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Trump Labor Department Launches 'Barrage of Attacks' on Workers
"They're showing their true colors as an anti-worker administration," Andrew Stettner of the Century Foundation told Common Dreams.
Jul 22, 2025
In what has been described as a "barrage of attacks on workers," the U.S. Department of Labor under President Donald Trump is planning to overhaul dozens of rules that protect workers from exploitation and wage theft.
The administration announced this month that it planned to change over 60 regulations it deems "unecessary" burdens to businesses and economic growth.
According to an analysis released Tuesday by labor policy experts at the Century Foundation—senior fellows Julie Su and Rachel West and director of economy and jobs Andrew Stettner—most of the changes "reverse critical standards that ensure workers get a just day's pay and come home healthy and safe."
In one of the most sweeping changes, the department plans to reverse a 2013 rule that extended minimum wage and overtime protections to home healthcare workers.
These workers, who care for elderly and other medically frail individuals, already make less than $17 an hour on average.
Stettner told Common Dreams that the changes will "suppress wages" and allow agencies to "put the screws on workers to work 50- or 60-hour weeks."
The Trump administration is also rolling back a Biden-era rule that banned bosses from paying subminimum wages to disabled employees.
This discriminatory practice has been on the wane due to state-level bans in 15 states. But in the absence of a federal ban, nearly 40,000 employees—most of whom have intellectual disabilities—still received less than the federal minimum wage as of 2024.
The Century Foundation report says that by ending the rule, the Trump administration would be once again "relegating workers with disabilities to jobs that pay as little as pennies per hour."
The department is also taking a hatchet to workers' rights and safety. Another major change it proposed would do away with protections for seasonal migrant farmworkers under the H-2A visa program who raise complaints about wage and hour violations.
It was commonplace for farm owners to take advantage of these seasonal employees, whose legal status was tied to their work, and who therefore risked deportation if they lost their jobs.
Cases of exploitation, however, declined to an all-time low after the Biden administration introduced the rule, which banned employers from firing, disciplining, or otherwise retaliating against workers who attempted to participate in collective bargaining.
"These reforms protected the rights of farmworkers in the H-2A program to speak out individually and collectively against mistreatment and prevented employers from arbitrarily firing them from their jobs," the report says.
The department also proposed weakening the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) general duty clause, which allows businesses to be punished for putting their employees in dangerous situations. The proposed change would exempt many jobs that are deemed "inherently risky" from protection.
The administration described it as a way to prevent OSHA from cracking down on workplace injuries among athletes and stuntmen.
However, Stettner suggested that the broad language could allow the administration to go much further in defining what is considered "inherently risky." The report notes that the administration is "crowdsourcing" suggestions from employers about what other occupations to exempt.
"The employer community, they're jumping onto this," Stettner said. "They're telling their members to write in to the Department of Labor about other inherently dangerous occupations they should except from the general duty clause."
The authors pointed out that the administration has previously rolled back restrictions meant to protect workers from heat-related stress on the job, which results in more than 600 deaths and over 25,000 injuries each year.
As the administration pushes to expand coal mining, it is also weakening protections for the miners themselves. After laying off most of the employees at OSHA's research arm—which monitors cases of black lung disease—earlier this year, it is now weakening safety requirements to prevent roof falls, mine explosions, and exposure to toxic silica.
"The DOL's role should be to protect the most vulnerable workers: farmworkers, people with disabilities, people that have suffered discrimination," Stettner said. "They're showing their true colors as an anti-worker administration."
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As Heatwave Cooks US, 150+ Groups Urge Leaders to Ban Deadly Utility Shutoffs
"Millions of lives are at risk this week as extreme heat scorches our country," said one campaigner. "Trump and his billionaire buddies will have blood on their hands."
Jun 24, 2025
With extreme temperatures fueled by human-caused global heating gripping much of the United States, a coalition of more than 150 advocacy groups on Tuesday urged federal, state, and local elected leaders to ban potentially deadly utility disconnections, increase worker protections, and tax polluters to finance renewable energy.
The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) led two letters—one to Democratic congressional leaders and another to governors and mayors—arguing that U.S. President Donald Trump "has put millions of lives at risk by dismantling federal agencies and lifesaving programs that help working families keep their homes cool and survive deadly heatwaves like the one this week."
"Since taking office Trump has stripped Americans of access to lifesaving measures, including the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program and Low-Income Household Water Assistance Program, which help more than 8 million working families pay their utility bills," CBD noted.
"Every day of extreme heat in the United States claims about 154 lives."
The Trump administration has also laid off staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, "crippling the agency's ability to help communities before and after disaster strikes. And the country's first-ever proposed federal heat standard, which would prevent heat-related illness and injury in workplaces, is stalled after staff cuts at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration."
CBD said that extreme heat is the deadliest weather-related phenomenon, "claiming more lives each year than hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods combined."
"Every day of extreme heat in the United States claims about 154 lives," the group added. "In the past seven years there has been a nearly 17% increase each year in heat-related deaths. Among those most harmed by extreme heat are outdoor workers and children."
The diverse groups signing the letter—which include Climate Justice Alliance, Food & Water Watch, Free Press Action, Friends of the Earth U.S., Sunrise Movement, and Utility Workers Union of America—centered the voices of people who are most vulnerable to exposure to extreme heat, including outdoor workers like José, a Florida roofer.
"I've felt dizzy, weak, unable to breathe, with cramps, and my heart beats very fast, desperate," the 24-year-old said. "The heat suffocates me and many times I've been close to going to the hospital. While working on the roofs, it feels like the heat is over 110°F or 115°F and we only take one or two short breaks. I need this work to survive, but as the summers get hotter, I worry that one day I will collapse."
CBD senior attorney and energy justice program director Jean Su said in a statement Tuesday that "millions of lives are at risk this week as extreme heat scorches our country. Trump and his billionaire buddies will have blood on their hands."
"Corporations are taking advantage of working people and stripping them of access to lifesaving utilities, clean water, and a safe and resilient future," Su added. "Congress and especially state leaders must deliver emergency relief and tax greedy polluters who are endangering our lives and the climate. Everyone deserves heat-resilient homes, schools, and workplaces."
Will Humble, executive director of letter signatory Arizona Public Health Association, said: "We're not asking for the moon here. We're just looking for state and federal officials to help keep people alive during the summertime."
"Heat kills as many people in Arizona as influenza and pneumonia, and every one of those heat deaths is preventable," Humble added. "The least our elected officials can do is make sure people have places of refuge from these deadly fossil fuel-driven heatwaves. We also need stronger limits on summertime electricity shutoffs, so people aren't dying because the utility company has turned off their power."
"We're just looking for state and federal officials to help keep people alive during the summertime."
Last week, Oregon became the latest of more than two dozen states to ban power disconnections during high summer heat. However, as CBD and others have noted, utilities still find ways to shut off utilities during hot periods.
Six major investor-owned utilities—Georgia Power, DTE Energy, Duke Energy, Ameren Corporation, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Arizona Public Service—"shut off power to households at least 400,000 times during the summertime," according to a CBD report published in January. Those six utilities raked in $10 billion in profits while collectively hiking their customers' rates by at least $3.5 billion since 2023.
"Mayors and governors must act now with bold, local solutions, including expanded public transit and community-centered strategies like neighborhood cooling hubs," Climate Justice Alliance executive director KD Chavez said in a statement. "We also urge stronger labor protections, including municipal and state-level heat standards, to protect postal workers, farmworkers, and all outdoor workers who are increasingly exposed to deadly heat without adequate safeguards."
"Extreme heat has been endangering communities across the country," Chavez added. "We're feeling it closely this week and know it will only get worse. Our growing dependence on aging buildings, air conditioning and a fragile, fossil fuel-dependent power grid is putting lives at risk, especially in frontline, low-income neighborhoods and U.S. territories without government representation."
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5 Ways Trump's Labor Secretary Pick Can Prove She's Really Pro-Worker
If workers truly have an ally in Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), she will advance policies that improve workers’ lives.
Nov 27, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump recently announced his nomination of Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer to serve as secretary of labor.
She is one of only three House Republicans to cosponsor the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and one of only eight Republicans to cosponsor the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act. Both bills would help reform our nation’s badly broken system of labor law. While Rep. Chavez-DeRemer’s support for these needed reforms is encouraging, if confirmed, she will be secretary of labor for a president who steadfastly pursued an ambitious anti-worker agenda during his first term in office.
Chavez-DeRemer has stated that “working-class Americans finally have a lifeline” with President-elect Trump in the White House. If workers truly have an ally in Chavez-DeRemer, she will advance policies that improve workers’ lives. Here are a few policies that will reveal whether the second Trump administration will actually aid working-class Americans or be a continuation of his first administration’s agenda attacking workers’ rights.
If confirmed as secretary of labor, Chavez-DeRemer should not follow the playbook of Trump’s first administration that used populist pro-worker rhetoric while advancing an anti-worker agenda that proved deeply harmful to U.S. workers.
Win funding for the Department of Labor (DOL) that enables the agency to serve the U.S. workforce: DOL and other worker protection agencies have been chronically underfunded. As the workforce has grown, the budgets of these agencies have shrunk, leaving workers without effective enforcement of basic minimum wage and overtime and health and safety protections. Chavez-DeRemer should fight for and secure at least a $14 billion budget to ensure that U.S. workers have health and safety inspectors and wage and hour investigators on the job to enforce their rights.
Protect workers’ overtime: Overtime pay ensures that most workers who put in more than 40 hours a week get paid 1.5 times their regular pay for the extra hours they work. Most hourly workers are guaranteed the right to overtime pay, while salaried workers’ eligibility is based on their pay and the nature of their duties. DOL recently issued a rule to raise the pay threshold for salaried workers to be eligible for overtime, which stands to benefit 4.3 million workers. Despite this benefit to U.S. workers, corporate interest groups and conservative states challenged the rule in court. Chavez-DeRemer should fight for workers’ right to overtime and continue to defend this rule in litigation. She should not allow the Trump administration to, once again, institute a low-salary threshold for overtime eligibility that leaves millions of workers without these protections and forced to work long hours for no additional pay.
Refuse to reinstitute the Payroll Audit Independent Determination program: This program was instituted during Trump’s first administration and essentially permits employers who have stolen workers’ wages to confess and get out of jail free. If an employer proactively notified DOL of the failure to pay minimum wage or overtime or for taking illegal deductions from workers’ paychecks, then DOL waived all penalties and liquidated damages. Wage theft is rampant, costing U.S. workers as much as $50 billion each year. Any program that makes it easier and less costly for employers to steal workers’ wages is a program that hurts U.S. workers and their wages. Chavez-DeRemer should make it harder for employers to steal workers’ wages, not easier.
Promote policies to protect workers’ health and safety: DOL’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is responsible for ensuring U.S. workers are safe on the job. Still, 344 workers die each day from hazardous working conditions. Under the prior Trump administration, OSHA scaled back safety inspections. Chavez-DeRemer should ensure that OSHA does not repeat this under her watch and instead expands inspections to ensure that all workers have a safe workplace. Further, she should fight to protect safety standards like the recently proposed standard protecting workers from extreme heat. Workers’ health and safety must be a priority for any secretary of labor and administration claiming to be pro-worker.
Hold employers accountable for exploiting workers: Some employers use workers’ immigration status as leverage to exploit workers, threatening them with deportation if they report violations of labor and employment laws. For workers in labor disputes, the current administration granted deferred action, which is a determination to defer removal (deportation) of an individual from the U.S. In order to qualify for deferred action, a worker’s employer must be the subject of an open investigation at a labor agency, like DOL, and the labor agency conducting the investigation must submit a letter supporting deferred action to the Department of Homeland Security which oversees the program. Deferred action helps hold lawbreaking employers accountable, and Chavez-DeRemer should continue to support this for workers whose employers are being investigated for violating the law. If she is confirmed, she should fight to ensure the Trump administration provides deferred action for workers whose rights have been violated and should work to issue letters in support of deferred action for eligible workers.
These are just a few actions Chavez-DeRemer could take to demonstrate her commitment to workers. If confirmed as secretary of labor, Chavez-DeRemer should not follow the playbook of Trump’s first administration that used populist pro-worker rhetoric while advancing an anti-worker agenda that proved deeply harmful to U.S. workers.
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