The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)—the agency responsible for enforcing federal wage and hour law—has agreed to pay $7 million to settle claims that it failed to properly pay its own District of Columbia-area employees.
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The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 12 first filed a grievance on the workers’ behalf in 2006, alleging that they were forced to work off the clock and were not properly compensated for overtime hours.
“You cannot begin to imagine how difficult it was to challenge and then fight the Department of Labor for ten years over its own failure to adhere to these laws and failure to properly compensate its own employees—but that’s […] exactly what our Union did—successfully,” said Alex Bastani, president of AFGE Local 12, in a press release announcing the settlement. “We will not stand by and let our workers get shortchanged,” he said.