Paul DeCamp, Member of the Firm in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in the Bloomberg Law Daily Labor Report, in “DOGE’s $455 Million in Labor Savings Carry Costs for US Workers,” by Rebecca Rainey. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
Trump administration plans to save $455 million by cutting Labor Department contracts, grants, and office leases will cost American workers and reduce efficiency, former agency officials say. …
Office closures could impact enforcement of more than a dozen laws that require employers to maintain safe workplaces, pay minimum wages and overtime, and provide job-protected family and medical leave, among other basic employment protections, former DOL officials say.
The 87 offices slated to have their leases expire span the country from Baltimore, Md., to Tacoma, Wash. Of that amount, 37 belong to the Wage and Hour Division and OSHA.
The full impact of the closures will be more fully seen once the administration decides what to do with the staff at the locations, said Paul DeCamp, a former wage and hour administrator under former President George W. Bush, now a management-side attorney at Epstein Becker & Green PC.
“The real measure of whether the agency will suffer in terms of its enforcement is the head count, not the office footprint,” DeCamp said, because most of the day-to-day work of wage division investigators takes place at worksites they are inspecting. “There can be a lot of good reasons why it makes sense to terminate a lease,” he added.
People
Member of the Firm