Trump Attacks the Unions

The US added 2.1m jobs in 2017 as the unemployment level fell to an 18-year low.  Shareholders and CEOs may have done very well out of Trump’s first year in office. But workers’ rights, says lobby group Good Jobs Nation in a new analysis, have been systematically attacked in a way that will affect labour for decades to come.

Trump’s most significant accomplishment, according to GJN director Joseph Geevarghese, has been to “eviscerate” all the gains the labour movement made under the Obama administration. Many working Americans have ended the year with less security than they started with.  Trump has made significant moves to end or roll back legislation aimed at protecting American workers – and 90 more pieces of legislation are in the process of being passed.

 “Trump ran as being the workers’ champion,” said Geevarghese. “He has done exactly the opposite.” Instead of being an agent of change, Geevarghese said the Trump administration had mirrored the orthodoxy of the rightwing arm of the Republican party. He said the only answer was for people to “hit the streets in greater numbers than ever before. The worst, worst thing you can do is let a liar get away with his lies,” he said.

Trump revoked Barack Obama’s 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, which barred companies from federal contracts if they had a history of violating safety, workplace harassment or wage theft laws. Now, Republicans plan to push ahead with the repeal of other rules they believe will free business from burdensome legislation meant to protect workers, including:

• The Outdoor Recreation Enhancement Act, which would block requirements that federal government contractors at national parks pay workers $10.10 an hour, overtime and sick pay.
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• The Future Logging Careers Act, which will expand the use of child labour in the forestry industry so that 16- and 17 year-olds can work in logging under adult supervision.

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering a rollback of a 2015 rule that banned children under 18 from working with toxic pesticides.

• The Department of Labor (DoL) has proposed repealing an Obama-era rule that workers who earn tips should keep them and that they could only be shared with other employees who received tips. The Trump administration argues the new rule is fairer because it means that tips can now be shared with “back of the house” employees who don’t get tipped. Critics point out that the establishment’s owner will now collect the tips and is not obligated to share them. In fact, the rule specifically states that pooled money can be used for structural improvements or to lower prices.
• The Trump administration has filed an amicus brief in support of a supreme court case that could spell financial calamity for the unions. The case, Janus v American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, is financed in large part by the conservative Bradley Foundation. It argues that non-union members who are forced to pay an “agency fee” to cover the expense of representing them in wage negotiations etc should be exempted because they should not be forced to subsidise a union’s political spending.
  A similar case, Friedrichs v California Teachers Association, ended in deadlock at the supreme court. Now that Trump has put conservative justice Neil Gorsuch on the court, unions expect to lose. Some unions are preparing to lose a third of their income.
• Patrick Pizzella, nominee for deputy labour secretary, lobbied in support of a programme that imported indentured labourers to the Marianas Islands to work in sweatshops where there were reports of forced abortions and beatings. Cheryl Stanton, his pick for wage and hour administrator, the top enforcer of minimum wage and overtime protections, has been sued for failing to pay her house cleaners.
  On the subject of minimum wage it is also worth noting that the president has distanced himself from campaign promises to raise the federal minimum wage. He now thinks that this is an issue for states to decide, in line with his Republican colleagues.
• The agency – which oversees the rights of private-sector workers to organise into unions, bargain collectively and engage in workplace protest – has been remade under Trump. Under Obama the NLRB made franchise companies, notably McDonald’s, liable as “joint employers” for unfair labour practices at the businesses that they effectively control. That rule is being rolled back.