Donald Trump campaigned on the lament that, under past presidents, “our workers' loyalty was repaid with betrayal,” but that “It doesn't have to be this way. We can turn it all around—and we can turn it around fast” and “Under a Trump presidency, the American worker will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them.”
About that.
The National Employment Law Project has lined up some of Trump’s key actions on workers in 2017 and it should not surprise you to learn that his promises were lies:
January: Anti-Worker Fast-Food CEO Nominated to Lead Labor Department.The U.S. Labor Department is charged with promoting the welfare of workers, improving working conditions, and increasing opportunities for workers to earn good wages. But the Trump administration nominated Andrew Puzder, a wealthy fast-food CEO with a documented history of labor violations, anti-worker philosophy, misogyny, and sexual harassment, to fill this important post. [...]
March: Drug Testing People Who Lose Their Jobs. Instead of helping people who’ve lost their jobs get back to work, congressional leadership and the Trump administration repealed a 2016 Labor Department rule, thereby making it easier for states to drug-test unemployment insurance claimants. [...]
April: Endangering Worker Safety and Health. Worker safety regulations do not kill jobs, they prevent jobs from killing workers. Yet the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under President Trump bowed to industry pressure and inexplicably delayed rules intended to protect workers from exposure to deadly silica dust. Moreover, in an unprecedented move, OSHA proposed in June to strip away critical protections for construction and shipyard workers against cancer-causing beryllium. [...]
June: A Pay Cut. The Trump Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division pre-announced an effort to roll back the 2016 overtime rules that promised to give 4.2 million workers around the country a long-overdue raise or more time with their families. [...]
August: Invalidating Tools to Identify Gender and Race-Based Pay Gaps. In a move that undermines pay-practice transparency, which is the first step in eliminating gender- and race-based pay gaps, the White House in August halted an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission initiative to collect better data on what companies pay workers by race and gender. [...]
December: Taking Workers’ Tips. Many workers in service industries like restaurants depend on tips to get by. The Labor Department has now proposed rescinding a rule that ensured that tips belong to workers. This proposal would give employers the chance to redistribute and even steal a portion of tips. It’s a prime example of an attempt to redistribute money from working people to employers, including large corporations.
Click through for lots more.