Paul DeCamp, Member of the Firm in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in Law360 Employment Authority, in “How Gov. Shutdown Would Impact DOL's Wage-Hour Work,” by Max Kutner. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
A federal government shutdown would effectively halt the work of the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, leaving workers and employers in a bind, attorneys and other observers said.
As a potential lapse in appropriations approaches Sunday, an ensuing shutdown would largely put the Wage and Hour Division's enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act and other wage and hour laws on hold, observers said, as nearly all the division's staff would be furloughed.
Such a shutdown could be brief, as funding lapses in January 2019 and February 2019 were. But one could also last more than a month, as happened during the 35-day closure that began in December 2018. …
Under a shutdown contingency plan the DOL published Wednesday, the Wage and Hour Division would keep on only seven employees, all of them "necessary to protect life and property." Another 1,531 Wage and Hour Division workers would be furloughed.
Paul DeCamp of management-side firm Epstein Becker Green, who led the Wage and Hour Division under former President George Bush, said the remaining team would be a "skeleton crew."
"That won't really affect or move the cases forward," he said.
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