TRUMP’S WAR ON WORKERS

Despite Trump’s rhetoric, his 2016 campaign promises, and an occasional symbolic gesture, his administration has shown a total lack of empathy or concern for the plight of American workers. He has:

• Undermined workers’ health and safety, as well as job security,
• Repeatedly supported employers and business interests rather than workers,
• Depressed workers’ pay and benefits, and
• Failed to support workers’ rights, including their ability to bargain collectively with employers through unions.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration has consistently sided with employers and against protecting workers from the very contagious virus. It has refused to promulgate mandatory standards and safety measures to protect workers. The most notable example has been in the meat packing industry, where the Trump administration has ordered workers back to work using emergency powers meant to ensure the supply of “scarce and critical material essential to the national defense.” Local public health officials are prohibited from closing plants and workers have to obey employers’ orders to return to work or be fired and lose their eligibility for unemployment benefits. [1]

Over 200 workers in the meatpacking industry have died and tens of thousands have been infected. Nonetheless, the Trump administration’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has not issued any regulations to protect these workers. Its fines for violations have been a slap-on-the-wrist few thousand dollars, despite thousands of complaints from workers about unsafe working conditions. The neglect of workers’ health and safety has undoubtedly cost many thousands of lives. [2]

Trump has consistently appointed pro-corporate, pro-employer, anti-worker officials to his cabinet and government agencies, as well as to judgeships. His Secretary of Labor, Eugene Scalia (son of the right-wing Supreme Court Justice), and all but one of his appointees to the National Labor Relations Board have spent their careers fighting for corporate employers and against workers’ rights and protections, despite the fact that they are now, supposedly, enforcing workers’ rights and protections.

On the other hand, Trump has failed to appoint anyone to head OSHA and has reduced its number of inspectors to a 50-year low. It would take these inspectors 165 years to visit every U.S. workplace once, despite an annual toll of 14 workers killed and 5 million injured on the job (not including the impact of COVID-19). [3]

Trump’s Department of Labor (DOL) has relaxed rules on overtime pay, resulting in millions of workers being denied overtime when they work over 40 hours in a week. The DOL and the Trump-appointed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have let McDonalds and other corporations that use a franchisee business model escape responsibility for franchisees who engage in wage theft (e.g., by failing to pay overtime, minimum wage, or for all hours at work) and other illegal practices.

The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have worked relentlessly to weaken and repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka Obama Care), which has increased costs and denied health insurance to millions of workers, including many of those who have lost jobs during the pandemic. On the other hand, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have done nothing about increasing the minimum wage (which has been unchanged for a decade) or the Earned Income Tax Credit, which augments the income of low wage workers. They also have done nothing to increase the availability of paid sick time or to provide paid leave for new parents. [4]

The Trump administration has acted favorable on all ten items on an employer-friendly, anti-worker wish list from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the lobbying organization of large corporations. All of these items involved undermining workers’ rights and unions, such as allowing employers more opportunities to interfere in union organizing efforts. The Trump NLRB has stripped Uber drivers and other similar workers of their rights under labor laws and has also proposed a ban on union organizing by tens of thousands of graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants. [5]

Trump’s 2017 tax cut legislation gave billions of dollars in tax cuts to wealthy individuals and corporations, while neglecting workers. It also increased incentives for multi-national corporations to move jobs overseas.

The Trump administration’s mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic has hurt the economy, increasing the number of jobs lost and the length of unemployment. The administration and Republicans in Congress have limited the amount and duration of unemployment benefits for those out of work. They provided limited pandemic relief for workers in general and have let it run out, refusing to extend it, even though the end of the pandemic is nowhere in sight, unemployment remains high, and millions of households are struggling to make ends meet.

The litany of the Trump administration’s anti-worker actions is long. Here are a few more examples:

• Repealed the fiduciary rule that required investment advisors to act in workers’ best interests in handling their retirement savings. Instead, the advisors can select investments that pay them higher fees.
• Relaxed or rescinded safety rules in numerous industries, such as more than a dozen rules protecting mine workers from such things as explosive coal dust and mining chemicals. However, the effort to relax safety inspections in coal mines was blocked by a federal court.
• Made it easier to award federal contracts to companies with multiple violations of laws on fair wages, sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and workers’ rights to form a union.
• Relaxed rules on toxic chemicals that harm farmworkers and children.
• Relaxed requirements on reporting of workplace injuries and ended requirements for large corporations to report payroll data by race and gender, which allowed analysis of possible pay discrimination.
• Rolled back regulations on usurious practices of payday lenders who prey on financially struggling workers.
• Supported, both through legal arguments and court appointments, a prohibition on class action lawsuits by workers against employers (instead requiring them to submit grievances to arbitration) and a prohibition on requiring public sector workers to pay union fees or dues for the benefits they receive from union actions on their behalf.
• Is pushing hard for blanket corporate / employer immunity from lawsuits if workers or customers get sick or die from COVID-19, regardless of any failure by the business to implement appropriate or required protection measures.

I hope America’s workers and voters are paying attention and not letting themselves be fooled by Trump’s rhetoric. Even a quick look at the actions and personnel of the Trump administration make it clear that it supports corporations and employers to the explicit detriment of workers.

[1]      Hightower, J., July 2020, “Something is rotten at Big Meat, Inc.,” The Hightower Lowdown (https://hightowerlowdown.org/article/something-is-rotten-at-big-meat-inc/)

[2]      Lee, T.M., 9/25/20, “Trump’s war on workers,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/labor/trump-war-on-workers/)

[3]      Hightower, J., Aug. 2020, “Behind his daily spectacle, Trump is pounding workers and their rights,” The Hightower Lowdown (https://hightowerlowdown.org/article/behind-his-daily-spectacle-trump-is-pounding-workers-and-their-rights/)

[4]      Greenhouse, S., 8/30/19, “The worker’s friend? Here’s how Trump has waged his war on workers,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/power/worker-s-friend-trump-waged-war-workers/)

[5]      McNicholas, C., Rhinehart, L., & Poydock, M., 9/16/1/20, “50 reasons the Trump administration is bad for workers,” Economic Policy Institute (https://www.epi.org/publication/50-reasons/)