Trump Labor Secretary kills 63 U.S. worker protection rules

WASHINGTON—Proving her MAGA credentials to Trumpite critics and the capitalist class, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, once a “moderate” Republican representative from Oregon, cut 63 U.S. worker protection rules, virtually all promulgated by Democratic administrations—and bragged about it.

The predictable result? “Each year, more than 5,000 workers die on the job from traumatic injury and an estimated 135,000 die from work-related disease. The families…suffer the consequences and these are devastating and they’re preventable,” AFL-CIO Safety and Health Director Rebecca Reindel warned lawmakers on July 17, five days before Chavez-DeRemer’s announcement.

“So what we are talking about are not just numbers and goals and achievements. They are people’s lives.”

A former Occupational Safety and Health Administration worker named Kayla, one of those whom Trump’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency fired, was even blunter when the federation’s “It’s Better In A Union” bus rolled into Pittsburgh. 

“We deserve better than OSHA’s able to provide under the current administration. The attack on government agencies is a firing squad on workplace protections for our members,” she said. 

By contrast, Chavez-DeRemer said revoking the rules put the Labor Department ahead of all other agencies in GOP President Donald Trump’s anti-regulation crusade.

The “highlights” for the capitalist class, who will be able to get away with murder, almost literally, without DOL looking over their shoulders, and the lowlights for workers include:

• Curbs on designating workers as “independent contractors”—gone. Chavez-DeRemer actually yanked those on May 1. The GOP-run Congress may ban National Labor Relations Board’s curbs on independent contractors, too. The GOP radical right dominates the House Education and Workforce Committee majority. It’ll consider a pro-independent contractor bill on July 23. 

An “independent contractor” can’t be unionized, must shoulder both her and her boss’s share of Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, and can’t draw either workers’ comp or jobless benefits.

The year-old Biden-era independent contractor rule looked at the totality of a boss’s control of the worker, direct and indirect, to decide if she’s independent or not. Trump goes back to the rule of his first term: “Economic reality” only. 

• Damages to workers whose bosses short them on minimum wages and/or overtime pay—curbed. No more damages before the feds sue. No more recovery of lost back pay. If the firm loses the case, no more double damages.

DOL warned, however, that “future regulatory changes could restore broader enforcement, increasing liability.” But banning double damages lets firms solve the cases for less money, analysts note.

• OSHA goes back to emphasizing “voluntary protection,” where firms can escape inspections if they promise to take OSHA’s advice on job safety and health measures. But OSHA can’t follow up because its inspection force will be slashed so much that it’ll take 254 years to probe every current worksite in the U.S.

Commenting on what he called “that jaw-dropping fact,” Jordan Barab, editor of the Confined Spaces job safety newsletter and former deputy OSHA administrator, drily wrote: “254 years is five years longer than the United States has been in existence. At that rate, OSHA inspectors would just now be getting ready to inspect George Washington’s Mt. Vernon estate.”

“These numbers are not a game, these cuts directly impact people’s lives. American workers have been left behind. They are being forced into an impossible choice–between their lives and their livelihoods,” Reindel testified.

• The Voluntary Protection Program rewards “medium and large employers who exceed OSHA requirements and, in return, are exempt from OSHA’s programmed inspections,” Barab added. Those inspections target—without waiting for workers to call—firms with high injury and illness numbers or a high-hazard industry, OSHA targets for emphasis.

The only catch, Barab says, is that voluntary protection doesn’t work, or didn’t during the GOP George W. Bush administration.

Outcome was disastrous

“The outcome was disastrous.  To meet VPP growth quotas, OSHA officials admitted companies that had marginal programs, refused to kick out employers who killed workers or received willful violations, and fell way behind on VPP recertifications, which are supposed to happen every three to five years,” wrote Barab, who’s also AFSCME’s former job safety and health director.

• Minimum wages for home health care workers, instituted during the coronavirus pandemic—no more. Back to what the GOP majority on the Supreme Court decreed almost a decade ago: Those workers, mostly women of color and many of them migrants, will earn pennies. Many of the 3.7 million could earn less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
• Migrant farmworkers have been exploited for years under the H2-A visa system, with bosses, who are supposed to seek U.S. farm workers first, ignoring that rule. The Democratic Biden administration made avoidance tougher and mandated more “wage transparency” for workers: Pay stubs and checks, not under-the-table cash, or none at all. Chavez-DeRemer reversed all those safeguards.
• The farmworkers often ride creaky buses to jobs. Biden required seatbelts in the buses as a safety measure. Chavez-DeRemer ended that safety rule, too.
• If a farmworker complained, Biden’s rules banned the boss from retaliating and came down hard on bosses who refused to renew workers’ visas. Chavez-DeRemer dropped both requirements. During Trump’s first four-year term, farm bosses often called in ICE agents, especially during organizing drives.  Now, ICE agents raid farms everywhere, union and non-union, dragooning anyone with brown skin. 

When agents raided a cannabis farm and factory in California’s Central Valley two weeks ago, a 57-year-old farmworker, fleeing across a roof he was repairing, fell over the side, dropped 30 feet, broke his skull, and died two days later.  

Ironically, a report from Washington state says farmers there may have to lean on H-2A visas even more. The number has quadrupled, to 36,000 statewide, in a decade. The reason for even more dependence? Trump’s ICE raids grab their present workers, or force them to stay home in fear of being picked up and summarily deported.

Chavez-DeRemer said she wants to make issuing more H-2A visas quicker, to help farmers, not mentioning workers at all. The one exception, she told Fox Business, a Trump megaphone, “illegal immigrants” will not be let in. 

• Banning pension administrators from considering “environmental, social and governance” impacts when investing their funds. That could affect billions of dollars in union pension investments. ESG was part of a joint rule by the Biden administration’s Labor Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Chavez-DeRemer’s rewrite says pension administrators must stick only to investments with the highest returns. But that, she told Fox Business, includes investing in cryptocurrencies. Trump just formed a cryptocurrency firm. 

• Light up mining tunnels—not. Biden’s Mine Safety and Health Administration instituted that rule. Chavez-DeRemer’s DOL repealed it. The AFL-CIO’s Reindel told AP that’s dangerous. In unlit tunnels, too many miners fall through unseen holes, she said. “It’s a very obvious thing that employers should address, but unfortunately, it’s one of those things where we need a standard, and it’s violated all the time.”

“Who is going to monitor dust levels in our mines? Who will ensure the next generation of miners doesn’t end up with the same black lungs as their fathers and grandfathers?” asks Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts. “The United Mine Workers will not stand by silently while decades of progress are gutted overnight. This isn’t just detrimental — it’s catastrophic.”

“Who lives and who dies in the workplace is determined by politics–both power relationships in the workplace, and traditional politics that determines who controls our government,” Barab once wrote. 

“What that means is that organizing unions and electing politicians who will fight against unlimited corporate control over our regulatory agencies, our workplaces and the environment are of vital importance to protecting the health and safety of American workers.”   

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