Inside Scalia’s Pro-Industry Revamp of Labor Agency Enforcement

In 2018, Wells Fargo & Co. sent its high-powered attorney, Eugene Scalia, then a partner at corporate law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, on a mission to San Francisco to make a U.S. Labor Department investigation go away.

Scalia, a savvy management lawyer who served a one-year stint as the department’s chief legal officer during the George W. Bush administration, was attempting to get DOL West Coast officials to accept a settlement more to the banking giant’s liking. The department was charging Wells Fargo with failing to pay more than 1,000 call-center workers for hours worked off the clock. ...