Knowledge is power when it comes to protecting the safety and rights of America’s workers. It’s impossible to enforce laws if you don’t know they are being broken. And even if you know laws are being violated, enforcement is difficult and very inefficient if you don’t have good data showing the biggest problems and worst lawbreakers.

The Department of Labor has had too little of this kind of knowledge for too long. Partly as a result of this blindness, enforcement has been lax and workers have suffered as wage theft and other workplace violations have become rampant. A 2009 study by three leading labor and employment research groups found that more than one in four low-wage workers were paid less than the legally required minimum in the previous workweek. The Obama administration can adequately enforce workplace laws only by dramatically improving DOL’s data collection and analysis capabilities.

Good data practices aren’t sufficient to ensure adequate enforcement of workplace laws by themselves, but data reforms are an essential component of a sound enforcement strategy. DOL will never have enough inspectors to scrutinize every workplace to ensure the laws are being followed, even in flush budget years. Good collection, analysis, and distribution of data about workplace violations can help DOL leverage limited enforcement resources. And good data practices today help ensure the law will be enforced in the future—providing evidence that makes it harder for opponents of worker protections to avoid enforcing the law when they are in power. (click on link to read full story)