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 Daily Labor Report, in “Judges Order Arrests in Rare Labor Agency ‘Punch’ Over Defiance,” by Rebecca Rainey and Parker Purifoy. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
Federal labor agencies have recently sought the arrest of employers who flout their orders, using a rarely exercised enforcement tool for policing workplace violations.
In separate cases involving the US Labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board, judges found business owners to be in contempt of court after repeatedly failing to comply with agency requests or mandates.
Some lawyers say the regulators’ push for court-ordered arrests is a sign of the Biden administration’s more aggressive approach to labor enforcement. …
Others suggest that the pursuit of arrests may reflect unique instances of very bad actors rather than a shift in policy.
“These are so unusual to find somebody going to jail for a discovery issue, that it’s important to kind of view these as the rare birds that they are,” Paul DeCamp, a former Wage and Hour administrator under President George W. Bush, said of the Michigan home-care case.
It’s “a cautionary tale in what not to do in responding to a Department of Labor investigation,” said DeCamp, now a management-side attorney with Epstein Becker & Green PC. He noted that the court docket indicated that the employer in the WHD case had many months to comply with the court’s order for records.
“If you disagree with the investigator, if you disagree with the department about what information you should produce, get a lawyer and work it out and behave like a normal, responsible, rational human being and a decent employer,” DeCamp said.
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