D. Michael Hancock

D. Michael Hancock, of counsel in Cohen Milstein’s Civil Rights & Employment practice, is the former Assistant Administrator for the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division. As a senior DOL employee for 20 years, conducting policy-related work, including policy interpretation and enforcement, he helped enforce a wide range of workplace protections, from minimum wage, overtime, child labor and the Family Medical Leave Act, to guest worker and other employment-based immigration programs.

Most recently, as Acting Director, DOL’s Division of Interpretation and Regulatory Analysis, and as Assistant Administrator for Policy, Michael managed a team of 40 senior managers and analysts and worked with, among others, the Solicitor of Labor, the Secretary of Labor, the Office of Management and Budget, and the White House.

At the DOL, Michael also served as Branch Chief, Wage and Hour Division, Division of Interpretations and Regulatory Analysis, and as National Farm Labor Coordinator, Wage and Hour Division. While on detail from the DOL, he served as Senior Labor Advisor to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where he provided guidance to the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, Office of Democracy and Governance, on a broad range of labor, civil society, democracy and development programs funded and administrated by USAID.

Prior to joining the DOL in 1995, Michael was the executive director of Farmworker Justice, where he helped provide policy support to farmworker organizations, labor unions, migrant legal services programs, administrative and legislative bodies, and other organizations. Before that, he was general counsel of the National Coalition to Ban Handguns and president of the Foundation for Handgun Education. He also served as executive director of the Aviation Consumer Action Project.

Michael was awarded a fellowship from Howard University — the Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship, Ozark Legal Services, Fayetteville, Arkansas — to practice poverty law in rural Arkansas, and was a law clerk at Ozark Legal Services. He also worked as an administrator and social worker with the Arkansas Department of Human Services.