The US House Committee on Education and the Workforce is demanding the US Department of Labor disclose data regarding its independent contractor misclassification investigations.

An Oct. 16 letter to Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su from US Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chairwoman of the Education and the Workforce Committee, accused the Biden administration of “efforts to eliminate the use of the independent contractor model under the Fair Labor Standards Act” and claimed the department has failed to satisfactorily provide full responses to a Sept. 23 subpoena from the committee seeking information on its independent contractor investigations.

Although the department did respond to the subpoena on Oct. 7, the committee’s letter states the department failed to provide documents showing the following:

• The total number of instances of misclassification that Wage and Hour Division inspectors have found and the occupation involved in each of those misclassifications.
• The total number of misclassification enforcement investigations the division has initiated and the industry involved in each investigation.
• The total number of misclassification enforcement investigations that the DOL has jointly undertaken with the National Labor Relations Board and the industries involved.
• The total number of misclassification enforcement investigations the DOL has jointly undertaken with the Federal Trade Commission and the industries involved.

“The Committee still expects you to provide complete productions in response to the document schedule of the subpoena,” the letter stated. “While DOL’s October 7 response claims that protecting ‘investigative information is an important law enforcement interest and implicates executive branch confidentially interests,’ the Committee advises you that these are not recognized privileges sufficient for you to withhold information from Congress.”

The letter demanded the information be provided by no later than Oct. 30. 

Separately, the DOL on Oct. 22 announced its Wage and Hour Division recovered more than $1 billion in back wages and damages for more than 615,000 workers from investigations concluded by the division from Jan. 20, 2021, through Sept. 30, 2024. The division enforces labor laws including the Fair Labor Standards Act that requires payment of a federal minimum wage and overtime wages, as well as laws that require prevailing wages for federally funded and assisted contracts.

“The money we recover from employers helps workers pay for housing, childcare and other necessities,” Wage and Hour Administrator Jessica Looman said in a press release. “While we are proud to have recovered $1 billion in workers’ owed wages and damages, we remain concerned by the wage theft we have uncovered and the harm it causes for hard-working people across the nation. We will continue to use all our tools to protect workers across the country.”