(C) Common Dreams
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Trump's Federal Workforce Cuts Hit Labor Department Enforcement [1]
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Date: 2025-02-24 23:11:46+00:00
The Department of Labor terminated employees across at least six departments in recent weeks, potentially curbing the agency’s ability to conduct inspections and ensure fair pay and safety for workers, according to three sources familiar with the moves.
Civil servants at DOL, along with all federal employees, also received an email telling them to submit five bullet points on the work they completed in the last week—with Elon Musk claiming on social media that a failure to respond would be considered a resignation. DOL staff received mixed messages from managers about how and whether to respond, with some leaving it up to individual employee discretion, according to two department employees who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The full scope of terminations and resignations at DOL is unclear. The agency didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding the total number of employees that were terminated, or its guidance to staff on the job tasks email.
Any reduction in staff will affect the agency’s capacity to enforce labor laws and undertake the programs its tasked with administering, employment attorneys say.
“It will be less regulatory burden on employers,” said Betty Graumlich, a management-side attorney and partner at Reed Smith. “There will be probably less inspections in some areas, with the exception of immigration.”
Probationary terminations have affected the department’s Women’s Bureau, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Disability Employment Policy, Mine Safety and Health Administration, Employee Benefits Security Administration, and Bureau of International Labor Affairs, according to three DOL employees who have communicated with their fired colleagues.
Workers seeking unpaid overtime wages or to complain about unsafe conditions at their workplace may have nowhere else to go, especially given the rise of workplace arbitration agreements and collective and class action waivers, according to Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel and legal director at the National Employment Law Project.
“That just puts more onus on the Department of Labor to because in some cases, they’re the only game in town in terms of holding employers accountable for minimum wage and overtime,” she said.
Limited Options
The White House and billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s various attempts to tempt resignations among federal employees or outright terminate them comes as some critical DOL subagencies were already facing historically low staffing numbers.
The Wage and Hour Division, which oversees minimum wage, overtime, and child labor laws, had only 650 investigators on board as of October, the lowest number on record since at least 2007.
“It sends a message to employers that accountability is going to be even less than it was before,” Ruckelshaus said.
But employers shouldn’t lessen their own compliance efforts in response to the changes in staffing at the federal level, Graumlich added, noting that many states offer more generous protections to workers compared to federal law, and may have better funded state workforce agencies.
“Employers with multi state workforces have to assume that the laws of the state where the employee actually works are going to apply, and that is a huge compliance headache for multi-state employers,” she said.
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[1] Url:
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/employment/trumps-federal-workforce-cuts-hit-labor-department-enforcement
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