Friday, March 27, 2009

Do you really want these people running your healthcare or pension plans?

In a report released this week, the GAO found horrible inefficiency at the Department of Labor. They mishandled 9 of 10 test cases. They failed to return one complainant's calls for 4 months, then told him it would take 8 to 10 months to begin an investigation.
Labor Agency Is Failing Workers, Report Says

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: March 24, 2009

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. (excerpt) read more at nytimes.com

Watch Congressman Price (D-NC) tear into the GAO in a Congressional hearing yesterday. This country needs more Democrats like Congressman Price.

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