Thursday, April 14, 2022: Wage & Hour Enforcement Tops USDOL Equity Action Plan
The U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL), along with more than 90 other federal agencies (see story above), announced its Equity Action Plan in response to Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities. The 20-page Plan summarizes vital aspects of DOL’s principles and approach to advancing equity. In all candor, though, this program seems to just commit and re-dedicate the Wage Hour Division to simply do its existing job with existing resources for existing stakeholders.
Equity Action Plan
The USDOL categorized its “ambitious” equity efforts into five areas.
- Protection of Wage and Hour Rights
- The federal-state Unemployment Insurance system
- Improving Language Access
- Workforce Training
- Government Apprenticeships
Wage & Hour Rights
As indicated in President Biden’s Fact Sheet, the USDOL recognizes that women, individuals with disabilities, people of color, immigrants, and those with low levels of formal education are especially prone to wage and hour violations. The Department’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) intends to conduct a new enforcement analysis to understand comparative labor standards offered by relevant worker protection laws. Specifically, the scope of worker protections, the enforcement capacity of state and local partners, and the available remedies across the country. From the analysis, WHD will identify the various sources of protection that employees can expect to receive from various levels of government and community partners. WHD will then develop strategic partnerships and MOUs to ensure that employees receive the greatest protections through all tools available in particular regions and sectors of the country.
Other wage and hour efforts include:
- reaffirm WHD’s commitment to preventing and addressing retaliation;
- continue conducting equity-focused outreach to essential workers; and
- develop strategic partnerships with community-based organizations, worker centers, unions, and industry associations
Workforce Training
Efforts to intensify the focus on underserved employees in the public workforce system and the labor market include:
- leverage and expand public workforce system data to identify and address barriers to underserved populations;
- engage with stakeholders to identify barriers to equity in ETA (Employment & Training Administration) administered services, programs, and benefits;
- foster equity in discretionary grantmaking;
- pilot programs and services, issue grants, and provide technical assistance to mitigate deep barriers faced by specific populations; and
- establish and invest in industry and sector-based high road training partnerships that build pathways to quality jobs for vulnerable workers.
Other Action Items
Among other things, to improve language access the Department has requested funds to support a centralized team, staffed at both the national and regional levels by the Civil Rights Center and the Office of Public Affairs, to develop greater consistency in the delivery of language access services across all Department agencies and programs. To build a “Federal Government workforce that is representative of the communities it serves” (sounds like an Affirmative Action Program?) the Department will develop Government Apprenticeships, starting with Employment and Training Administration.
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