Federal Manager's Daily Report

The Department of Labor needs to adopt a more systematic approach to developing guidance for the Fair Labor Standards Act, GAO has said

The act sets minimum wage and overtime pay requirements for millions of workers and is a framework for bringing lawsuits against employers for violations. The number of civil suits brought over the last decade has increased substantially.

Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, or WHD, has an annual process for planning how it will target its enforcement and compliance assistance resources to help prevent and identify potential FLSA violations, but it does not compile and analyze relevant data to help determine what guidance is needed, according to GAO-14-69.

It said that in developing its guidance on FLSA, WHD considers input from its regional offices, but it does not have a systematic approach that includes analyzing relevant data, nor does it have a routine, data based process for assessing the adequacy of its guidance.

WHD agreed with recommendations to direct the WHD Administrator to develop a systematic approach for identifying and considering areas of confusion that contribute to possible FLSA violations to help inform the development and assessment of its guidance.