U.S. Office of Personnel Management - Ensuring the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce

U.S. Department of Labor, Employment Standards Administration

About the Agency

The Department of Labor (DOL) fosters and promotes the welfare of the job seekers, wage earners, and retirees of the United States by improving their working conditions, advancing their opportunities for profitable employment, protecting their retirement and health care benefits, helping employers find workers, strengthening free collective bargaining, and tracking changes in employment, prices, and other national economic measurements.

Agency Strategic Goals

DOL has established four strategic goals that encompass the major responsibilities of the Department. These goals provide a framework for the strategic plans of individual DOL agencies, including ESA. The agency goals are as follows:

1. A Prepared Workforce - Provide effective training and support services to new and incumbent workers and to supply high-quality information on the economy and labor market.
2. A Competitive Workforce - Meet the demands of the worldwide economy by enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of the workforce development and regulatory systems that assist workers and employers in meeting the challenges of worldwide competition.
3. Safe and Secure Workplaces - Ensure that workplaces are safe, healthful, and fair; providing workers with the wages due them; providing equal opportunity; and protecting veterans' employment and reemployment rights.
4. Strengthened Economic Protections - Protect and strengthen economic security through effective and efficient provision of unemployment insurance and workers' compensation; ensuring union transparency; and securing pension and health benefits.

About the Organization

The Employment Standards Administration (ESA), the largest agency within the U.S. Department of Labor, enforces and administers laws governing legally-mandated wages and working conditions.

Such laws include:

• child labor, minimum wages, overtime and family and medical leave;
• equal employment opportunity in businesses with federal contracts and subcontracts;
• workers' compensation for certain employees injured on their jobs;
• internal union democracy and financial integrity, and union elections, which protect the rights of union members;
• other laws and regulations governing employment standards and practices.

ESA and its four component programs - - the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the Office of Labor-Management Standards, the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs and the Wage and Hour Division - - have closely monitored and enforced laws protecting the wage, hours, equal employment opportunity, working conditions and injury compensation of workers. While each program has an established identity of its own, all work together to support, protect and defend the rights of American workers under these labor laws.

To Learn More about the Agency/Organization

To learn more about ESA, go to http://www.dol.gov/esa.