Launch of the OCI was accompanied by the launch of worker.gov and employer.gov, two websites with resources to assess compliance with the law. (Photo: Shutterstock)

The Department of Labor has launched a new Office of Compliance Initiatives, which is a cross-agency effort to strengthen and innovate compliance assistance outreach.

According to the DOL, the new office is intended to “promote greater understanding of federal labor laws and regulations, allowing job creators to prevent violations and protect Americans' wages, workplace safety and health, retirement security, and other rights and benefits.”

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The new office was established within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy and is expected to provide both leadership and support to DOL enforcement agencies. It will also work with those enforcement agencies to make the DOL's compliance assistance activities more effective.

Launch of the OCI was accompanied by the launch of worker.gov and employer.gov, two websites with resources to assess compliance with the law. Worker.gov, according to the DOL, provides a centralized base of information focused on federal worker protections, while employer.gov “provides job creators easy-to-understand information about their responsibilities under federal laws and regulations.”

Among the functions of the OCI are facilitation and encouragement of a culture that promotes compliance assistance within the DOL; provision of information to both workers and employers about their obligations and rights under federal labor laws and regulations; assistance to enforcement agencies in finding new ways to use data for more effective compliance and enforcement strategies; and improved outreach to stakeholders for the DOL's enforcement agencies.

According to the DOL, more effective compliance assistance should make it easier to go after repeat and deliberate violators of the laws while making it easier for companies that comply.

“Vigorous enforcement and compliance assistance go hand in hand,” Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta said. “The Office of Compliance Initiatives expands our efforts to promote full compliance with federal labor law.”