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department of labor
Good Riddance to Trump's Horrible, No Good Labor Secretary
The disgraced Lori Chavez-DeRemer is what you get when you have a president and White House staff who don’t give a rat’s ass about whom they appoint to positions of power except for their loyalty to Trump and how they look on television.
Apr 21, 2026
Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned Monday as secretary of labor [translated: she was told to resign by the White House], after facing investigations by the department’s inspector general into multiple allegations of misconduct.
She’s alleged to have been drinking during the workday from a “stash” of alcohol in her office, arranging official trips for herself that were extended vacations, taking subordinates to an Oregon strip club while on one such trip, showing no interest in the work of the department, and having an affair with a member of her security team.
Sources have described Chavez-DeRemer as the “boss from hell,” saying she demanded staffers run personal errands for her or perform other menial tasks unrelated to their government jobs. More than two dozen department employees from across the political spectrum described in interviews with The New York Times a toxic workplace characterized by an absentee secretary, hostile aides, and a deeply demoralized staff.
In other words, Chavez-DeRemer was turning the great department I once headed and loved into shit. And I hold Trump responsible because he appointed her.
As I shared with you a few weeks ago, I loved the Department of Labor from the moment I entered the Frances Perkins Building on Constitution Avenue as secretary of labor in January 1992. I loved its mission: to protect and raise the standard of living of working Americans.
I loved its history. The first secretary of labor, Frances Perkins — appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 — was also America’s first female Cabinet secretary. She was the guiding light behind the creation of Social Security, the 40-hour workweek, the National Labor Relations Act, and much more.
I hung the painting of Frances Perkins behind my desk in my huge second-floor office. Whenever I felt discouraged, I looked at her, and she bucked me up. (Although I’m Jewish, I called her Saint Frances.)
I admired the Department of Labor’s career staff, who were dedicated to helping American workers. I was deeply impressed by the assistant secretaries, the deputy secretary, the chief of staff, and other appointees with whom I toiled, often six or seven days a week from early morning to late at night.
Never before or since have I had the privilege of working with such talented people who cared so much about what they were accomplishing for the American people, and who made such a positive impact on so many lives.
We raised the minimum wage for the first time in many years, even under a Republican-controlled Congress. We implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act. We fought against sweatshops. We took on big corporations that were cheating their employees. We kept workers safe. We … well, I could go on and on. (And I have, in my book Locked in the Cabinet, which you can also find here, but please don’t order from here.)
But like so much else Trump has done, he’s turned what was once a great department into a fucking mess. And it frankly breaks my heart.
It’s what you get when you have a president and White House staff who don’t give a rat’s ass about whom they appoint to positions of power except for their loyalty to Trump and how they look on television.
Trump and his White House assistants don’t mind if his appointees wreck our government because they don’t care about government. Hell, they came to government to wreck it. If the public loses confidence in, say, the Department of Labor, that’s perfectly fine. If Congress slashes its funding, so much the better.
What they do mind is if a Cabinet member makes Trump look bad, which is why Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi are now history — along with Chavez-DeRemer.
It infuriates me, because I’ve seen government work for the people. I’ve witnessed public servants who care deeply and bust their asses in service to this country. I know how important government can be if it’s doing the job it should be doing.
I loved the Department of Labor because it has improved the lives of millions of Americans. I worked like hell as secretary of labor because I believed in what we were doing. That it’s been treated like crap is an insult to generations of hardworking DOL employees, to American workers, to America.
The least we can all do is flip Congress in November, so senators and representatives who care about this country can oversee the departments of the government and try to remedy some of the wreckage that Trump and his appointees have wreaked on America.
In the meantime, goodbye and good riddance to Madam Secretary Chavez-DeRemer.
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May Day—Why We’re Rallying in Liberty, New York
Most of us are workers, and Trump 2.0 is the most anti-worker administration in living memory.
Apr 19, 2026
Nestled in the Catskill Mountains of Sullivan County, New York, Liberty is a village of some 10,000 inhabitants, two hours west of New York City. Last year PepsiCo shuttered its Frito-Lay snack factory, laying off nearly 300 workers. “I don’t know how our town survives this,” a Town Board member remarked. “It’s a bad situation.” The biggest employer now, after the school district, is a chicken farm on the outskirts with a largely immigrant workforce that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sporadically targets.
On May 1—International Workers’ Day—Sullivan County residents will rally in Liberty, joining nationwide actions as part of the May Day Strong coalition. Why will we be on the streets? It’s simple. Most of us are workers—some unionized, most not; some well paid, most not; some small businesspeople or “independent contractors” and others employees; some retired, some still at it even in our 70s. Whatever our situation, it’s clear that Trump 2.0 is the most anti-worker and pro-oligarch administration in living memory.
Consider this:
- It issued an executive order terminating union collective bargaining agreements for 1 million federal employees.
- It implemented hiring freezes and encouraged resignations, along with mass firings of probationary employees.
- It reinstated Schedule F, which reclassifies civil servants in policy roles, stripping them of job protections and making it easier to fire them for political reasons.
- It fired National Labor Relations Board officials, replacing them with pro-regime hacks who will back employers in contract disputes.
- It promotes state-level so-called "Right to Work" laws and supports a national "Right to Work" law. Together with the Supreme Court’s 2018 Janus decision, these measures undermine unions’ organizing and finances.
- It gutted OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), endangering workers, especially in high-risk industries like logging and lumber, farming, meatpacking, warehouses, and commercial fishing.
- In the name of rolling back regulation, it rescinded safety rules in construction, mining, chemical, and other sectors, which will increase injuries and fatalities and the disease burden of nearby communities.
- It radically reduced workplace safety and wage violation enforcement. The bosses can now get away with almost anything.
- President Donald Trump’s Department of Labor (DOL) proposed removing minimum wage and overtime protections for an estimated 3.7 million home-care workers.
- It issued rules to make it easier for companies to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees, stripping them of benefits and minimum wage guarantees.
- It rescinded a 2024 rule that protected migrant farm workers from retaliation for reporting safety violations.
- Its threats and mass deportations have created volatility in labor-intensive sectors, such as construction, agriculture, hospitality, and eldercare, which disrupts supply chains, produces labor shortages, and leads to worse outcomes for US-born workers.
- The administration revoked Executive Order 11246, which prohibited federal contractors from discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
- It has undermined the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, potentially impacting 2.8 million workers.
- It threatened to veto the PRO (Protecting the Right to Organize) Act, which would allow employers to interfere with union elections.
- It slashed federal grant programs that fight child labor and slave labor abroad.
- It requested $1.5 trillion for the Defense Department—a 42% increase—while holding Social Security flat and cutting Medicare and Medicaid personnel.
- It eliminated Community Service Block Grants, the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program, and Senior Employment Services, which provide older people with food assistance, home heating, and job opportunities.
- It proposed a rule that would encourage the addition of dodgy high-risk “alternative” assets—such as private equity, private credit, and crypto—to employer-run 401(k) retirement plans and that would protect management against worker lawsuits.
- The Trump 2.0 administration jacked up the cost of living with unprecedented tariffs and massive deficit spending to fund its tax cuts for the rich, as well as unpopular wars, huge cuts to cheap renewable energy programs, and giveaways to the AI and crypto sectors that sent petroleum and electricity prices soaring.
Over one-third of Sullivan County residents now have “utility debt” to New York State Electric and Gas, an electric company owned by a Spanish multinational corporation that is raking in profits from our skyrocketing bills. This utility debt is often on top of housing debt, medical debt, education debt, credit card debt, automobile debt, and small business debt.
Many people in our region are struggling and economically increasingly precarious. Much of the rest of our country is in similar straits, especially but not only in rural areas. Blood collection centers are moving into middle-class neighborhoods, as even relatively well-off Americans now resort to selling their plasma to make ends meet.
May Day is as American as apple pie, despite what anti-labor talking heads might tell you.
The Trump 2.0 administration is so anti-worker that its Labor Secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, faces formal complaints of creating a “hostile work environment” at the DOL, making subordinates run personal errands and do chores like cleaning out closets in her home, and retaliating against staffers for cooperating with an investigation, including claims of sexual harassment of DOL employees by her husband.
May Day is as American as apple pie, despite what anti-labor talking heads might tell you. It dates to the 1880s, when US workers—many of them immigrants—struggled for an eight-hour workday; a five-day workweek; and an end to dangerous, grueling working conditions. May Day also honors the memory of the labor organizers who died at the hands of the Chicago Police in 1886 and the four who were framed up and sentenced to death by hanging in the aftermath of that violence.
We remember—and we see what’s going on today. Enough is enough. May Day will be a nationwide day of collective action. We’ll be rallying in Liberty.
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Trump Labor Department Takes a Page From Hitler’s Playbook
This fascist propaganda dishonors the government agency whose charge is to support the workers of this country. It has no business deifying any President, particularly one already drunk with power.
Jan 27, 2026
Something is rotten in the Department of Labor. I’m not talking about the recent news that Secretary of Labor Chavez-DeRemer is being investigated about claims she used taxpayer money for personal trips disguised as business-related. Or that she allegedly engaged in an improper tryst with a subordinate.
If true, these are serious issues that call for appropriate responses. But, from my perspective as an attorney who committed a 39-year career to a government agency I continue to care deeply about, they pale in comparison to something that’s out in the open, carefully curated for all to see: the Department’s latest social media campaign.
Just take a look at the past few weeks’ postings on the Labor Department’s Facebook or X accounts. One might ordinarily expect to find content that reflects the Department’s worthy mission of lifting up all workers in the United States, regardless of race, religion, or national origin. That might include reminders about employers’ responsibilities under wage and workplace safety laws Congress enacted over the past several decades, or maybe spotlight a series of particularly impactful enforcement actions that vindicated workers’ rights.
Don’t hold your breath. Instead, watching a jarring graphic with a dystopian soundtrack, you’ll be instructed to “Remember who you are, American.” Those words are placed below the header, “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage”—a slogan promptly recognized by visitors to the Facebook site as a haunting echo of the 1930’s Nazi propaganda poster featuring Adolf Hitler and the slogan “One People, One Nation, One Leader.”
That’s only one of a steady drumbeat of similar phrases, like “Faith in God. Law and Order. Pride in Our Homeland…central tenets of the American Way of Life.” We learn that “[u]nder President Trump, the globalist dominance of our government is over,” and that a year ago “our country was dead.” Now, however, we’re “the hottest country anywhere in the world because we finally have a President who puts America first.”
We’re instructed not to “believe the fake news lies.” Multiple entries feature paintings and posters depicting 1940’s-era churchgoers and families with beatifically smiling children, all white. And most prolifically, we’re treated to one hero-like depiction of Donald Trump after another, mostly in bold silhouette, with captions like “Americans First,” “NEVER SURRENDER,” “Second to None,” “Trust the Plan, Trust Trump,” "PATRIOTS IN CONTROL,” and “One of One.” We learn that “No President has cared more about hardworking Americans than President Trump.”
There’s so much wrong with all this it makes the head spin. Most blatant is the unmistakable resemblance to the style and messaging of the Nazi propaganda machine. As described by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, during the Third Reich “public adulation for Adolf Hitler was an ever present feature in the public square of German life.” Hitler was portrayed “as the living embodiment of the German nation,” radiating strength as the savior of a beaten-down German nation, and idolized as a “gifted statesman who brought stability, created jobs, and restored German greatness.” Take a look at the Labor Department’s Facebook page and see if that description resonates.
Add to that: the posts’ repeated targeting of undefined “globalists”—a recognized “dog whistle” for racist, anti-Semitic and anti-government conspiracy theorists—as the shadowy characters responsible for our country’s woes, not unlike Nazi propaganda demonizing Jews and other “outsiders”; the Christian imagery and language, smearing the line that separates church and state, and implicitly, if not explicitly, promoting white Christian Nationalism; the full-on outrageous assertion made on X, just days after the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent, that “Mass Deportations are Improving Americans' Quality of Life.”
Appalling as all this is, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Substantively, in addition to the countless other ways Trump’s presidency has been a disaster for this country, he has been no friend to US workers—undermining their wages and economic security, weakening job creation, and assaulting their rights to organize. Federal worker ranks have been terrorized and dissembled by DOGE, and soon tens of thousands will be judged not by merit alone but by their loyalty to Trump. Religious prayer services have been introduced at the agency’s headquarters. Labor Department employees are demoralized. And for months, an enormous banner with Trump’s face has been hanging off the front of the Francis Perkins Building, sternly looking down at the passersby below.
Still, the Facebook/X campaign brings the Department to a new low. It dishonors the government agency whose charge is to support the workers of this country. It has no business deifying any President, particularly one already drunk with power. Nor should it be promoting a white, Christian nationalist vision for this country, that was built by immigrants -- people of all colors, places of origin, and beliefs. As a Labor Department veteran, I’m ashamed. And as a first generation son of Jewish refugees who lived through the horrors of Nazi Germany, I’m aghast, at seeing history rhyme, if not repeat.
This poem no one should have to recite to their grandchildren.
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Whatever Happened to Trump’s 'Golden Age' for American Workers?
Trump administration policies have lowered wages, reduced employment, and made work less safe.
Dec 29, 2025
Although President Donald Trump’s Department of Labor announced in April 2025 that “Trump’s Golden Age puts American workers first,” that contention is contradicted by the facts.
Indeed, Trump has taken the lead in reducing workers’ incomes. One of his key actions along these lines occurred on March 14, 2025, when he issued an executive order that scrapped a Biden-era regulation raising the minimum wage for employees of private companies with federal contracts. Some 327,300 workers had benefited from former President Joe Biden’s measure, which produced an average wage increase of $5,228 per year. With Trump’s reversal of policy, they became ripe for pay cuts of up to 25%.
America’s farmworkers, too―many of them desperately poor―are now experiencing pay cuts caused by the Trump administration’s H-2A visa program, which is bringing hundreds of thousands of foreign agricultural workers to the United States under new, lower-wage federal guidelines. The United Farm Workers estimates that this will cost US farm workers $2.64 billion in wages per year.
As in the past, Trump and his Republican Party have blocked any increase in the federal minimum wage―a paltry $7.25 per hour―despite the fact that it has not been raised since 2009 and, thanks to inflation, has lost 30% of its purchasing power. By 2025, this wage had fallen below the official US government poverty level.
“Since Inauguration Day... the fever dreams of America’s corporate billionaires have come to life with a relentless assault on working people."
Furthermore, the Trump administration is promoting subminimum wages for millions of American workers. Although the Biden administration had abolished the previous subminimum wage floor for workers with disabilities by bringing them up to the federal minimum wage level, the Trump Labor Department has restored the subminimum wage. In addition, the Trump administration is proposing to strip 3.7 million home-care workers of their current federal minimum wage guarantee.
Trump’s Labor Department has also scrapped the Biden plan to expand overtime pay rights to 4.3 million workers who had previously lost eligibility for it thanks to inflation. And it is promoting plans to classify many workers as independent contractors, thereby depriving such workers of key labor rights, including minimum wages and overtime pay.
Not surprisingly, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on December 18, 2025 that, from November 2024 to November 2025, the annual growth of the real wages (wages adjusted for inflation) of American workers had fallen to 0.8%.
Trump’s policies have also fostered unemployment.
Probably the best-known example of this is the Trump administration’s chaotic purge, led by billionaire Elon Musk, of 317,000 federal workers without any sort of clear rationale or due process. On top of this, however, it has shut down massive construction projects, especially in the renewable energy industry. Trump’s recent order to halt the huge wind farms off the East Coast is predicted to cause the firing of thousands of workers.
Ironically, as two economic analysts reported in mid-December 2025, “key sectors of the economy that are central to Trump’s agenda have contracted, with payrolls in manufacturing, mining, logging, and professional business services all falling over the last year.” Despite Trump’s repeated claims to be reviving US manufacturing through tariffs, 58,000 US manufacturing jobs were lost between April (when the administration announced its “Liberation Day” tariffs) and September 2025.
Consequently, US unemployment, which, during the Biden presidency, had bottomed out at 3.4%, had by November 2025 (the last month for which government statistics are available) risen to 4.6%. This is the highest unemployment level in four years, leaving 7.8 million workers unemployed―700,000 more than a year before.
Worker safety and health have also been seriously undermined by the Trump administration. According to the latest AFL-CIO study, workplace hazards kill approximately 140,000 workers each year, with millions more injured or sickened. Although the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is supposed to enforce health and safety standards, the Trump administration cut its workplace inspections by 30%, thereby reducing inspections of each site to one every 266 years.
Similarly, Trump has nearly destroyed the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which provides research on workplace safety standards, by reducing its staffing from 1,400 employees to 150 and slashing its budget by 80%.
Through executive action, the Trump administration eliminated specific measures taken to protect workers. This process included blocking a Biden rule to control heat conditions in workplaces, where 600 workers die from heat-related causes and nearly 25,000 others are injured every year. Moreover, in the spring of 2025, the Trump administration announced that it would not enforce a Biden rule to protect miners from dangerous silica exposure and moved to close 34 Mine Safety and Health Administration district offices. Although a public uproar led to a reversal of the office closures, the administration then proposed weakening those offices’ ability to impose mine safety requirements and, also, weakened workplace safety penalties for businesses.
In addition, Trump appointed corporate executives to head relevant federal agencies, gutted Equal Employment Opportunity guidelines, and, in March 2025, issued an executive order that terminated collective bargaining rights for more than a million federal government workers. This last measure, the largest single union-busting action in American history, ended union representation and protections for 1 out of every 14 unionized workers in the United States.
In a special AFL-CIO report, issued on December 22, 2025, the labor federation’s president, Liz Shuler, and secretary-treasurer, Fred Redmond, declared: “Since Inauguration Day... the fever dreams of America’s corporate billionaires have come to life with a relentless assault on working people,” and “every day has brought a new challenge and attack: On federal workers. On our unions and collective bargaining rights. On the agencies that stand up for us and the essential services we rely on... On our democracy itself.”
Although Trump’s second term in office might have provided a “Golden Age” for the president and his fellow billionaires, it has produced harsh and challenging times for American workers.
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Trustworthy US Jobs Info Is the Latest Victim of Trump’s War on Facts
How can anyone in the future trust the data that emerges from the Bureau of Labor Statistics when the person in charge of the agency has to come up with data to Trump’s liking in order to stay in the job? Answer: They cannot.
Aug 02, 2025
I spent much of the 1990s as U.S. secretary of labor. One unit of the Labor Department is the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I was instructed by my predecessors as well as by the White House, and by every labor economist and statistician I came in contact with, that one of my cardinal responsibilities was to guard the independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Otherwise, this crown jewel of knowledge about jobs and the economy would be compromised. If politicized, it would no longer be trusted as a source of information.
So what does President Donald Trump do? With one fell swoop Friday he destroyed the BLS.
Trump didn’t like the fact that the BLS revised downward its jobs reports for April and May. Revisions in monthly jobs report are nothing new. They’re made when the bureau gets more or better information over time.
When Trump doesn’t like the message he shoots the messenger, and replaces the messenger with someone who will come up with messages he approves of.
Yet with no basis in fact, Trump charged that Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of labor statistics, “rigged” the data “to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.” Then he ordered her fired and replaced with someone else—presumably someone whose data Trump will approve of.
How can anyone in the future trust the data that emerges from the Bureau of Labor Statistics when the person in charge of the agency has to come up with data to Trump’s liking in order to stay in the job? Answer: They cannot. Trump has destroyed the credibility of this extraordinarily important source of information.
When Trump doesn’t like the message he shoots the messenger, and replaces the messenger with someone who will come up with messages he approves of.
So we’re left without credible sources of information about what is really occurring.
Trump is in the process of trying to do the same thing with the Federal Reserve—demanding that Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chair, cut interest rates. Trump is even threatening Powell with a Trumped-up expose of Powell’s supposed extravagance in refurbishing the Fed as a means of forcing Powell to do his bidding or resign.
What happens to the Fed’s credibility if Powell give in to Trump? It loses it. In the future, we wouldn’t have confidence that the Fed is fighting inflation, as it should. And without that confidence, longer-term interest rates will spike because investors will assume that there’s no inflation cop on the beat, and therefore will demand a higher risk premium.
Trump hates facts that he disagrees with. That’s why he’s dismembering the Environmental Protection Agency, which has repeatedly shown that climate change isn’t a “hoax,” as Trump claims, but more like a national emergency. It’s why Trump is attacking American universities, whose whose scientists are developing wind and solar energy, and whose historians have revealed America’s tragic history of racism and genocide of Indigenous people. He is killing off the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, which are showing the sources of sickness and disease and how we can guard against them.
This is a man and a regime that doesn’t want the public to know the truth. He is turning America into George Orwell’s dystopian 1984.
This is what fascism looks like, friends.
We must fight this with everything we have.
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Trump’s Brand of Law Enforcement: Deportation Yes, Worker Protection No
Let’s contrast the lengths to which this administration will go to forcibly remove productive, noncriminal immigrants and their families, with a recent and mostly unnoticed action the Trump Labor Department took a few weeks ago.
Jul 19, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump claims to be all about law enforcement. But what laws he chooses to prioritize, and which get the back seat, or are ignored entirely, speak volumes about the heart and soul of this administration. Recent developments in immigration and labor law enforcement offer some trenchant examples.
I spent the entirety of my almost-40-year civil service career enforcing federal worker protection laws with the U.S. Department of Labor, including the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), whose purpose is to guarantee that the workers actually receive at least the minimum wage and overtime pay that Congress has mandated.
Enforcing laws like the FLSA for the benefit of workers in the U.S.—across the many millions of workplaces in this country, with very limited investigative and attorney staff—is no easy task. How closely any given federal agency can approach the goal of widespread compliance depends on many factors, most prominent being the level of resourcing Congress has made available, and the effectiveness of the strategies the agency chooses to deploy.
On the immigration front, the president has broadcast far and wide his intention to remove everyone who’s in this country without legal authority (a civil, not criminal violation) as his top enforcement priority. His just-signed budget bill massively increases the funds available for “building the wall” and ramping up Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency whose job will be to penetrate every community in the country, find those “without papers,” and arrest and deport them. And then there are prisons like “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Everglades, and the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador, designed to terrify as many as possible into self-deporting, and to detain indefinitely those who fail to comply.
Immigrants have known for a while where they stand with Trump. The picture has never been pretty, and it’s a whole lot uglier now. Workers, including those who voted for him, are beginning to learn where they stand too.
The flood of dollars slated to supercharge the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) enforcement capacity, along with its terror strategy designed to induce self-removal, will no doubt make serious headway toward the president’s goal. But there are so many reasons why this is both a cruel and foolish policy—including, because the U.S. will be left with fewer workers (citizen and noncitizen), fewer people spending money, and a smaller economy overall. But it’s an example, albeit a dark and nefarious one, of how enforcement results can be accomplished if the administration has both the will and the political power to get them done.
Let’s contrast the lengths to which this administration will go to forcibly remove productive, noncriminal immigrants and their families, with a recent and mostly unnoticed action the Trump Labor Department took a few weeks ago.
Large numbers of workers in the U.S. are cheated out of the minimum wage or overtime they’re entitled to under the FLSA—an unlawful practice known colloquially as “wage theft”—to the tune of billions of dollars per year. A primary reason for this high rate of noncompliance by employers inclined to evade the law is the paltry level of funding the department’s enforcement divisions receive, relative to the millions of businesses they’re responsible to oversee. Given the size of their mission to protect workers, the Labor Department’s (DOL) ranks are tiny, have shrunk significantly due to the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the federal budget, and are slated to be cut 35% in the FY 2026 budget.
While staffing today is exceptionally bare-bones, the DOL has always needed to deploy its limited resources for maximum impact. Fifteen years ago, I was part of a team that developed a wage law compliance-enhancing strategy that wouldn’t depend on hiring more enforcement personnel. It was founded on FLSA’s mandate that when an employer commits wage theft, it will owe the worker both the amount of the underpayment and an equal amount in “liquidated damages,” with very limited exceptions.
The law’s requiring payment of double back wages makes sound enforcement sense. It compensates workers for costs they incurred on account of being underpaid, and it also incentivizes unscrupulous employers to comply. If an employer who shorted his workers is only required to pay back what he owed in the first place, he’s really getting an interest-free loan that the worker never agreed to. That’s hardly a recipe for encouraging compliance.
And yet, for too long, that’s how the vast majority of DOL investigations finding wage underpayments were resolved. So, 15 years ago DOL assembled a team to address this serious enforcement deficiency, and we conceived a new strategy. Employers who engaged in wage theft were given a choice: be sued for double back pay, or settle for that amount without having to go to court. If the employer believed they shouldn’t have to pay double, or shouldn’t have to pay at all, no gun was pointed to their head. They could go to court and challenge DOL’s claims. But if, recognizing they’d likely lose in court and that settlement was a better option, they’d need to pay the workers the double back wages the law says they owe.
The Labor Department began implementing this policy in 2010, and over the past decade and a half, workers in scores of cases have received millions of dollars in back wages and liquidated damages, DOL’s litigation resources have been spared, and U.S. district courts are less clogged than they would have been if these resolutions in lieu of litigation hadn’t happened. Since 2010, this enforcement strategy has been challenged only once, and the court found it to be reasonable. It also exemplifies sound enforcement strategy designed to spur compliance, and government efficiency, to boot.
And yet, on June 27, the acting administrator of DOL’s Wage and Hour Division saw fit to prohibit DOL staff from entering into any wage theft settlements in which workers receive double back pay, if the case hasn’t been filed in court. The clear impact will be that most workers who are victims of wage theft will once again become unwilling interest-free lenders to their employers, and corner-cutting employers will have no incentive to comply with the law. Regrettably, this isn’t the first such slap against workers, and undoubtedly won’t be the last.
To recap: On immigration enforcement, the Trump administration, and a compliant Republican-majority Congress, are pulling out all the stops to remove unauthorized immigrants—whether law-abiding, taxpaying, contributing members of our communities or not—as part of a dreadfully misguided but comprehensive DHS enforcement policy designed to intimidate and coerce.
The Trump Labor Department, meanwhile, just went out of its way to end a successful, court-approved enforcement strategy designed to make whole workers victimized by wage theft, and to deter unscrupulous employers from engaging in these types of violations.
Immigrants have known for a while where they stand with Trump. The picture has never been pretty, and it’s a whole lot uglier now.
Workers, including those who voted for him, are beginning to learn where they stand too. Suffice it to say: not exactly at the front of the line.
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Trump Assault on Federal Contractor Wages Could Mean 25% Pay Cuts for Hundreds of Thousands
"A higher federal contractor wage standard is good for employers and the federal government overall," said one left-leaning think tank.
Apr 11, 2025
After U.S. President Donald Trump last month undid a Biden-era regulation that required businesses that contract with the federal government to pay their workers a $17.75 an hour minimum wage, the Center for American Progress released an analysis Friday which found that some workers impacted by the change could see a 25% pay cut.
Thanks to rollback from Trump, "corporations working on government contracts are free to cut wages for hundreds of thousands of workers," according to the author of the analysis, who also said that the move constitutes a new front in the Trump administration's "war on workers."
Former President Joe Biden's order, which was announced in 2021 and went into effect in 2022, initially raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour with automatic updates, which bumped it the minimum up to $17.75 in January 2025.
The rescission was part of an executive order that reversed 18 "harmful executive orders and actions" issued by Biden.
According to CAP, a liberal think tank, Trump's scrapping of the Biden minimum wage protection leaves in place an Obama-era rule, meaning some workers on federal contracts can now be paid a minimum of $13.30 an hour.
The analysis arrived at the 25% pay cut by calculating the difference between the $17.75 floor and $13.30. However, CAP noted that the U.S. Department of Labor still has to issue guidance over how it will enforce this older wage standard.
Other wage protections for workers on federal contracts exist, but CAP argues that "they are inadequate for protecting the workers who just saw their minimum wage taken away."
The Davis-Bacon Act establishes minimum prevailing wage standards for workers on federal construction sites, for example, but the wages established under the law can be much lower than $17.75 an hour, according to the analysis.
"The boost for workers from the Biden minimum wage increase that the Trump administration just nullified was substantial," according to CAP, which cites a Department of Labor estimate from 2021 that the change would impact 327,300 employees in the first year of implementation.
In 2021, the left-leaning think tank the Economic Policy Institute estimated that, taking into account the hundreds of thousands of workers who could see their wages raised through Biden's executive order, the total pay increases thanks to the rule would amount to $1.2 billion in 2022.
"A higher minimum wage for federal contractors helps ensure that taxpayer dollars incentivize good jobs, rather than low-wage jobs where contractors compete with each other in a race to the bottom," according to a statement from EPI following Trump's rescission of the minimum wage rule. "A higher federal contractor wage standard is good for employers and the federal government overall."
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'A New Action Plan': Ban Musk Companies From Any and All Federal and State Contracts
"The U.S. is engaging in a suicidal strategy: funding the very person who is trying to destroy the government."
Mar 04, 2025
Democratic leaders have angered progressive organizers and voters alike in recent weeks as they have claimed they have "no leverage" to stop the most damaging actions of the Trump administration.
But a new national campaign to cut off President Donald Trump's ally and adviser, Elon Musk, from the taxpayer money that's helped make him the world's richest person could "breathe life into the Democratic Party at a time when it is flailing" while forcing Musk "to limit his slash-and-burn campaign against the federal government," according to Sunjeev Bery, the executive director of the advocacy group Freedom Forward.
The organization is circulating a petition to gather support for its proposal to block all federal funding and contracts for two of Musk's companies—electric car manufacturer Tesla and aeronautics company SpaceX.
As Bery wrote in a recent column at The Intercept, SpaceX has received nearly $20 billion in government contracts, while Musk has been able to charge more than a fair market price for his Tesla vehicles thanks to government incentives giving consumers thousands of dollars when they bought cars from his company.
"This was essentially free money for his company at a time when he desperately needed the cash to keep Tesla afloat," wrote Bery.
Musk's reliance on government funding hasn't stopped him from pushing to cut Social Security, the anti-poverty program that serves retired Americans, and sweeping through federal agencies including the Department of Education and Department of Labor with plans to slash spending that American families depend on.
"We need to end the dynamic where America is heavily funding a billionaire who is using his wealth to destroy the federal government."
Bery wrote at The Intercept that Democratic senators should first speak out publicly against government funding for the man who is working to dismantle the federal government—and then "begin turning their stated opposition into actual votes."
Although Republicans hold majorities in the U.S. House and Senate, he wrote, Democratic senators have a "powerful tool" help help cut Musk off from federal funding: the filibuster.
"Forty-one U.S. senators could use the filibuster to block most legislation that enables the funding of Musk's companies," wrote Bery. "With 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and two independents in the Senate, such a push is numerically possible, though politically difficult."
Bery acknowledged challenges the Democrats would face, including party leaders' reluctance to "[pick] fights with billionaires" and the fact that filibustering the appropriations bills that help fund SpaceX and Tesla contracts would also delay the distribution of other government funds.
"Despite these difficulties, what makes pushing for a legislative attack on Musk's wealth such a powerful opportunity is that Musk himself is deeply unpopular among Democratic voters," wrote Bery, pointing to a recent Economist/YouGov poll that found 82% of Democrats disapprove of the billionaire and that a growing number of Republicans want Musk to have less influence over the Trump administration.
Bery told the Institute for Public Accuracy on Tuesday that the proposal to end government support for Musk's companies is "a new plan of action."
"This is an opportunity for senators to filibuster and block funding for Musk's companies," said Bery. "It is also an opportunity for state legislators to introduce legislation affirming that their states will not engage in contracts or buy equipment or services from Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, Tesla, and other ventures."
"We need to end the dynamic where America is heavily funding a billionaire who is using his wealth to destroy the federal government," said Bery. "The U.S. is engaging in a suicidal strategy: funding the very person who is trying to destroy the government. We have an opportunity to cut down that valuation dramatically. Musk stands to lose a lot. We can start holding these billionaire oligarchs accountable."
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Trump Set to Install Anti-Union Attack Dog as Director of Key Labor Office
One watchdog group warned that Elisabeth Messenger is "a real ideologue" whose selection underscores the Trump administration's hostility to organized labor.
Mar 04, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly expected to pick the former head of an anti-union organization that supports so-called "right-to-work" laws to lead a key office within the Department of Labor, where the administration is working to gut enforcement efforts against lawbreaking employers.
Citing two unnamed sources, HuffPost reported Monday that Elisabeth Messenger, former CEO of Americans for Fair Treatment (AFFT), is set to become director of the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), whose purpose is to promote "labor-management transparency by making available reports showing unions' financial condition and employers' expenditures for their activities in persuading workers during union organizing campaigns."
HuffPost noted that "as the head of OLMS, Messenger would be charged with making sure unions, as well as anti-union consultants, make lawful disclosures to the government about their work."
Bob Funk, director of the watchdog group LaborLab, told HuffPost that Messenger is "a real ideologue" and her selection signals that the Trump administration will likely "go after not just public-sector unions but worker centers, too."
The outlet observed that AFFT "promotes right-to-work laws and advises public-sector workers like teachers on how to opt out of paying union dues."
Elisabeth Messenger, former CEO of the anti-union group "Americans for Fair Treatment," will be tasked with making sure anti-union consultants disclose their work.
[image or embed]
— LaborLab (@laborlab.bsky.social) March 3, 2025 at 4:59 PM
After posturing as a champion of American workers on the campaign trail, Trump kicked off his second White House term with what one observer described as "rapid-fire anti-worker actions," including mass firings of federal employees and the termination of key labor officials.
One of the fired officials, former National Labor Relations Board Chair Gwynne Wilcox, is suing Trump in federal court arguing her termination was illegal.
News that Trump is poised to install Messenger at the helm of OLMS comes roughly two weeks after former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), the president's pick to lead the Labor Department, vowed during her Senate confirmation hearing to defend "right-to-work laws" and said she no longer supports pro-union legislation that would dramatically weaken them.
That legislation, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, is set to be reintroduced Tuesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a group of congressional Democrats, and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.).
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Sanders Says Attack on NLRB Proves Trump Is Enemy of the Working Class
"Rather than standing up for average Americans," said the Independent U.S. senator, the president is "protecting the interests of some of the wealthiest people in the world."
Feb 08, 2025
President Donald Trump, by his actions, has revealed his clear dishonesty when he claims to be governing on behalf of American workers and their families.
That's the message at the heart of a statement released Friday by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who cited recent attacks on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by the Trump administration and his allies that directly contradict any such claims.
"When Trump campaigned for president, he claimed he was on the side of the working class," said Sanders. "But that’s not what he’s delivering. Rather than standing up for average Americans, he's protecting the interests of some of the wealthiest people in the world."
When Trump, he continued, "fires the most pro-union General Counsel in the history of the NLRB and illegally removes a member of this independent board, he is not a champion of the working class. He is a champion of unfettered corporate greed and union busters."
"When Trump campaigned for president, he claimed he was on the side of the working class. But that’s not what he’s delivering."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders
On Jan. 27, NLRB Commissioner Gwynne Wilcox, appointed to the board in 2021 for a term intended to last through to 2028, was terminated in a move that labor experts said was both unprecedented and unlawful.
Wilcox, who has since filed a lawsuit over her ouster, said in an interview with CBS News on Thursday that she was shocked—as were many others—by Trump's move, which she called a "blatant violation" of statutes that protect members of the board from political interference or reprisal.
"The law is that board members cannot be removed from their position unless they've engaged in neglect or duty or malfeasance, Wilcox explained. "And based upon the letter I received, there was no claim of that. There [wasn't] any cause or any reason that I was actually terminated."
Labor unions and advocates have said the attack on Wilcox represents a full and frontal assault on the ability of workers to organize or for union members to have their disputes or grievances addressed.
"The removal of Chair Wilcox threatens NLRB's independence and endangers working people's rights," said Eric Dean, General President of the Iron Workers Union (IW), in a Friday statement. "We stand in solidarity with Chair Wilcox and call for her immediate reinstatement to safeguard workers' rights."
The IW, which represents over 135,000 ironworkers in North America, said the "inappropriate" removal of Wilcox "has rendered the 5-member board inoperable, shutting down its decision-making ability and jeopardizing the protection of workers."
Sanders, in his remarks, echoed that central concern:
As a result of Trump’s unprecedented move, the NLRB no longer has a quorum and has effectively been shut down. What does this mean? It means that it will be far, far harder for workers to exercise their constitutional right to form a union and improve their standard of living. It means that during a union election, corporate bosses can illegally fire workers who vote to join a union. It means that corporate CEOs have free rein to illegally intimidate and coerce pro-union workers without recourse. It means that corporations can aggressively decide not to bargain in good faith with union workers or sign a first contract.
And because the NLRB is now dysfunctional, workers have no recourse.
Trump’s decision has already had disastrous consequences. Last week, workers at a Whole Foods grocery store in Philadelphia voted 130-100 to join the United Food and Commercial Workers union. But Whole Foods, owned by Jeff Bezos, has made it crystal clear that they will ignore this union victory and will not bargain with their union workers in good faith. Without a functioning NLRB, Whole Foods cannot be held accountable for its illegal behavior.
Sanders singled out Bezos as well as Elon Musk, who has been tapped by Trump to oversee the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is not an actual department with congressionally-granted authority but has targeted numerous federal agencies over the last two weeks, including the Department of Labor.
"For months, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the two wealthiest men alive," said Sanders, "have been working overtime to abolish the NLRB. Why is that? These notorious anti-union billionaires want the absolute power to exploit their workers and violate labor law. The lower the wages they pay, the more money they make. Since Election Day, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have become $184 billion richer and are now worth $669 billion. But, apparently, that’s not enough."
Since Trump's reelection in November, a campaign victory bankrolled by numerous right-wing billionaires like Musk, Sanders has railed against the threat posed by what he has termed an American oligarchy.
Union leaders like AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler have also issued warnings about the erosion of worker protections under Trump.
“The government can work for billionaires or it can work for working people—but not both,” Shuler said on Wednesday ahead of a rally outside the Department of Labor, where DOGE personnel were said to meeting with DOL staffers.
“The government can work for billionaires or it can work for working people—but not both." —Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO
In a recent appearance on MSNBC's "All In With Chris Hayes," Sanders said that while Republicans are in control of both chambers of Congress, those majorities are historically slim and that means lawmakers remain "susceptible to citizen outrage."
Sanders said he wanted the American people, and specifically working families, to understand that they are right to be anxious about the current situation, but that they must mobilize and agitate to make their opposition heard.
"If you see these guys doing something—like wanting to give huge tax breaks to billionaires while they cut Medicare; or they want to go 'Drill, baby, drill' while we happen to be facing an existential threat of climate change; if they want to deport 20 million people in this country—stand up, fight back, we can beat them," said Sanders.
"Let's not act in a hopeless way," he continued, remarking on what can be done in the immediate term. "Longer term, obviously, we have to do what the Democratic Party has not done—and become the party of the working class, develop a strong grassroots movement, with labor unions, with young people, with people of color—and organize and fight back."
"The progressive agenda, and I say this over and over again, is the people's agenda," said Sanders. "It is wildly popular."
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