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us department of labor
New Trump Rule Would Let Private Equity, Crypto ‘Endanger Retirement Savings of Millions'
“This isn’t about advancing the interests of retirement savers, it is about opening a new profit center for crypto and Wall Street," said one critic.
Mar 31, 2026
US President Donald Trump's Labor Department on Monday unveiled a proposal that would welcome private equity and cryptocurrency investments into Americans' 401(k) plans, the culmination of an aggressive Wall Street lobbying push that could leave the retirement savings of millions vulnerable to the wild swings of so-called "alternative assets."
The proposed rule, now subject to a public comment period, was issued at the direction of a Trump executive order from last year that was characterized at the time as "the holy grail for private equity."
In addition to giving employers a green light to include private equity and crypto investments in 401(k) plans offered to workers, the new rule would establish a "safe harbor" allowing retirement account administrators to avoid legal action from employees who believe their funds were steered into excessively risky products.
"The legal immunity created by this safe harbor will incentivize financial advisers to pitch these toxic products, which will become ticking time bombs in tens of millions of retirement accounts, which will no doubt result in significant losses," warned Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy at the advocacy group Better Markets. "There are good reasons why 401(k) plans have been considered closed to private markets and cryptocurrencies, and those reasons have not changed. The only thing that has changed is the administration’s support for these industries and regulators’ willingness to do their bidding."
"This is no reason to endanger the retirement savings of millions of Americans," Schiffrin added.
Oscar Valdés Viera, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, similarly warned that "opening 401(k)s to these products risks turning workers’ retirement savings into a Ponzi-like scheme that throws a lifeline to an industry scrambling for fresh cash."
"This isn’t about advancing the interests of retirement savers, it is about opening a new profit center for crypto and Wall Street," said Viera. "Retirement savers should not be bailing out these high-risk industries and subsidizing the Wall Street and crypto billionaire class."
"Private equity firms should not get a free pass to loot workers’ 401(k) retirement savings."
Americans currently hold over $10 trillion combined in 401(k) plans, a huge trove of wealth that the private equity industry has been working for years to access. The Labor Department indicated that its proposed rule would apply to over 720,000 retirement plans covering roughly 118 million workers.
The American Prospect reported Tuesday that the managers of private equity firms are "already pressuring companies, third-party administrators, and the consultants who advise them to list their offerings" among workers' retirement plan options.
"One staffer at an institutional investor who is not authorized to speak to the media told the Prospect about their primary worry: that private equity will stick their most overvalued companies into continuation funds exclusively for 401(k) plan holders, or 'retail investors,' as they are known," the outlet continued. "Private credit firms are retailoring their funds for 401(k) plans as well, and some of the biggest have already struck deals with asset managers like Voya and Vanguard. 'I’d be shocked if the industry doesn’t attempt to dump their garbage onto retail,' the staffer said."
One recent analysis by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) found that private equity funds for retail investors "dramatically underperformed publicly listed stock indexes" in 2025 while charging much higher fees.
Jim Baker, PESP's executive director, said Monday that "private equity firms should not get a free pass to loot workers’ 401(k) retirement savings."
“The bar for including private equity in 401(k)s should be extremely high,” said Baker. “Private equity funds have lagged public markets while charging much higher fees, and public pension funds are pulling back from the asset class. Instead, this rule risks shifting more financial risk onto workers who rely on their retirement savings for long-term security.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also ripped the Labor Department rule, saying in a statement that "Americans facing an uncertain future in Trump’s economy will now have more reasons to question the security of their retirement savings—all so that Trump’s Wall Street buddies have another pile of cash to play with."
"Anyone who cares about the financial security of working people," said Warren, "should oppose this proposed rule."
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Trump's Revived Anti-Worker Rules Condemned as 'Outright Grift'
"Every day, little by little, the Trump administration is rigging the system to benefit giant corporations and shortchange workers," said one senator.
Feb 26, 2026
President Donald Trump's "barrage of attacks on workers" continued on Thursday with announcements about two key labor rules.
The US Department of Labor (DOL) proposed an independent contractor rule that the National Employment Law Project (NELP) called "yet another example of the administration siding with major corporations and stacking the deck against working people" by "effectively allowing employers to strip workers of federal minimum wage and overtime protections."
The DOL's Wage and Hour Division proposal would replace the Biden administration's widely celebrated 2024 policy for when employers can treat workers as independent contractors under the Fair Labor Standards Act with business-friendly guidance that resembles a rule adopted just before the end of Trump's first term.
"This rule will have profound real-world consequences for working people," warned NELP. "Misclassification is common in many labor-intensive, poorly paid jobs—jobs like home healthcare, janitorial work, landscaping, personal services, and increasingly, app-dispatched ride-hail and delivery—where people of color and immigrants are overrepresented, and workers lack the bargaining power to negotiate higher wages and better working conditions."
NELP pointed to research showing that low-paid independent contractors "lag behind their employee counterparts," and some "do not even earn the federal minimum wage." The organization stressed that "this rule threatens to enshrine a two-tiered labor system where similarly situated workers receive vastly different rights and protections based on the classification chosen by the business employing them."
The new rule—which now faces a 60-day public comment period—focuses on two "core factors" to determine an employee's classification: the nature and degree of control over the work, and the worker's opportunity for profit or loss based on initiative or investment.
NELP argued that "by elevating two factors above other equally important factors, the Trump administration's test fails to account for the economic realities of many working relationships. Many workers labeled as independent contractors are not really in business for themselves because they are integrated into the operations of a larger business structure that sets most of the terms of the work."
"In app-dispatched ride-hail and delivery jobs, for example, corporations like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Amazon use apps and algorithms to offer shifts or assignments to so-called independent contractors doing the core work of the business, set the wages these workers receive, surveil and assess their performance, and determine if they are offered future assignments or get 'deactivated,'" the group noted. "App-based ride-hail and delivery workers perform difficult and dangerous work without basic employment protections like the right to minimum wage and overtime, workers' compensation, and unemployment insurance."
As NELP and other critics sounded the alarm over the DOL proposal on Thursday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) also revived an effort from Trump's first term, reinstating that administration's 2020 rule on joint employers.
During Trump's initial administration, the NLRB required joint employers to "possess and exercise substantial direct and immediate control" over at least one aspect of the workers' employment. In 2023, under former President Joe Biden, the board decided that two or more entities could be considered joint employers if they had an employment relationship with the workers and helped to determine their terms and conditions of employment. However, the latter was blocked by a Trump-appointed judge the next year.
Unlike the DOL proposal, the board's rule is final. The NLRB—which has two Trump appointees, one Biden appointee, and two vacancies—said in the Federal Register that "the 2023 rule was vacated by the district court, and the action the board takes today merely implements the court's decision. Our action is ministerial and therefore will have no separate economic effect."
US Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a senior member and former chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, declared in a Thursday statement that "every day, little by little, the Trump administration is rigging the system to benefit giant corporations and shortchange workers—it's an outright grift and working people should be furious."
"The joint employer rule is nothing more than a return to Trump's anti-worker policies that let giant corporations skirt their basic obligations to employees—Trump is giving the biggest corporations cover to deny workers their ability to band together for better wages and working conditions and leaving millions of workers in the lurch, vulnerable to egregious violations of their rights," she said.
"At the same time, today, the Trump administration announced they're working to rescind the independent contractor rule," Murray continued. "Trump wants to let giant corporations classify workers as contractors so that they don't have to pay them minimum wage and overtime—these workers deserve fair pay."
The senator then took aim at the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that congressional Republicans passed and the president signed last summer, saying that "under the Trump administration, giant corporations get giant tax breaks paid for by cutting Medicaid—the healthcare that the poorest workers are forced to rely on."
"Now, Trump wants those same corporations off the hook for every benefit, protection, and dollar they'd otherwise owe to millions of workers—it's a shakedown," she asserted. "Republicans are proving time and again, they don't care about workers—they don't want to even let workers have crumbs, but billionaires can get trillions in tax breaks that will blow up our national debt."
Murray isn't up for reelection in November's closely watched midterms, but could lead the Senate Appropriations Committee if Democrats reclaim the chamber. On Thursday, she vowed that "I am going to keep fighting for laws on the books that protect workers and build an economy that grows the middle-class, not just profit margins for the largest corporations on Earth."
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'This Is Trump's America': Scandals Engulf Labor Secretary as She Guts Worker Protections
A group of Democratic senators accused Lori Chavez-DeRemer's Labor Department of showing "disregard for workers’ lives."
Feb 20, 2026
Lori Chavez-DeRemer's tenure as head of the US Department of Labor was further embroiled in scandal on Thursday after bombshell New York Times reporting revealed that her husband has been banned from the agency's headquarters over sexual assault allegations leveled by at least two staffers.
The reporting landed on the same day that a group of Senate Democrats launched an investigation into Chavez-DeRemer's policy moves at the Labor Department, accusing her agency of showing "disregard for workers’ lives" by "rolling back protections that keep workers safe and hobbling the agency that is tasked with overseeing worker safety."
The sexual assault allegations against the labor secretary's husband, Shawn DeRemer, were made by two women "as part of an internal investigation by the department’s inspector general into alleged misconduct by Ms. Chavez-DeRemer and her senior staff," the Times reported Thursday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter and a police report.
"The widening misconduct scandal at the Labor Department has forced several aides and members of the security staff in Ms. Chavez-DeRemer’s inner circle onto administrative and investigative leave," the newspaper continued. "The inspector general’s office is investigating a formal complaint that Ms. Chavez-DeRemer was having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a subordinate—a member of her security detail—and abusing her office by taking staff to strip clubs, drinking alcohol on the job, and taking personal trips at taxpayer expense. Her lawyer has denied the allegations."
"This is Trump's America," retired US diplomat Ken Fairfax wrote in response to the reporting.
Meanwhile, Chavez-DeRemer has been playing a central role in what six Senate Democrats characterized as the Trump administration's "attack on workers from all sides."
In a Thursday letter to Chavez-DeRemer and David Keeling, the assistant secretary of labor for Occupational Safety and Health, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other Democrats expressed alarm over the Labor Department's "ambitious deregulatory agenda that includes many of the regulations that OSHA has promulgated to keep American workers safe."
The lawmakers pointed specifically to Labor Department efforts to eliminate more than a third of the Mine Safety and Health Administration's offices, roll back "a requirement for employers to provide adequate lighting at construction sites," and loosen "respirator requirements for workers exposed to dangerous materials like lead, asbestos, and formaldehyde, as well as chemicals known to be carcinogens."
"But you are not only rolling back rules that protect workers—OSHA also appears to be taking a lighter hand in enforcing even the rules that still exist," the senators wrote. "According to OSHA statistics comparing the months of April through September 2025 with the same period in 2024, the agency reduced workplace inspections by 20%. Those statistics also show a 42% decrease in the number of 'willful violations' found during inspections by OSHA during the months of April-September of 2025 as compared to the same period in 2024."
Chavez-DeRemer was confirmed as labor secretary last year with bipartisan support and a boost from the Teamsters union given some of her past pro-worker stances, such as support for the PRO Act—which she quickly distanced herself from during the confirmation process.
"Chavez-DeRemer refused to commit to supporting a minimum-wage increase, or paid leave for workers," The Nation's John Nichols wrote following her confirmation hearing last February. "And, of course, she unapologetically declared, 'The right to work is a fundamental tenet of labor laws, where states have a right to choose if they want to be a right-to-work state, and that should be protected.'"
"She has made it abundantly clear that she is not interested in serving as an ally of America’s workers or the unions that represent them," Nichols added. "In the great struggle between the working class and the billionaire class, Chavez-DeRemer has chosen to side with Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the oligarchs."
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