WASHINGTON—Enduring almost three hours full of evasive answers, Democrats on the House Education and the Workforce Committee jumped on GOP President Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, about the president’s planned huge cuts in both money and people enforcing laws against wage theft.
The lawmakers forced Chavez-DeRemer to admit that under a skeleton version of Trump’s proposed budget for the fiscal year starting October 1, the number of workers in the department’s Wage and Hour Division would decline from 1,313 when Trump took office to 906 in the new fiscal year.
That division enforces laws banning wage theft—and recovers lost pay after it occurs, plus damages.
There are 1,160 Wage and Hour staffers now, after 153 workers either took six-month buyouts which Trump’s government offered, or were fired due to purges by Trump’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” then headed by multibillionaire and Trump puppeteer Elon Musk.
Wage and Hour Division funds would take a 19% hit, down $25 million, too. Chavez-DeRemer downplayed the figures. “More dollars [do] not necessarily complete the job,” she said.
“Firing more inspectors will not empower the modern worker,” Rep. Ilhan Omar, DFL-Minn., later retorted. “The math is not mathing.”
The division is important to workers, union and non-union. It investigates and prosecutes violations of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, the basic law establishing overtime pay and the minimum wage.
But in many industries, notably construction and food service, and also industries where employers exploit undocumented people, bosses don’t pay workers what they’re owed.
And 30% of all wage theft occurred in those two industries, which also employ high proportions of undocumented—and exploitable—people. In fiscal 2024, which ended September 30, Wage and Hour recovered $273 million in unpaid wages for 152,000 workers.
Vowed to enforce laws
Chavez-DeRemer vowed to enforce anti-wage theft laws, even with a budget cut and fewer people. Democrats were skeptical, at best. A typical exchange came when Rep. Alma Adams, D-N.C., and Chavez-DeRemer discussed child labor law violations. “In terms of these staff cuts, will these reduce the number of investigations of child labor?” Adams asked.
“The goal of the Wage and Hour Division is compliance and enforcement,” Chavez-DeRemer replied. “Absolutely…we want to streamline and modernize. I will work with all my divisions to ensure we are complying with the law, and we will be able to do that once the budget is finalized.
“But it is not acceptable that we will ever tolerate child labor,” she added. “I will do everything in my power to prevent it.”
That was one of the few positive Chavez-DeRemer answers. She may have her work cut out on that issue. Republican-run states, with Iowa in the lead, are legalizing child labor in fields and factories.
Otherwise, Chavez-DeRemer repeatedly said she couldn’t discuss planned department action—or lack of it—because “the matter is under litigation.” DOL faces lawsuits from unions, civic groups, worker advocates, and others against Trump’s plans to fire its workers and dump its projects.
In her prepared statement, Chavez-DeRemer admitted DOL is reviewing every Joe Biden administration regulation to see whether the Trump government should or could yank it. The president has set a goal for all agencies of ten regulations dumped for every new rule they announce.
Her review announcement pleased the committee chair, Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich. In his opening statement, Walberg slammed Biden rules which, he said—falsely—hamstrung U.S. businesses, sent companies fleeing from our shores, and drove joblessness and inflation up.
In reality, of course, the opposite happened under Biden. Inflation rose, but has since fallen, due to federal “pump-priming” of billions of dollars to keep workers alive and companies going during the coronavirus pandemic. The prior Trump government, in its last two years, 2019-21, denied the pandemic’s existence until Congress forced it to give out the aid.
Meanwhile, half the economy closed down, and unemployment shot up into double-digit percentages. At its height, including jobless benefit checks to “gig economy” workers and others who are shut out of the regular jobless benefits system, some 22% of all U.S. workers received checks. By the time Biden left office, the pandemic and its depression were over, and joblessness was 4%.
Chavez-DeRemer’s promise to review all Biden-era rules wasn’t quite enough for far-right Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill. She urged the Secretary to junk three particular Biden-era rules, one of which hasn’t even taken effect yet: Protecting workers against deaths and injuries from excessive heat.
Telephone lines people, underground sewer workers, assembly-line workers in factories, and particularly warehouses, and especially farm workers, are all exposed to the dangers of high heat. Several Amazon warehouse workers have collapsed and died in recent years. So have produce pickers, the United Farm Workers report. The death rate among farm, fishery, and timber workers is higher than that of any other occupational group, federal figures show.
Could have been prevented
The farmworker deaths, DOL probers have found, could have been prevented through simple measures, such as having enough water on hand, hydration breaks, shade, and—in the factories and warehouses—ventilation and air conditioning. Miller was having none of it.
“Among the pile of infamous rules was the heat standard, as well as the infamous worker walk-around rule,” Miller declared. “As if that wasn’t enough, Democrats wanted to stifle independent contractors with more regulations to hamper economic growth and job opportunities.” Miller wants Chavez-DeRemer to kill all three Biden administration rules
“I can’t comment on this, as it is in active rulemaking,” and DOL must follow federal law governing that, Chavez DeRemer replied about the heat rule. She didn’t discuss the other two.
Unions have campaigned hard and worked closely with Biden’s DOL to curb firms’ misclassification of workers as independent contractors. Misclassification bans workers from unionizing and denies them overtime pay and jobless benefits, the minimum wage, and workers’ comp. It forces them to pay their share and the employer’s share of Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes.
The walk-around rule declares that worker representatives—often union safety and health experts, even when non-union firms are involved—can “walk around” job disaster sites, accompanying federal OSHA and MSHA inspectors. The trained unionists often spot violations when the feds do not.
Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, a union organizer, went the other direction on heat. “Recent research shows that about 2000 workers are killed at work because they overheat due to the (high) heat, and thousands more” are injured every year, he said.
Casar told Chavez-DeRemer that several weeks before, some corporate lobbyists told lawmakers they oppose the Biden heat rule, but admitted it is wrong to let construction workers come to work at 7 a.m., in 90-degree weather, and “work without a rest break until lunch” when temperatures could hit 100. That was the example Casar cited.
“I know you can’t discuss the rule-making, but would you agree that that’s wrong and dangerous?” he asked. Chavez-DeRemer, daughter of a Teamster trucker, was evasive.
“I understand you want my opinion, but as Secretary of Labor, the bigger question is, ‘Is it my responsibility to take the information from the stakeholders, as you just mentioned, from one side says that it might be wrong and from another side that says, wait a minute, we want to comply?’
“We will take that information when we are in rulemaking, and we will use it to follow the law. But we know, as I said earlier, that one size does not fit all. One of the things I want Congress to address,” said Chavez-DeRemer, a former congresswoman, “is…the issue and decide the best way forward. I want to work with you on that.”
“In San Antonio last summer, it was 100-degree heat virtually all summer,” Casar followed up. “Do you think a person should be working in 100-degree heat?” all that time.
“Well, as Secretary of Labor, I cannot put my thumb on the scale,” Chavez-DeRemer replied.
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