Department of Labor

Ethics Quiz: The Tip-Sharing Plan

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Last year the Trump administration announced a proposal to amend a 2011 regulation prohibiting employers from collecting server tips and distributing them to anyone other than servers. If the new proposal is adopted, employers could theoretically use workers’ tips for  any purpose, as long as the workers who received the tips were directly paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The restaurant industry opposed the Obama regulation, and argues that more freedom would allow employers to share the tips of waiters and waitresses with other workers like busboys, greeters, cooks and dishwashers.

Labor advocacy groups and former Obama administration officials counter that the regulation would legalize employers stealing income from workers, since they could theoretically pocket the tips.

Your Ethics Alarms Economics/Labor/Human Nature Quiz of the Day…..

Is the proposed regulation fair, responsible and ethical, or not?

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Conservatives Flunk An Integrity Test: The Puzder Withdrawal

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXuo5RtVWDc

Amazing. I am reading conservative bloggers and columnists blaming Andrew Puzder’s withdrawal as the Labor Secretary nominee on an outrageous Democratic Party hit job. This is the mirror image of Democrats and their news media describing every move by the President as a threat to the solar system. Why would anyone believe these conservatives when their charges are reasonable and  justified, if they call something like this an outrage?

Puzder was one of President Trump’s worst and most indefensible nominations, running in a dead heat with Ben Carson at HUD (unqualified, and an apparent idiot); and Rick Perry at Energy (appointing someone who wants to get rid of the agency he will be heading when he couldn’t even remember the name of the agency on live TV). His nomination is also the most glaring example yet of incompetent and lazy vetting, as well as insensitivity to obvious problems, and why the President desperately needs a pro, and adult, and a competent manager as Chief of Staff.

No, Puzder wasn’t forced to withdraw “just” because of his employment of an undocumented immigrant as his housekeeper. To be clear, however, that alone would have been sufficient to disqualify him to serve in this administration, which has made enforcement of immigration laws a centerpiece of its philosophy. Continue reading →

The Raymond Jefferson Mystery: Isn’t There Ethics Training for Obama Administration Officials?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

 

Raymond Jefferson's government ethics tool box

Based on the sorry Raymond Jefferson scandal, I would assume that the answer to that question is: “What’s ethics training?” Sure, there are reams and reams of government ethics regulations; I’ve read a lot of them. Apparently there is no one making sure that high-ranking officials have read them or understand them, however.

Jefferson, the Assistant Secretary of the Labor Department’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Service appointed by President Obama to oversee a job-training program for veterans, has resigned following an inspector general’s finding that he violated federal procurement rules and ethics principles by fast-tracking lucrative consulting contracts to his friends. Jefferson, says the report from the Labor Department’s inspector general, engaged in “a pattern of conduct . . . which reflects a consistent disregard of federal procurement regulations, federal ethics rules and the proper stewardship of appropriated dollars.” Continue reading →