that pols take advantage of the voters utter ignorance of basic economics.

[LeftRight]

Conservatives constantly LYING about the effects of the minimum wage.

-Most people making minimum wage are younger, but more and more (around 25-45% of those earning minimum wage in recent years) ARE trying to raise families on it.

-Raising the minimum wage DOES improve, since a 5% increase in the minimum wage only translates into a .5-1% increase in the cost of goods and services.

-Raising the minimum wage actually INCREASES the job opportunities, since businesses see INCREASED sales, which means that they HIRE people to fill the demand, which FURTHER increases sales, which means that they hire more people....­.

It is too bad people like you either lie for money or for stupidity.

[WhoneedsGoverment]

Well put.....Wh­y do the republicans hate the working class?

I just keep in mind the gap between the rich and not so rich, which has gotten much bigger,
ohh, the last eight years.

We need a discussion on just what is the poverty line and exactly what is a living wage.

.

[fishsandwichesr2good]

You are sadly misinformed, although I can't blame you given the MSM's swallowing of the income inequality myth hook, line, and sinker.

If you look at the Census Bureau's report "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007" http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdff), you'll see how they measure income inequality via the "Gini Index". I'm sure that the "Gini Index" used in the CB report has its detractors, but the wikipedia description essentially describes it as the definitive metric that economists use to measure income inequality.

The data show rather conclusively that income inequality at the end of W's 7th year is nearly identical to that at the end of his first year. Yet, the MSM fails to challenge the liberal claim of the ever widening divide between rich & poor. Unfortunately, the media and their so-called "experts" are so firmly attached to the notion of "Bush's tax cuts caused greater inequality" that it will become axiomatic in any near term analysis of W's economic policies.