Labor Secretary Perez announced that the Labor Department is taking important steps to fulfill its commitment to protect vulnerable workers. Specifically, the Wage and Hour Division will begin certifying applications for trafficking victims seeking T visas. In addition, the division will now certify U visa requests when it detects three new qualifying criminal activities in the course of its workplace investigations: extortion, forced labor, and fraud in foreign labor contracting.
The Wage and Hour Division enforces several critical federal workplace laws — including the federal minimum wage and overtime laws. Because many wage and hour investigations take place in industries that employ vulnerable workers, the Wage and Hour Division is often the first federal agency to make contact with these workers and detect exploitation in the workplace.
