Labor Day is the federal holiday meant to honor and celebrate workers. But this year, the Trump Labor Department is once again making clear they just don’t care about workers.
TL;DR
- In July, the Trump Labor Department proposed more than 60 rollbacks to rules that protect and promote pay, safety, and job opportunities.
- Workers have until the day after Labor Day to provide feedback on these potential rollbacks, but the agency isn’t giving workers and their advocates enough time or information to fully weigh in.
- The Trump Labor Department is already ignoring a rule they want to roll back, a clear indication that they don’t care what workers think anyway.
The Trump Labor Department Wants to Rollback Dozens of Rules That Help Workers
On July 1, the Trump Labor Department announced more than 60 proposals to rollback regulations that protect and promote workers’ wages, civil rights, health and safety, retirement security, and training. The agency proudly proclaimed that these actions would help workers “build a better future.”
But it’s hard to imagine how workers – especially women workers – are going to build better futures with less pay, unsafe workplaces and fewer job opportunities.
Here’s a stark example: the Department is proposing a rollback that would strip millions of home care workers – who are overwhelmingly women of color – of their minimum wage and overtime protections. Without these wage protections, these workers – who are already paid extremely low wages – could be left with even less pay.
But the Trump Labor Department Isn’t Giving Workers and Their Advocates Enough Time or Information To Fully Weigh In
Federal agencies must provide notice to the public to let them know how they plan on changing their regulations and give the public a “meaningful opportunity” to provide their input via comments. To provide a meaningful opportunity to provide input, agencies must give the public enough time to comment and adequate information on potential impacts of proposals. But the Trump Labor Department is providing workers with neither.
The Trump Labor Department Refuses to Provide Workers with More Time to Weigh In
A meaningful opportunity to comment requires giving the public a minimum amount of time to weigh in – generally, at least 60 days. While many of the current proposals give the public 60 days to weigh in, it’s not enough.
When the Labor Department issues potential rule changes, workers might comment directly. But often, labor unions, member organizations and worker advocacy organizations provide input on behalf of the workers they represent. Unions and advocates need adequate time to read the lengthy proposals; assess how the proposed rules could impact workers; seek input from the workers they represent; and craft written comments. Unions and advocates also often help educate workers on the potential impacts of proposals and help workers directly share their stories and feedback with the Labor Department.
Workers, unions and worker advocates often work on multiple issues and may want to provide comments on more than just one of the 60-plus rules that have the same comment periods. But overlapping comment periods could force workers and their advocates to choose, undermining their ability to meaningfully participate in the regulatory process. The Trump administration has recognized this problem before. In 2019, the first-term Trump Labor Department extended 60-day comment periods for proposed rules related to workers’ pay that had overlapping deadlines.
But this time around, the Trump Labor Department seems unwilling to provide workers and their advocates with more time to weigh in on rules that impact wages. Most comment periods will end September 2, the day after Labor Day.
The Trump Labor Department Hasn’t Provided Critical Information Workers Need to Fully Provide Feedback
The law requires agencies to estimate the costs and benefits of their proposals. For the Labor Department, that often means estimating lost or additional wages for workers. But the potential costs to workers are glaringly absent from the Department’s proposal to strip minimum wage and overtime protections from home care workers. The proposal makes clear that many home care workers would “lose the right to receive minimum wage and overtime pay” under federal law but doesn’t even bother to estimate what that could cost workers.
Failing to provide potential impacts for workers is nothing new for the Trump Labor Department. The first-term Trump Labor Department repeatedly failed to let the public know how much their proposals could cost workers in lost wages. The agency’s watchdog even issued a report stating the agency “was not transparent and did not provide the public with complete information” for a proposal that would have allowed employers to steal workers’ tips.
The Trump Labor Department Doesn’t Seem To Care About Input From Workers Anyway
We’re nowhere near the end of the rulemaking process for these proposed rules, but already, the Labor Department has said it won’t enforce a rule it wants to roll back.
On July 25th, the Trump Labor Department issued guidance telling staff to stop enforcing minimum wage and overtime rights for certain home care workers until it has finalized its proposal to rollback protections for these workers. That means Labor Department investigators will be forced to abandon workers who were relying on them to recover their stolen wages.
This nonenforcement guidance makes it clear the Trump Labor Department is just going through the motions. They seem to think they can skip the part of the regulatory process that requires them to review comments from the public, including workers.
Simply put, these 60-plus proposed rollbacks threaten pay, safety and job opportunities for millions of workers. But the Trump Labor Department doesn’t seem to care what workers think about them.
