Video- Fox News: Minimum Wage Hike “Terrible For All Workers”

Via Newshounds.

Labor Agency Is Failing Workers, Report Says

By GottaLaff

Rachel Maddow just Tweeted the following:

This is why the words "Elaine Chao" instigate an involuntary teeth-grinding reaction from me...

And here is what she linked to. You might want to grab some Tylenol, Imitrex, or, at the very least, a good stiff drink:

The federal agency charged with enforcing minimum wage, overtime and many other labor laws is failing in that role, leaving millions of workers vulnerable, Congressional auditors have found.

In a report scheduled to be released Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office found that the agency, the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, had mishandled 9 of the 10 cases brought by a team of undercover agents posing as aggrieved workers.

In one case, the division failed to investigate a complaint that under-age children in Modesto, Calif., were working during school hours at a meatpacking plant with dangerous machinery, the G.A.O., the nonpartisan auditing arm of Congress, found.

When an undercover agent posing as a dishwasher called four times to complain about not being paid overtime for 19 weeks, the division’s office in Miami failed to return his calls for four months, and when it did, the report said, an official told him it would take 8 to 10 months to begin investigating his case. [...]

The report pointed to a cavalier attitude by many Wage and Hour Division investigators, saying they often dropped cases when employers did not return calls and sometimes told complaining workers that they should file lawsuits, an often expensive and arduous process, especially for low-wage workers.

During the nine-month investigation, the report said, 5 of the 10 labor complaints that undercover agents filed were not recorded in the Wage and Hour Division’s database, and three were not investigated. In two cases, officials recorded that employers had paid back wages, even though they had not. [...]

Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis said she took the report’s findings seriously.

“I am committed to ensuring that every worker is paid at least the minimum wage,” Ms. Solis said, “that those who work overtime are properly compensated, that child labor laws are strictly enforced and that every worker is provided a safe and healthful environment.”

Ms. Solis said the Wage and Hour Division planned to increase its staff by a third by hiring 250 investigators — 100 of them as part of the federal stimulus package — “to refocus the agency on these enforcement responsibilities” and “ensure that contractors on stimulus projects are in compliance with the applicable laws.” [...]

Ms. Solis’s predecessor, Elaine L. Chao, often defended the Wage and Hour Division, saying it had concentrated on larger, tougher cases, and secured back wages for more than 300,000 workers a year and collected more than twice as much annually as the division had done in the final years of the Clinton administration.

The report concluded that the Wage and Hour Division had mishandled more serious cases 19 percent of the time. In such cases, the accountability office said, the division did not begin an investigation for six months, did not complete an investigation for a year, did not assess back wages when violations were clearly identified and did not refer cases to litigation when warranted.

It's a good thing the fetus was being protected so diligently by BushCo and other anti-choice zealots, because once a child is born, all that goes right out the window. Health care, labor laws, poverty... Pro-life, my ass.

Much more here.

"Inheritance" always had such a nice ring to it... until BushCo came along.