This request is a collaboration with data journalist Adrian Nesta.
This FOIA request 📄 to the Department of Labor (DOL) seeks all tables from the Wage and Hour Investigative Support and Reporting Database (WHISARD) from fiscal years 2012 to 2024.
WHISARD is the database that the U.S. Department of Labor uses to track wage-and-hour violations. It is an automated data processing system that enables investigators, managers and assistants in the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) to connect many parts of their process:
- Processing complaints
- Assigning and investigating cases
- Managing and closing cases
- Assisting with outreach
- Recording and monitoring investigator time
- Tracking case history through narratives and diary entries
- Processing FOIA and publication requests
- Reporting to management
DOL has already made a portion of the database openly available. This dataset contains all concluded WHD compliance actions since fiscal year 2005. The dataset includes whether any violations were found and the back wage amount, number of employees due back wages and amount of civil money penalties assessed.
Several important pieces of the larger database are not included in the openly available data online:
- Establishment ownership structure (franchise, corporate)
- Case creation type (agency initiated or complaint-based)
- Non-case creation complaints
- Subsidiary employer (if any)
Given our research so far, we believe that additional tables and columns from WHISARD are disclosable and have described those in more detail in our request.