The incoming Trump administration is expected to change rules and make it more difficult for workers to receive overtime pay and benefits.
“There will be a concerted effort to repeal pro-worker N.L.R.B. precedents,” said Heidi Shierholz, a senior Labor Department official during the Obama administration, referring to the National Labor Relations Board.
Experts like Ms. Shierholz, who is now president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said they also expected the Trump administration to ease up on enforcing safety rules, to narrow eligibility for overtime pay and to make it harder for gig workers to gain status as employees.
The reason why blue-collar workers should never vote for Trump can be seen in his first-term record on labor.
Trump Is An Extremely Anti-Worker President
As I wrote in our newsletter The Daily:
Donald Trump rolled back the Obama administration’s overtime rules and made 8.2 million workers ineligible for overtime pay. Trump stacked the National Labor Relations Board with people hostile to collective bargaining who then issued a series of rules that made it more difficult for workers to organize.
Trump used his presidency to make sure that workers were paid less and faced more hurdles to organizing, but if there is one action that stands out above all of the others, it is how Trump tried to change tipping.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, “One of the Trump DOL’s most egregious rulemakings was the proposed “tip stealing” rule, which would allow employers to pocket the tips of their employees, as long as workers are paid the minimum wage. EPI’s estimates showed that, if finalized, the rule would have resulted in $5.8 billion in lost wages of tipped workers each year. However, before the rule was finalized, reports found that the Secretary of Labor went to great lengths to hide DOL’s economic analysis that showed the rule would have been costly to workers. In the wake of this news, Congress added a section to the Fair Labor Standards Act that prohibits employers from keeping tips received by employees, ultimately making the proposed rule invalid.”
When Trump promised not to tax overtime pay, he left out a key detail. He is going to make it impossible for many workers to earn overtime pay, so it doesn’t matter if it’s not taxed. Millions of workers won’t be getting it.
Workers had a great for years under Joe Biden, but all of that progress will be erased once Trump takes office.
Trump is the most hostile president toward workers in a century, and yet some people didn’t seem to know what they were voting for and sent him back to the White House.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
