President's Column - An administration that wants to gut all of the labor laws

In a speech before the Federalist Society on November 14, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao bragged that her Department's budget had been cut more than "any other Cabinet department in this Administration. As for her goals, she reiterated her plan to have Labor Department enforcement agencies beef up their compliance assistance activities; her intent to hold labor organizations more accountable for dues expenditures and handling of pension funds; and her commitment to reforming what she termed the Fair Labor Standards Act's "literally ancient" and "absurdly complex" white-collar exemptions.

The Labor Department is the only government agency entrusted with the laws governing the conditions and safety of America workers. The Fair Labor Standards Act, enacted in 1938, was to be a safety and health law to force companies to work employees on an 8 hour day. The FLSA has been turned into a law that governs how much overtime pay is paid to workers for working as many hours as the workers in 1938 or more. The average worker now works 60 hours or more a week.

Secretary Chao has a task force meeting with business interests on how to extend the FLSA to cover overtime only after 160 hours per month. Which would mean that employers could and would work employees as many hours per day or weeks they wished, without the penalty of paying overtime until those hours exceed the 160 hours per month, and would only be required to pay over time if the employees are not exempt for some other reason.

While this an affront to the Labor movement who have fought for the 8 hour day for over a hundred years, it could seriously affect the health of the workers. Countless studies have proven that long work hours over an extended period of time cause long-range health problems and accidents do happen. So it is more than just cheating of these employees, it could seriously affects their health.

In regard to the issue of "monitoring the unions," the Office of Labor Management Standards has been doing this since the passage of the Landrum Griffin Act. OLMS does it effectively, and does protects the union members. But I what of the corporate fraud that has gone on and cheated thousands of non-union workers of their pensions? This agency should be fully funded and ramped up for those frauds yet to surface.

There is the strong appearance that this Administration wants to gut all of the labor laws. This is predictable given the all effort the Labor Movement did in the 2000 and 2002 Elections to defeat the foes of worker protection. But why gut all the laws that protect the millions of workers not protected by labor contracts. After all, there are only 19 million workers in organized labor and millions of others. I understand anti-labor, but why anti-worker?