Career Services

Protecting Workers from Intimidation, Retaliation

This is the Labor Department blog post authored by Tom Perez,  Secretary of Labor.  In his post, Tom  asserts that intimidation and retaliation in the workplace are against the law, the department will use every enforcement tool including litigation, civil money penalties, liquidated damages, debarment, and warrants to protect workers' rights and may even  seek temporary restraining orders to protect workers and their wages while the department's investigation continues.

The success of our enforcement work at the Labor Department depends on cooperation from employers and workers alike. Our investigators at the Wage and Hour Division are trained professionals; and when they go into a workplace to do their job, they do so in a way that causes as little disruption as possible. Typically, an investigator will meet with the employer, conduct interviews with workers, and review relevant wage and time records. This process usually goes smoothly and allows us to ensure that workers are properly paid and violations swiftly corrected.

 

But sometimes it goes less smoothly. Some employers interfere with our investigations by providing false information, intimidating workers and threatening them with termination or even – no exaggeration here — physical violence if they speak openly with investigators. Sometimes, unfortunately, the intimidation works. If workers fear that telling the truth to investigators will cost them their job, they will just suffer the wage violations in silence.

Intimidation and retaliation are against the law. The department has at its disposal many enforcement tools — including litigation, civil money penalties, liquidated damages, debarment, and warrants — to protect workers’ rights. But when necessary, we will also seek temporary restraining orders to protect workers and their wages while our investigation continues.

In recent months, we have gone to federal judges in New York, New Hampshire, Georgia, Texas and California and done exactly that. In Atlanta, we did so against restaurant owner Giovanni DiPalma of Antico Foods, LLC, who was ordering his workers to hide from investigators and lie about their work hours. In Poughkeepsie, New York, we obtained a temporary restraining order against the owners of BabyVision Inc., a maker of baby apparel, for engaging in the same unacceptable bullying. The courts also intervened in the case of ISPE Produce in McAllen, Texas. There, company officials required their workers to leave the job site when Wage and Hour investigators arrived to conduct interviews, threatening to fire them and even have them deported if they did otherwise. And when physical violence is threatened, as occurred in Southern California, we got a restraining order against an employer who literally threatened to break an employee’s teeth if one was discovered to be cooperating with our investigation.

Our Wage and Hour laws are based on a very simple principle and promise: if you work hard and play by the rules, you should get the pay to which you’re entitled. When rogue employers flout the law, it means people struggle to pay the rent and put dinner on the table. It threatens livelihoods and hurts families. We will use every enforcement tool available, including going to the courts, to stop them.

Follow Secretary Perez on Twitter, @LaborSec