Bob Sheak, March 15, 2025
Trump’s views on workers are not new
Lawrence Wittner, Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany who has written extensively on peace movements, foreign policy, and economic inequality, considers Trump’s record on American workers (https://commondreams.org/opinion/trump-working-class). The title of his article, published on May 21, 2024, says it all: “Trump Didn’t Lift Up the Working Class. He Stepped on Its Neck.” Here’s some of what he writes.
“Although Donald Trump, as president, proclaimed in his 2020 State of the Union address that he had produced a “blue-collar boom” in workers’ wages, the reality was quite different. Using his control of the executive branch of the U.S. government, Trump repeatedly undermined the wages of American workers by blocking raises and imposing wage reductions.
“Only the preceding year, Trump derailed vital wage legislation. In July 2019―with the pathetically low federal minimum wage stuck at $7.25 per hour for a decade and some 13 million workers holding two or more jobs to support their families―the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed the Raise the Wage Act. If enacted, the legislation would have gradually increased the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour over a six-year period. But, instead of supporting the legislation or proposing an alternative, the Trump White House announced that, if the Senate passed the House bill, Trump would veto it.
“Consequently, the measure died in the Republican-controlled Senate. According to the AFL-CIO, the legislation would have raised the pay of 40 million American workers.
Wittner continues.
Also in 2019, “Trump’s Department of Labor succeeded in rolling back planned wage increases for millions of workers by restricting eligibility for overtime pay. In 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, the Labor Department had issued a rule substantially raising the income level below which workers were paid time and a half for work done beyond 40 hours per week. But the Trump Labor Department, seizing on a delay in implementation occasioned by a judicial decision, lowered the level by more than $20,000, thus depriving 8.2 million American workers of the right to overtime pay secured under Obama.
“In August 2018, Trump canceled a scheduled 2 percent pay raise for millions of civilian federal employees, leading to criticism even from some Republicans. This action, plus other administration assaults on the rights of public employees, led to a massive flight of workers from government service. By the fall of 2019, there were 45,000 vacancies in the Department of Veterans Affairs alone. To fill these vacancies, the Trump administration hired large numbers of temp workers at low wages and with minimal benefits.
“Yet another administration policy that undercut workers’ wages emerged with the Trump Labor Department’s issuance of a “joint-employer” rule. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 had been fashioned to ensure that businesses using staffing companies or subcontractors would be accountable for complying with basic workplace protections. Even so, the Trump administration’s joint-employer rule substantially limited liability for wage and hour violations, thereby making it harder for workers to hold all parties accountable. As a result, U.S. workers lost an estimated $1 billion annually thanks to subcontracting or wage theft by employers.
“Of course, not all Trump administration attempts at holding down wages succeeded. In 2017, the Trump Labor Department proposed that employers could simply pocket workers’ tips, as long as the workers were paid the minimum wage. Economists estimated that this policy would lead to the loss of $5.8 billion per year in tips for workers, 80 percent of whom were women. But after the discovery that Trump’s Secretary of Labor had gone to great lengths to hide his department’s findings about how harmful the new policy would be, Congress stepped in and amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to prohibit employers from seizing the tips of their employees.
“Another Trump administration failure occurred in connection with reducing the wages of farmworkers, some of the most exploited, lowest-paid workers in the United States. In mid-2019, the Labor Department proposed a new regulation that would change the rules of the H-2A visa program, used by agricultural employers to hire migrant farmworkers for seasonal work―for example, by President Trump’s wineries. As one of the rules changes would lower wage rates for H-2A farmworkers and, consequently, for their U.S. counterparts, the United Farm Workers challenged it in federal court and, ultimately, prevailed.”
Ten of Trump’s more recent, pre-reelection, anti-worker statements
Steven Greenhouse, a journalist and author focusing on labor and the workplace,
delves into this issue (https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/23/trumpanti-worker-union-statements).
Greenhouse writes, “Many people failed to realize that Donald Trump has a long, ugly history of making anti-worker and anti-union statements. He has at times insulted workers, saying their wages are too high, saying their work is so easy that a child can do it.” He also “sought to sabotage labor by saying union members shouldn’t pay their dues and successful union leaders should be fired.”
Greenhouse identifies “Trump’s 10 most shocking anti-worker and anti-union statements.” Here are a few examples. (1) “Trump actually said that the wages of US workers are ‘too high’…even though corporate profits and the stock market were booming at the time.” (2) “Trump praised the idea of firing workers who are on strike, even though that is illegal under federal law.” (3) “Trump insulted the nation’s factory workers by saying their jobs are such a cinch that children can do them. By saying that, he showed he has very little understanding of blue-collar jobs and how hard, exhausting and sometimes dangerous they are.” (4) “Before he became president, he was notorious for paying construction contractors and workers late and for refusing to pay them the amount he had promised to pay; sometimes he would pay tens of thousands of dollars less than he was contracted to pay. Hundreds of contractors and workers had sued Trump after he failed to pay them or after he insisted on paying them far less than what the contract called for.”
A Union documents Trump’s Anti-Worker Record
CWA [Communication Workers of America] also looks at Trump’s anti-worker record (https://cwa-union.org/trumps-anti-worker-record).
The union makes this point: “At every turn Donald Trump has made increasing the power of corporations over working people his top priority. The list of the damage done to working people by the Trump Administration is long.” Here are a few examples.
“Trump packed the courts with anti-labor judges who have made the entire public sector ‘right to work for less’ in an attempt to financially weaken unions by increasing the number of freeloaders.
“Trump stacked the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union appointees who side with employers in contract disputes and support companies who delay and stall union elections, misclassify workers to take away their freedom to join a union, and silence workers.
“Trump made it easier for employers to fire or penalize workers who speak up for better pay and working conditions or exercise the right to strike.
“Trump changed the rules about who qualifies for overtime pay, making more than 8 million workers ineligible and costing them over $1 billion per year in lost wages.
“Trump reduced the number of OSHA inspectors so that there are now fewer than at any time in history, and weakened penalties for companies that fail to report violations.”
Trump rips up the Government’s agreement with its workers
Harold Meyerson, editor at large of The American Prospect, considers some of the actions taken by Trump and his administration, plus Musk, on government workers
(https://prospect.org/labor/2025-03-10-trump-rips-up-governments-agreement-with-workers).
“Airport security screeners had a contract, signed just last year. On Friday [March 7, 2025], Trump trashed it.” “…Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, told the roughly 45,000 airport security screeners (of both passengers and their luggage) who work for the Transportation Security Administration that it would no longer honor its contract with their union, which the government signed last year and was to be in effect until 2031. That contract gave the nation’s airport screeners the right to parental, sick, and bereavement leave, and also raised their wages to levels comparable to the wages of other federal employees with similar jobs.
Meyerson continues. “One of the ostensible reasons Homeland Security gave for its going back on its word is that the 193 security screeners are on leave to the union to represent the screeners when they have issues on the job. The vast majority of those union reps work in the field, covering the 430 U.S. airports where federal screeners are employed. Somehow, having 193 worker representatives covering work issues at 430 vitally important worksites doesn’t strike me as excessive, much less grounds for unilaterally abrogating a contract that the government is legally obligated to honor.”
There is more.
“There are two regulatory bodies charged with adjudicating disputes between federal employees and the government: the Federal Labor Relations Authority and the Merit Systems Protection Board. Not coincidentally, however, Trump has fired Democratic members of both those boards, effectively leaving them incapable of ruling on any cases brought before them. These boards, like the National Labor Relations Board, were established by Congress to have members serving for fixed terms who can’t be terminated mid-term by a president save for misconduct, which hasn’t been alleged in any such Trump firings. For that reason, one federal district judge temporarily reinstated one such member earlier last week, just as another reinstated Gwynne Wilcox, an NLRB member whom Trump had fired, to her seat on that board.”
Meyerson adds, “Today, the rate of unionization is so low—just below 10 percent among all workers and just below 6 percent among private-sector workers—that there’s not much room for it to descend any lower. Ironically, unions’ approval rating, at a little more than 70 percent, hasn’t been this high since the 1960s, and towers above the approval ratings of corporations, the government, and Donald Trump. Employers’ determination to crush unionization drives, however, is also at a near all-time high, with Amazon and other companies now in court contesting the constitutionality of the 90-year-old National Labor Relations Act.”
Bernie Sanders on pending legislation that cuts or eliminates programs that address the needs of workers
The CR [continuing resolution] Would Cut Taxes for Billionaires and Slash Funding for the Working Class
Bernie Sanders, Counter Punch, March 14, 2025
(https://counterpunch.org/2025/03/14/the-cr-would-cut-taxes-for-billionaires-and-slash-funding-for-the-working-class). Here’s some of what Sanders writes.
“Today, at a time when we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of this country, 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck.”
“So given that reality, what does this bill do? The bill written by right-wing extremists in the House of Representatives without any bipartisan discussion at all.
“What does this bill do? Well, let me count the ways that it makes their financial struggles of working people even more difficult than they are today. And it does all of that to lay the groundwork for massive tax breaks for Elon Musk and the billionaire class.”
Here are a few of Sanders’ examples.
“…some 22% of seniors in this country are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less. Half of our seniors are trying to survive on $30,000 or less. So what does the Trump/Musk administration do to address the terrible economic pressures on seniors all over America? Well, they have a brilliant idea: they illegally fire thousands of workers at the Social Security Administration, with plans to cut that staff in half.”
“In America today, 30,000 people die each year waiting to receive their Social Security disability benefits because of a grossly understaffed and under-resourced Social Security Administration.”
“When you have the President lying about millions of people who are 150 or 200 years of age receiving Social Security benefits – a total lie – everybody should understand what’s going on. Trump and Musk are laying the groundwork for the dismantling of the most successful federal program in history, a program that keeps over 27 million Americans out of poverty. And, by the way, over 99% of the more than 70 million Social Security checks that go out each month are going to people who earned those benefits.”
The continuing resolution passed in the House is also “an attack on the veterans of our nation – the men and women who put their lives on the line defending our country.
“While we made some progress under the Biden administration in improving veterans’ health care, the truth is that the VA has remained significantly understaffed. In the fourth quarter of 2024, there were 36,000 vacancies at the VA.
“We needed 2,400 more doctors, 6,300 more registered nurses, 3,400 more schedulers, 1,800 more social workers, and 1,200 more custodians. So what has the “Trump administration and Mr. Musk done to address this very serious workforce shortage?
“Their answer is that they are threatening to dismantle the VA by firing 83,000 employees. In other words, you have a shortage today, and their solution to the shortage is to fire 83,000 workers.
“Not only does the CR do nothing to stop that, but it cuts more than $20 billion in funding needed to provide care for veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances next year.”
“Just the other day, they fired half of the staff at the Department of Education. That means that it will be far harder to administer the Title I program that helps 26 million low-income kids get the education they need and pays the salaries of some 180,000 public school teachers throughout the country.”
“Well, at a time when our primary health care system is completely broken, when we don’t have enough doctors or nurses or mental health counselors, this proposal cuts community health center funding by 3.2%, cuts the National Health Service Corps by over 5% and cuts funding for Teaching Health Centers — a program which helps train doctors in rural and underserved areas — by almost 13%.
In the midst of a horrific primary health care crisis in Vermont and all over rural America, this proposal will make it that much harder for people to get the health care they desperately need.”
“But it’s not just health care. Everyone in this country from Vermont to Los Angeles understands we have a major housing crisis. And it’s not just all the homelessness we are seeing. Over 20 million of our people spend more than 50% of their limited income on housing.
“How in God’s name do you pay for anything else? How do you buy food? How do you take care of health care if you’re spending 50% or more for your housing.
So how does this CR address the housing crisis? It cuts rental assistance for low-income families in America by $700 million, which could lead to more than 32,000 families in our country being evicted from their homes. Well, that is a heck of a solution to the housing crisis.”
“And on top of all this, the administration is already indicating that they will simply ignore the provisions of the spending bill they don’t like.”
“And let’s be clear: the House CR and the Trump administration are doing everything they can to lay the groundwork for more tax breaks for billionaires paid for by massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition assistance, housing and education.
“So you’re looking at a 1-2 punch: a very bad CR and then a reconciliation bill coming down which will be the final kick in the teeth for the American people.
“This legislation that the Republicans are working on, the reconciliation bill, will cut taxes for billionaires and the top 1% by $1.1 trillion over the next decade.”
“According to a recent study, if all of Trump’s so-called ‘America First’ policies are enacted, the bottom 95% of Americans will see their taxes go up, while the richest 5% in our country will see their taxes go down. Way down.
The reconciliation bill which Republicans are working on right now “would also cut Medicaid by $880 billion.
“Tax breaks for billionaires. Throwing low-income kids off health care. Decimating nursing homes all over America, because nursing homes receive two-thirds of their funding from Medicaid. Making it harder for community health centers to survive, who provide health care to 32 million Americans because 43% of their revenue comes from Medicaid.
Further, the reconciliation bill proposes to cut $230 billion from nutrition. Today, nearly one out of five children in America rely on federal nutrition programs to keep them from going hungry.
There is no world, no universe, no religion that would not believe that that is grossly immoral and unacceptable. You don’t give tax breaks to the rich and take food away from hungry children.
The firing of thousands of government workers
Chris Walker reports in an article for Truthout on March 13, 2025 on how “Trump Baselessly Suggests Fired Federal Workers Were Incompetent at Their Jobs”
(https://truthout.org/articles/trump-baselessly-suggests-fired-federal-workers-were-incompetent-at-their-jobs). Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles.
Walker writes, “Contrary to the administration’s view, ‘a multi-year survey finds that those working at federal jobs tend to be among the hardest working in the country.
“Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Donald Trump expressed little remorse over his administration’s firing of thousands of government workers through Elon Musk’s so-called ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE), baselessly suggesting that the people who have been fired thus far were incompetent at their jobs.
“Trump offered no evidence to back up his claims. The president’s words contradict what data about federal workers has shown — that they are oftentimes more productive than their private sector counterparts.”
Evidence belies what Trump says.
“According to data recently examined by The Washington Post, federal workers, on average, are much more hardworking than the president gives them credit for.
“The Post examined data from the American Community Survey, which looked at 13 million workers’ habits over the past decade and found that federal workers are more productive than any other class of worker.
“The survey then broke down different types of federal workers, and still found that those working in the public sector tended to work beyond the typical 40-hour work week.
“Workers within the armed services worked 48.4 hours per week, the survey found, while postal service workers performed around 41.6 hours per week. All other civil servants worked the same amount, 41.6 hours weekly.”
“The survey also found that a higher proportion of federal workers tended to work at least 40 hours per week. Among those in the military, 94 percent worked that long or longer; among postal workers, the rate was over 87 percent, and among all other federal workers, it was over 91 percent, well above the 74.4 percent of private sector workers who tended to work over a 40-hour week.”
Mass Firings of Federal Workers Were Done Illegally, Two Judges Rule
Anita Hamilton considers this development in an article for Barron’s, March 14, 2025
(https://barrons.com/articles/federal-workers-reinstate-court-california-ruling-40c2b920).
“Most federal workers who lost their jobs as part of the Trump administration’s move to shrink the federal workforce are poised to get rehired. On Thursday, two federal judges ruled that the mass firings were conducted illegally and workers must be reinstated.
“The orders affect employees at nearly 20 agencies, comprising the vast majority of the 30,000 workers still in their probationary periods who were dismissed in February.
“The first ruling, from Judge William Alsup in Northern California district court, found that the firings at six agencies—including the Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs departments—were illegal because the Office of Personnel Management didn’t have the authority to direct them.
“In the second ruling, which came late Thursday night, Judge James Bredar of Maryland district court said layoffs of probationary workers across 18 agencies were conducted without proper notice. ‘There were no individualized assessments of employees. They were all just fired. Collectively,’ Bredar wrote in a memorandum accompanying his temporary restraining order.
“These big government layoffs were actually ‘Reductions in Force’ or ‘RIFs.’ And, because they were ‘RIFs,’ they had to be preceded by notice to the state that would be impacted,” he wrote.
“Deadlines for reinstating workers are either immediate in the Northern California court ruling or by March 17 in the Maryland court ruling. The rulings are preliminary and could change once a final decision is made. Both judges were appointed by Democratic presidents: Barack Obama appointed Bredar and Bill Clinton appointed Alsup.”
“Previous efforts have had mixed results, with most reinstatements only temporary. Thousands of Department of Agriculture workers terminated in February were reinstated March 12 after they were granted a 45-day stay by the federal agency that reviews employee complaints. They will receive all back pay, and the department “will work quickly to develop a phased plan for return-to-duty,” according to a USDA statement.”
“There has been an onslaught of lawsuits pushing back on Trump’s executive actions, with more than 100 filed since Inauguration Day. On Thursday, 21 attorneys general—most from the same states that filed suit over probationary worker firings—filed a new suit over mass firings at the Education Department.”
Trump Set to Whack US Working Class With Historic $2,000 Tax Hike
Dean Baker, co-founder and the senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), considers another aspect of Trump’s actions related to taxes and workers (https://commondreams.org/opinion/trump-tax-hike-working-class). The article was published on March 4.
“The waiting is almost over, Donald Trump is about to hit America’s workers with the largest tax increase they have ever seen. Trump’s taxes on imports (tariffs) from Canada, Mexico, and China will cost people in the United States somewhere around $260 billion a year or around $2,000 a household.
“This is far larger than any tax increase we’ve seen in the last half-century, and unlike tax increases put in place by Clinton and Obama, it will primarily hit low and middle-income households.”
Trump Is Sending the Economy in the Wrong Direction
Christian E. Weller and Emily Gee report on this in an article for the American Progress, March 9. 2025 (https://americanprogress.org/article/trump-is-sending-the-economy-in-the-wrong-direction).
“The Trump administration appears to be sending the U.S. economy into a period of slower growth and higher inflation. In the past few weeks, the administration enacted steep tariffs on a wide range of imports from America’s top trading partners and threatened more; has laid off tens of thousands of federal government workers; and has frozen payments already appropriated by Congress for farms, Head Start facilities, economic development programs, and more.
“The administration’s sudden moves have raised uncertainty about what will happen next. What programs will they cut—and by how much? What regulations will the administration enforce or roll back? Will critical government services that help everyday Americans cease to function? The Economic Policy Uncertainty Index—maintained by researchers at Stanford, the University of Chicago, and Northwestern University—was 161.9 percent higher in February 2025 than a year earlier. Massive uncertainty makes it harder for households and businesses to plan, invest, and spend. Put differently, even President Donald Trump’s threats to further undermine Americans’ economic security can hurt both economic growth and the stock market.
“Over Trump’s first two months in office, some aspects of the economic outlook for typical Americans have become clearer, even as policy uncertainty escalates. At the urging of President Trump, Congress approved plans to make deep cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs to fund tax giveaways for wealthy households. And, over the past few weeks—amid the chaos of federal funding freezes and layoffs—the stock market has become more volatile, directly impacting the savings of millions of American households.”
Trump’s tariffs
Weller and Gee continue. “The Trump administration’s tariffs on Mexico and Canada are expected to put upward pressure on prices and sticky inflation. The 25 percent taxes on goods coming from the United States’ biggest trade partners will raise costs for American businesses and households. Production costs will rise as firms pay more for energy, agricultural products, and intermediate goods such as car parts.
“American consumers pay for higher tariffs—not foreign countries, as Trump has claimed. Indeed, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee—which makes interest rate decisions—observed in January that “firms would attempt to pass on to consumers higher input costs arising from potential tariffs.” Some major retail chains have already said they are poised to hike prices, passing on all or some of these higher costs to American consumers.”
A recession?
“The Conference Board’s U.S. Consumer Confidence measure—a prominent indicator of consumers’ outlook for the economy—dropped “sharply” in February, falling “below the threshold of 80 that usually signals a recession ahead.”
“Conference Board senior economist Stephanie Guichard noted that “comments on the current Administration and its policies dominated the responses” in the survey.
Consumer confidence is not just about vibes, to use recent vernacular. Consumer confidence has fallen substantially in 2025. The University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment stood at 64.7 in February 2025, the lowest reading of the composite index since November 2023. Consumer sentiment dropped 12.6 percent from December 2024—the index’s last peak—to February 2025, largely driven by consumer expectations of tariff-induced price increases.”
The labor market is softening
Weller and Gee: “The U.S. economy added 151,000 jobs in February, marking the 50th consecutive month of job growth. While the overall unemployment rate remains low by historical standards—at 4.1 percent—it increased for white men; for workers without a high school diploma; and for those with a college degree. The number of people who worked part time because their hours were reduced or they were unable to find full-time work jumped by 460,000 in February. These data points were consistent with other signals of a weakening labor market with less favorable conditions for workers. For example, the labor-leverage ratio—a measure of quits to layoffs and an indicator of workers’ ability to secure better jobs—has been trending down.”
“While it is still too early for the full effect of federal layoffs to show up in employment data, unemployment claims rose nationally and were up sharply in the District of Columbia in late February.”
“A volatile policy landscape can be a harsh climate for business, making it difficult for companies to forecast returns on investment and assume contracts will be fulfilled. Such uncertainty has increased since Trump was elected in November 2024. As one measure, the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index stood at 234 in February 2025, its highest reading since December 2020. This newly, highly unstable and uncertain policy environment is bad for business. Periods with above average increases in policy uncertainty have also been associated with slower industrial production growth—a reflection of less investment and other economic activity.”
Concluding thoughts
Donald Trump and his close adviser, Elon Musk, want to transform the federal government from one that reflects the Constitution and the law to one that they can lawlessly dominate. The largescale firing of government workers is one example of how they hope to accomplish this. If they are successful, the federal workforce would become smaller than it is, workers would have little security, and loyalty to Trump and Musk would become essential for jobholders. We would be left with an increasingly privatized workforce, lower wages and benefits, the loss or diminution of services, higher levels of inequality, and the demise of constitutional restraints on Trump’s power.
Vital issues - challenging pol and econ power 