(Economic Policy Institute) — Immigration is the government’s top federal law enforcement priority, while labor standards enforcement agencies are starved for funding and too understaffed to adequately protect workers.
For too long, employers have lobbied members of Congress to keep funding unrealistically and disastrously low for agencies like the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—so low that they cannot adequately fulfill their missions. The result is an environment of near impunity for rampant violators of labor and wage and hour laws, a situation brought to light by the recent wave of labor organizing across the country as workers make it clear that they are unwilling to continue accepting unsafe and unjust conditions on the job.
One clear way to understand the priorities of a government is to look at how it spends money. If it’s true that “budgets are moral documents,” then the U.S. Congress, for at least the past decade, has placed little value on worker rights and working conditions. An analysis of federal budget data from 2012 to 2021 reveals top federal law enforcement priorities of the U.S. is to detain, deport, and prosecute migrants, and to keep them from entering the country without authorization. Protecting workers in the U.S. labor market—by ensuring that their workplaces are safe and that they get paid every cent they earn—is barely an afterthought.
This situation leaves migrant workers especially vulnerable to...
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