Trump Labor Dept To Help More Workers Earn Less Than Minimum Wage, Also Maybe Die?
The new party of the working class is about to kill 60 worker protections, maybe some workers.
Should those who profit off of the labor of others be required to pay them a fair wage and provide them with a safe place to work? We’d say yes, but the Trump Labor Department just isn’t so sure.
The Republican Party has not been able to shut up for some time now about how it is “the party of the working class” — though it seems they might have confused that for “the party of the employers of the working class,” as the the Trump administration’s Department of Labor (DOL) is looking to kill more than 60 labor rules and regulations they have decided are “obsolete.”
Don’t worry, it’s nothing important. Just some old-timey rules like “adequate lighting for construction sites,” “mine safety,” “literally any labor protections at all for migrant farm workers” and “home health care workers should get paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour,” which I would like to note is, in fact, less than I got paid to babysit when I was in high school.
“The Department of Labor is proud to lead the way by eliminating unnecessary regulations that stifle growth and limit opportunity,” said Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer — who we’d like to remind you was endorsed by Teamsters president Sean O’Brien. Chavez-DeRemer’s statement touted the “most ambitious proposal to slash red tape of any department across the federal government.”
By “red tape,” she means rules that require employers to pay their workers fairly, keep them safe on the job, not retaliate against them for exercising their rights, and other crazy liberal things like that.
When labor laws were first crafted in this country, certain workers were specifically and pointedly left out — including domestic workers and farm workers. By sheer coincidence, these happened to be jobs that were largely held by people of color. Also, by sheer coincidence, many of the regulations this administration thinks are simply too burdensome for employers to comply with are rules that apply to these jobs.
For instance, one of the new rules will reverse changes made under the Obama administration in 2013 that require the companies that employ the nation’s nearly 3.7 million home health care workers to pay them the federal minimum wage and overtime for taking care of our sick and elderly. Now, they can be paid maybe two, three dollars an hour with no overtime, working 50-60 hours or even more a week making meals, wiping asses, lifting people into wheelchairs, and otherwise caring for those who can’t care for themselves.
The Trump Labor Department is also bringing back sub-minimum wages for workers with disabilities, despite the fact that eliminating that ridiculous rule actually led to greater employment of those with disabilities under the Biden administration.
The Labor Department also seeks to invalidate rules protecting H-2A visa migrant workers that were finalized last year. These include things like having seatbelts in vehicles meant to transport them and requiring those vehicles to be safe, not firing or otherwise retaliating against them “for filing a complaint, testifying, or exercising [their] rights in any way or helping others to do so,” and more.
Michael Marsh, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, was very pleased by this, telling the Associated Press that the new regulations were just too much for simple farmers to keep up with.
“Can you imagine a farmer and his or her spouse trying to navigate 3,000 new pages of regulation in 18 months and then be liable for every one of them?” he asked, which would be a fair question if anyone were asking them to do that. While I was unable to find 3,000 pages of anything anywhere, I was able to find this helpful one-page poster explaining exactly what labor rights farm workers have, along with multiple FAQs, webinars, and other resources designed to help employers understand what is expected of them.
The Department is also looking to undo a provision that requires adequate lighting on construction sites so that workers don’t, well, die.
“There have been many fatalities where workers fall through a hole in the floor, where there’s not adequate lighting,” Rebecca Reindel of the AFL-CIO told the AP. “It’s a very obvious thing that employers should address, but unfortunately it’s one of those things where we need a standard, and it’s violated all the time.”
The DOL holds that this rule is unnecessary and covered under the general duty clause, meant to protect workers from known safety issues. Naturally, they are also looking to upend the general duty clause so that it no longer covers workers in “inherently dangerous” jobs — so that employers in certain industries will no longer be held responsible for worker injuries or deaths.
“It is simply not plausible to assert that Congress, when passing the Occupational Safety and Health Act, silently intended to authorize the Department of Labor to eliminate familiar sports and entertainment practices, such as punt returns in the NFL, speeding in NASCAR, or the whale show at SeaWorld,” the proposed rule reads, seemingly making a pointed reference to the death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau, who was killed by an orca during a “Dine With Shamu” event.
Of course, these are the exact sorts of professions that actually do require serious safety regulations, so that people don’t die. For the record, OSHA has never sought to regulate either punt returns in the NFL or “speeding” in NASCAR.
Mine safety would also be affected, and the ability of Mine Safety and Health Administration district managers to review employer safety plans and require them to make improvements, as well as their ability to adjust mine health and safety programs, rescinded.
Additionally, the administration is looking to undo Biden-era provisions that protect employees from extreme heat, because that’s just too inconvenient for employers.
For a full list of all of the rules the DOL is looking to kill, check out The Century Foundation’s analysis of the new changes. Unfortunately, as much as some people want to believe that we have endless regulations with no point to them whatsoever, which exist only to annoy “job creators,” that’s really just not the case. It may be annoying to employers to have to allow workers to take water breaks in the shade or to have to pay people more than $7.25 an hour, but those protections exist for a reason. Mostly because some of us think it’s bad for workers to starve or die.
Clearly, the Trump administration doesn’t have much of a problem with that.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
> “Can you imagine a farmer and his or her spouse trying to navigate 3,000 new pages of regulation in 18 months and then be liable for every one of them?”
Farmer John and his wife Betty tending their wee 5 acre truck farm are not the same people who are hiring dozens of field workers and transporting them in unsafe vehicles. That would be the huge corporations who are doing that.
We're going backwards. Fast.