The mother of one of 174 people who died on the job in North Carolina in 2016 spoke to reporters and community members at a Workers’ Memorial Day service outside the Old State Capitol last Friday where attendees rang a memorial bell 174 times and called on the N.C. Department of Labor to do more to prevent workplace fatalities and to show respect to the victims’ families.
The North Carolina Council of Churches has responded to the findings of an investigation by the News & Observer that Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry let deadbeat employers steal $1 million from North Carolinians in 2014 with a powerful op-ed calling on Berry “to enforce the laws of North Carolina” because “That’s her job.
Wage thieves are real, they are criminals, and last year Cherie Berry let them get away with stealing $1 million from workers in North Carolina.
It’s not just failing to combat wage theft. Cherie Berry has a long, sorry record as North Carolina’s Labor Commissioner, including multiple investigations by both the press and federal regulators and outrageous policy positions on child labor and the minimum wage.
The North Carolina Department of Labor allowed deadbeat employers to steal $1 million in wages from their employees last year. When those 617 workers turned to their Labor Commissioner, Cherie Berry, for help, she turned them away, closing their cases almost as soon as they had been opened, according to reporting by Mandy Locke at the News & Observer about our “Reluctant Regulator”.
