The Buffalo News, September 28, 2007, Friday

The Buffalo News, September 28, 2007, Friday

The Buffalo News.com

State labor commissioner focuses on enforcing laws

Author: Fred O. Williams - NEWS BUSINESS REPORTER
© The Buffalo News Inc.

When Albany sees a problem, its reflex is to write a law, state Labor Commissioner M. Patricia Smith said.

But when it comes to lifting New York workers out of poverty, simply enforcing laws already on the books is a first step. Gov. Eliot Spitzer's administration has stepped up enforcement of labor laws to lift up workers and to protect law-abiding employers from unscrupulous competitors, Smith said.

"There was a crisis in this state of non-enforcement," she said during a talk Thursday in Buffalo.

In the first four months of this year, Labor Department investigations found $15 million in minimum-wage underpayments, four times the amount found the year before, she said.

A former labor bureau chief in the state Attorney General's Office, Smith was appointed to head the labor department under the Spitzer administration.

She spoke during a conference on economic development and economic justice. The "High Road Runs Through The City" conference continues today at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Buffalo.

Speakers argued that conventional development programs have subsidized sub-standard jobs, shifting social costs onto taxpayers while failing to alleviate poverty.

The event is exploring "what development policies are going to make the economy work," said Lou Jean Fleron of Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, an organizer of the conference.

Smith said that New York's minimum wage, workers' compensation and other labor protections form a significant benefit for working people, if they are enforced.

One crackdown on New York City grocery stores found that immigrant workers were sometimes paid only $250 for a 72-hour week. Rather than investigate the widespread wage abuses one employer at a time, the Attorney General's office instituted an industry "code of conduct" under which employers accepted monitoring in return for amnesty on past wage underpayments.

In one recent enforcement step, a newly formed task force harnessed multiple agencies to pursue employers who misclassify workers as independent contractors. Gov. Spitzer's office announced the task force formation Sept. 7.

Misclassification denies workers overtime pay, workers' compensation and unemployment protection, all at one blow.

A study by Cornell's ILR School found that 10 percent of workers may be misclassified, rising to 15 percent in the construction industry, based on Labor Department audits.

The multiple state agencies responsible for enforcing the laws broken by misclassification have failed to work together, Smith said. Employers caught by one agency would face only the penalty of paying the back wages they should have paid in the first place.

"We are going to do coordinated investigations so employers know that when they are caught," Smith said, "it's going to be a big deal."

e-mail: fwilliams@buffnews.com