Labor Watch: New York Has a Better Idea

If the Department of Labor isn’t the most obscure Cabinet level agency in the federal government, it’s at least in the running.  So the fact that the confirmation vote of Obama’s Labor Secretary designee Hilda Solis drew even a little a bit of attention that way seems an opportunity not to be missed. Let’s, then, cast an eye upon something new in labor law enforcement that’s happening in the state of New York called Wage Watch.  And let’s also hope that Solis – and the labor officials of the other states – pay attention as well, because it’s a program that could change the way we conduct government.

With the current bailout regime having thawed our previously frozen national discussion of the economy to the point where the supposed immutable laws of the free market can now be challenged, the idea of limiting how much money the people at the highest levels of the corporate world can take home is finally seeing the light of day.  But the question of whether those at the other end of the economy are even getting what the law already demands remains as much in the dark as ever.  That would change in New York, however, if the month-old program that the state’s Labor Commissioner M. Patricia Smith, calls a “one-of-a-kind grass-roots tool in the fight against illegal labor practices” succeeds.

For its first six months Wage Watch will set in motion six local organizations in New York City and Long Island to spread knowledge about the basics of minimum wage and overtime law among the low wage earning communities they already work with.  The range of practices that New York’s Department of Labor refers to generally as “wage theft” also includes tip stealing.  The six groups, all with prior experience with labor issues, will receive training and materials, in Spanish or Chinese where appropriate; disseminate information to local employees and employers; and facilitate direct contact with the Labor Department for complaints as needed.

Given how hard many people find it to even imagine living on the minimum wage – which at New York’s $7.15 an hour minimum would give a 40 hour, 52 week worker $14,872 in annual gross wages (the $6.55 federal minimum totals to $13,624) – it might seem like the problem couldn’t be too widespread.  And yet the department reports that last year it collected $25 million in unpaid wages for 17,000 workers throughout the state.  With bailout and stimulus bills in the air that are nearing a trillion dollars, $25 million can itself start to seem like small potatoes.  But the fact is that the average minimum wage, small potatoes worker who was a beneficiary of this program recouped about ten percent of an annual minimum wage income, or about five weeks wages.

In some industries cheating is already known to be widespread – the agency found that 78% of New York City car washes were committed wage law violations.  But the problem is not confined to businesses that might be considered marginal – Yellow Rat Bastard, a SoHo retailer (named after a comic book) that New York magazine’s website calls “three rooms of name-brand sportswear and accessories with a punk edge” agreed to pay nearly $1.5 million to settle a wage theft lawsuit.  Nor are high profile institutions immune – the Saratoga Race Course underpaid its backstretch workers and Erie County Fair bathroom attendants worked only for tips and were even forced to give half of them back to a subcontractor.

All in all, then, the Labor Department has reason to believe that there’s a lot more wage theft going on out there than it could ever hope to ferret out with its own staff resources, hence Wage Watch, which Stuart Appelbaum, President of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, one of the participating groups, calls “labor law enforcement at the purest, most grassroots level.” After the first six month trial period of working with these half dozen experienced organizations, the Labor Department plans to expand the program and recruit religious, student, union, business, neighborhood, and community organizations statewide, with no requirement of past labor law experience.

While the program’s relevance for wage law enforcement on the federal level and for other state labor agencies is obvious, its implications extend well beyond this one particular task.  For instance, in 2006, the United Nations’ International Labour Office (ILO) found the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) woefully understaffed for the responsibilities with which it is charged.  ILO standards call for one inspector for every 10,000 workers in industrialized nations like ours.  The US has 2,100 labor inspectors, or about one for every 70,000 workers, well below even the one-per-40,000 workers recommended for nations with relatively low levels of industrialization.

The AFL-CIO has analyzed this question by considering how many years it would take to inspect all of the job sites in each state with current levels of OSHA staffing.  They found only six states whose worksites could be covered in under fifty years.  Most would require from fifty to one hundred and fifty years, and in seven states it would take longer than that.  (About 16 American workers are fatally injured on the job each day while more than 11,000 are injured or made ill by workplace conditions.)

In order to reach the ILO’s recommended staffing level, OSHA would need to add more than 12,000 new inspectors at a cost in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion annually.  Given that the nation’s largest workers compensation insurer, Liberty Mutual, puts the direct cost of disabling workplace injuries at nearly $1 billion a week, this would be money well spent.  Yet we know all too well that over the next several years the government is going to face an unprecedentedly broad range of needs on which money could be well spent.  What then, if OSHA were directed to follow the lead of the New York Department of Labor and seek out and train organizations that would then train the workforce itself to identify and effectively call attention to conditions that threatened its well being?  It might well have a cheaper, less bureaucratic, and more effective operation.

Even this is relatively small compared to the potential impact of directing an institution like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to socialize its work.  There is probably no aspect of government currently enjoying greater support among the general public than environmental protection and the fight against global warming.  So it’s hard to imagine that an EPA foray into the world of community organizations would not turn up hundreds of them interested in training their members in methods of helping the government to help the environment.

According to Labor Commissioner Smith, the genesis of Wage Watch lies in an entirely other realm of government – the Neighborhood Watch schemes to assist police that started in Queens in the 1960s.  In fact, it’s hard to imagine that there is any branch of government that might not benefit from a perspective of expanding the public’s role in their work (although the CIA might disagree.)

If all of this talk about empowering workers and community organizations sounds a little, well, radical, don’t forget, we’re all socialists now – I read it on the cover of Newsweek.  And even if you’re a Time magazine reader, this development in New York has got to be considered good news because you know what they say – if they can make it work there, we can make it work anywhere.