After my reports and those of the Daily Caller’s Patrick Howley on a poor labor atmosphere (and other problems) at the very federal department tasked with policing places of labor, and after Senator Tom Coburn requested an investigation of these issues, the Department of Labor’s Inspector General (IG) did indeed begin an investigation — and it might be giving some indigestion to the Obamites at the department. In what sources tell me is a highly unusual move, DOL senior communications advisor Carl Fillichio has called a “mandatory” meeting on March 31 for the more than 70 employees in the department’s Washington Office of Public Affairs (OPA) and (by phone) the six regional OPA offices. Many of these people are the ones with the most direct knowledge of some of the shenanigans on which I reported, and thus are high on the list of the potential witness pool for the IG and for any congressional inquiry. In what Fillichio described as the “first quarterly meeting for all OPA federal employees,” he said in an e-mail that the meeting is to discuss, among other things, “leadership” and “anything on your minds.”

Fillichio’s division is far from the only one from which we are hearing complaints (more on that in future posts), but it is the one that so far has borne the brunt of the public reports.

Labor secretary Thomas Perez, no stranger to contentious hearings on Capitol Hill (and before quasi-independent agencies) — in which his truthfulness has been widely questioned, including by a federal judge — is slated to testify Wednesday, March 26, before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. The hearing officially concerns the department’s 2015 budget proposal, but one imagines that somebody on the panel may well question Perez about this brewing controversy involving wasteful spending and poor treatment of career civil-service employees.

Those who serve as whistleblowers to congressional investigators or IGs, especially those who formally claim such status, are entitled by law to protection against retaliation.