They Should Call It The "Fair" Labor Standards Act: Govt Freezes Your Assets On Mere Suspicion
Few people understand what a bully the government can be -- and we see more and more of that, with the government using the law as a club. In this story by Walter Olson, as with civil asset forfeiture, mere suspicion of wage violations is enough to get your ass in a sling, via your assets being frozen by the feds:
Under a provision of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, the U.S. Department of Labor can seek what is known as a "hot goods" order, freezing the physical output of an employer that it suspects of having violated wage and hour law, all without having to prove its case at a trial.In recent years -- urged by such constituencies as labor unions, trial lawyers, and left-leaning academics -- the Obama administration has greatly stepped up its enforcement of FLSA wage-hour law. Part of that enforcement has taken the form of a revitalized use of hot-goods orders, which even defenders of its approach concede had until recently been little-known. So far the most notable result has been a federal attack on blueberry growers in the Pacific Northwest -- an onslaught high-handed enough to have been met with a stinging rebuke from a federal court last year, and which has now ended in humiliation with the dropping of charges against two growers and a refund of moneys extracted from them.
The case started in 2012 when the Labor Department told three Oregon farms it didn't think the piecework rate system they used, which paid workers for pounds picked, resulted in high enough pay for field workers. Without spelling out exactly how it had arrived at this conclusion -- an omission that would raise questions later -- it obtained a hot-goods order against them, labeling an estimated $5 million worth of fresh blueberries as contraband forbidden to enter the channels of commerce for supermarket sale, processing, or any other use. And then it offered the growers a deal: if they wanted Washington to release their crop, they would have to not only fork over a demanded cash settlement but -- this is the kicker -- agree not to appeal.
It's coercive enough to deploy the hot-goods power against a maker of steel ingots or knitted garments. But blueberries are a highly perishable crop that begins to lose value at once if not shipped. Indeed, no one could remember a case until the Obama years in which the hot-goods power had been used against agricultural produce at all, let alone one with a shelf life measured in days.
For the growers, of course, the proffered choice was no choice at all: rather than lose crops worth millions, they took the deal and agreed to pay $240,000.
It is scary how our country is, slowly but surely, starting to resemble a communist dictatorship, but with the pretense that we're still a free and free-market country (we never really were the latter, but it's a good goal).
By making the seizures and stoppages through regulations, the government pretends that it's all nice and clean. Basically, they're dressing up a kleptocracy in the fief and drum suit of a democracy. But anybody who is willing to rub two thoughts together and consider what they're really doing can see through this.
It's time for Congress to put accountability back into government. None of these regulations should become law until posted openly, with a month for people to comment, and then confirmed or denied by both Houses in an open vote. If you think it is OK to steal, because, we deserve to know who you are and have the opportunity to replace you with someone who might be more honest.
MarkD at February 19, 2015 4:35 AM
No civil asset seizures should be permitted without due process - period. NONE - no exception. If they believe they have cause, the place a lien, like everyone else, that goes through due process and if they lose, they pay the defendants attorney's fees: PERIOD. Nobody should be negatively impacted by the government bullying tactics just because government.
Lee Ladisky at February 19, 2015 10:08 AM
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