As a result of President Obama’s White House Summit on Worker Voice, on October 28, 2016, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Blog announced its new beta website – Worker.gov. This website is, according to the DOL, designed to provide “easy-to-access” solutions for employees who need answers “fast”. The DOL admits that “Even the best government websites can be difficult to navigate” – true, true. That being said, it makes it only about 4 clicks for a worker to file a claim electronically.

In short, the website, which is in beta and therefore undergoing constant changes, is designed to provide employees with an easy way to determine whether their rights are being violated, then provides them with a simple click to file a claim against an employer. Partnering with the NLRB, EEOC, and DOJ, the DOL wants the website to provide “critical information” to employees about their rights, who may not know whether they have a “FLSA” or “FMLA” problem, but an “unfairness-on-the job problem”. Employees answer a “few simple questions” and voila! The website will supposedly provide the relevant information, expanding in the weeks and months to come, and “learning” from the workers that use it about what kind of information is being sought – and the site will supposedly begin to feature that information prominently for similar workers.

The beta site provides a drop down, under which five job titles are currently available – day laborer; office worker; nail salon worker; restaurant worker; and construction worker. From there, it takes to you a “Tell Us what happened. We can help.” screen with several options such as – “You have the right to be treated equally.”, “You have the right to engage with others to improve wages and working conditions”, “You have the right to a safe and healthy work environment”, and “You have the right to be paid.”  From there, the employee can chose what happened (i.e. suggestions – all are in the negative – such as “I was not paid for work I performed”) , and then be taken to a “File a Claim” screen.

What does this mean for employers? I have to believe we will see an increase in filed complaints, as that is the whole purpose of the website – to make it easy for employees to complain about unfair work treatment – and provide a simple click to do so.