In a 180-degreee turn from a Labor Department under the Bush administration that tried to gut overtime rules for millions of workers, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has unveiled a new campaign to inform workers about their pay rights and to put a stop to wage theft.

In Chicago earlier this month before a group of union, community and faith activists, Solis said:

“I have a message for those employers who break this nation’s labor laws and prey on vulnerable workers: It ends today. I’m here to tell you that your president, your secretary of labor and this department will not allow anyone to be denied his or her rightful pay – especially when so many in our nation are working long, hard and often dangerous hours.”

The Labor Department’s “We can help” multi-lingual campaign is aimed at low-wage and vulnerable workers with a special focus on reaching employees in such industries as construction, janitorial work, hotel/motel services, food services and home health care. It also will address such topics as rights in the workplace and how to file a complaint with the Wage and Hour Division to recover wages owed.

Last year, an investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the department’s Wage and Hour office, under President G.W. Bush’s Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, had failed miserably in enforcing minimum wage and overtime laws.

The division’s failure to act, says the report, “left thousands of actual victims of wage theft who sought federal government assistance with nowhere to turn. A 2008 GAO report found that under the Bush administration, the number of wage and hour inspectors dropped from 942 to 732. At the same time, the number of investigations into employers’ refusal to pay minimum wage, overtime – or even any wages at all – has dropped from 47,000 in 1997 to 30,000 in 2008.”

Since taking office, Solis has added 250 new inspectors to the wage and hour division, bringing the total to 949.

The Wall Street Journal reported April 5 that the Wage and Hour division had recovered $171 million in back wages under the Obama Administration. They reported no comparable figures on amounts recovered during the Bush Administration were available.