Michael Conroy/AP Photo
Though 200 meatpacking workers have died since March, OSHA’s few fines against meatpacking companies have been so small that they could not possibly deter future disregard for workers’ lives.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump famously pledged: “The jobs, incomes, and security of the American worker will always be my first priority.”
But at every opportunity—whether in appointing pro-corporate, anti-worker nominees to the courts, key agencies and positions; using his executive power; or spearheading legislation—President Trump’s track record has been exactly the opposite. Trump and his appointees have consistently and aggressively:
- adopted policies that take money out of workers’ pockets;
- undermined workers’ ability to bargain together for better pay and working conditions;
- and failed to protect workers’ health and safety on the job, most disastrously during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are so many examples of Trump’s anti-worker priorities, from tax policies to job losses resulting from his pandemic blunders, that they fill a whole new report from the Economic Policy Institute, where I serve as president. Our report capped the list of ways the Trump administration has hurt workers at 50—because of space limitations.
Trump’s tax policies have given billions of dollars in tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy while increasing incentives to offshore production. At the rhetorical level, his trade policies challenged decades of bipartisan malfeasance, but in the end his erratic messaging and execution, together with his decision not to address key problems like currency misalignment, have failed to bring jobs home or reduce the trade deficit.
The unemployment rate and the number of jobless Americans are almost double what they were when Trump took office, and he is on track to end his presidency with a net loss in the number of employed Americans. Even before the pandemic recession hit, real wage growth for most workers was relatively weak, inequality was rising, and deep racial inequities persisted.
The Trump Labor Board has stripped Uber drivers, Super Shuttle drivers, and others of their rights under labor law.
Trump’s appointees at the Labor Department weakened an Obama administration rule on overtime, depriving millions of workers of overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week. Trump’s Labor Department and National Labor Relations Board have issued rules that attempt to let McDonalds and other franchisers off the hook when their franchisees engage in wage theft and other illegal practices. EPI has estimated that these rules will cost workers $1.3 billion in lost wages every year. Fortunately, the Labor Department’s rule was struck down by a federal judge last week, but the Labor Board’s rules continue to stand.
Union organizing has also taken a hit under this administration.
The Trump Labor Board has faithfully acted on ten out of ten items on the Chamber of Commerce’s wish list, giving employers more power to interfere in organizing campaigns. The administration’s war on unions has come at a time when leading economists agree that one of the best ways for workers to win higher wages and better working conditions is through forming a union with their co-workers and bargaining collectively with their employers. Unionized workers earn 11 percent more than workers without a union, and the pay difference is even higher for Black and Latinx workers.
In a move that undermined unions in the public sector, the Trump Justice Department persuaded the Supreme Court, with newly confirmed Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch voting with the majority, to say unions and employers in the public sector cannot negotiate agreements in which workers share in the costs of negotiating and enforcing collective bargaining agreements. The Trump Labor Board has stripped Uber drivers, Super Shuttle drivers, and others of their rights under labor law, and has proposed to strip organizing rights from tens of thousands of student workers as well.
Trump has refused to issue binding rules requiring employers to institute safety measures to protect nurses, bus drivers, meatpacking and poultry workers, and other vulnerable workers from exposure to COVID-19 on the job.
When it comes to worker protections, Trump has repeatedly put the proverbial fox in charge of the henhouse. Trump’s appointees to the National Labor Relations Board—except for a recently re-confirmed Democrat—have all made their names representing corporate interests, not workers’. Trump’s Labor Secretary, Eugene Scalia, spent his previous career fighting against worker protections, including those he is now tasked with enforcing.
Even amid this cavalcade of horrors, one point requires highlighting: the administration has utterly failed to protect workers’ health and safety during the most serious public health pandemic our country has faced in a century.
Trump has refused to issue binding rules requiring employers to institute safety measures to protect nurses, bus drivers, meatpacking and poultry workers, and other vulnerable workers from exposure to COVID-19 on the job. Thousands of OSHA complaints from workers about unsafe working conditions during COVID-19 have led to few citations; and a report by the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General found understaffing at the agency was causing investigation delays. Not to mention the recent outcry over OSHA’s meager fines for unsafe working conditions against meatpacking companies. Though 200 meatpacking workers have died since March, OSHA’s few fines against meatpacking companies, including Smithfield Foods, have been so small that they could not possibly deter future disregard for workers’ lives.
While Donald Trump never shot a bystander on Fifth Avenue (as he once bragged he could do with impunity), his neglect of workers’ health and safety has cost many thousands of lives—and graphically demonstrates how little empathy and concern for the lives of working people the president actually has.
Over the next several weeks, we are likely to hear the same lines about his pro-worker sympathies from candidate Trump that we heard in 2016. His claims could not be more hollow. Working people cannot afford another four years of empty rhetoric and hostile actions.
