Trump's Labor Agenda: Unsafe and Underpaid

Floor Speech

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Mrs. McIVER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of our Nation's workers, to give voice to their fear, their concerns, and their anger.

While the American people are focusing on putting food on their tables, the Labor Department has finally dismantled decades of hard- fought protections for our communities. These rollbacks are not just isolated attempts. They are part of a broader, calculated effort to weaken the rights, safety, and dignity of America's workers in the hopes that no one would notice.

But guess what, Mr. Speaker?

We have noticed. We will not let them get away with it.

My colleagues and I have demanded the Labor Secretary end these attacks on working people and their families. If the Secretary will not act, we will take matters into our own hands. That is why we are here tonight, to bring these actions to light and to show the American people exactly what is at stake.

Tonight, Mr. Speaker, you will hear from my colleagues about the impact of each of these rollbacks and about the way that our friends, our neighbors, our coworkers will be hurt by something the administration is trying to do in the shadows.

Mr. Speaker, you will hear about the specific rules that this administration has rolled back, rules that put home care aides, farmhands, construction workers, workers with disabilities, minors, and so many more at risk. As you hear about these rules, ones that don't always get a lot of attention but that matter so much to the people they protect, you will come to the same conclusion, Mr. Speaker, that we have.

If you work in America today, Mr. Speaker, you are less safe than you were 1 year ago, and you are more likely to be underpaid, exploited, and ignored. You are more likely to be hurt on the job, Mr. Speaker, underrepresented, and left to fend for yourself.

That is unacceptable.

I am proud to have led my colleagues in urging the Secretary of Labor to immediately reverse course on these actions. As I yield to my colleagues standing with me tonight, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues across the aisle to consider:

How many more of these rules do we let the Trump administration get away with before saying enough is enough?

I hope this convinces them to follow suit.

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Mrs. McIVER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member, the fine gentleman from Virginia, for his remarks and for coming here this evening to talk with us.

Mr. Speaker, home health aides are some of the most essential workers in our economy, taking care of our parents and grandparents as they age and ensuring that sick and disabled people can live with dignity.

It is downright despicable that this administration has proposed to reverse the rule requiring that these vital workers be paid the Federal minimum wage.

This reckless rollback threatens the dignity, wages, and basic rights of nearly 4 million of our lowest paid and most essential workers, the majority of whom are women and women of color.

These care workers are certified nursing assistants, home health aides, personal care attendants, and direct support professionals. They provide skilled, often medically necessary care, from administering medication to helping with daily activities like bathing, dressing, and eating.

Their work is both physically and emotionally demanding. It is essential to the health, safety, and independence of nearly 10 million older adults and people with disabilities who rely on these services to remain in their homes and communities.

For some, it is the care they receive from these aides that actually helps them enter or remain in the workforce. It is difficult to capture the profound impact they have on not only families but our economy.

While they wait for that proposal to go through, the administration has already announced that they will no longer enforce the care worker rule, effectively stripping these workers of basic wage protections without notice, without public comment, and without regard for the devastating impact this will have on families, caregivers, and our long-term care system.

Mr. Speaker, I just can't wrap my head around some of these changes. Home care workers are too valuable. They are already underpaid and unprotected, with 2 in 5 already living at or near the poverty line. Nearly one-half rely on public assistance to make it, and now Trump wants to give the green light to pay these folks less than $7.25. Yes, I said it, $7.25 an hour.

It is just wrong. It is completely unsustainable. We are already in the midst of a staffing crisis in the care economy. I know my colleagues are afraid of the Bureau of Labor Statistics these days, but BLS says that demand for home care workers will grow by more than 20 percent in the next decade as our population ages.

Mr. Speaker, how are we going to recruit and retain the workforce we need to take care of our seniors if we don't pay them?

Surely, they can't make it if we don't pay them. They can't stay employed if we don't pay them.

Mr. Speaker this is not just a labor issue. It is a civil rights issue. It is a women's right issue. It is a disability issue.

I know this administration is already sick of hearing from me, but that is too bad. In August, I wrote to the Secretary of Labor urging her to stop these rollbacks. Today, I want to again call on the Department of Labor to withdraw this dangerous and disgusting proposed rule immediately, to reinstate full enforcement of the 2013 rule, and to focus its efforts where they belong, on improving wages, training, and conditions for our home care workers.

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Mrs. McIVER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks and for joining me this evening.

At this very moment, the Department of Labor is working to rescind the Farmworker Protection Rule, a Biden-era standard that gave farmworkers, many of them seasonal workers here under the H-2A visa program, the basic right to speak up about unsafe working conditions without fear of being fired or deported.

Let's be clear. This rule that the administration is attacking wasn't about politics. It wasn't about gangs or drugs or any of the disgusting tropes the other side will paint against hardworking immigrants. It was about seatbelts in vans, safety on the job, and the simple human dignity of not being punished for demanding better conditions.

What has this administration done? They have proposed stripping those protections, both for transportation safety and for organizing on farms. While they wait for that change to take effect, they have announced they will not enforce the 2024 Farmworker Rule at all.

What does that mean in practice? It means workers, including the 300,000 seasonal workers worked for come to our country to do vital work, supporting our Nation's agriculture industry, are once again forced to choose between their safety and their survival. It means transportation will remain the leading cause of death for farmworkers, and it means that the worst of the worst employers get a free pass.

It doesn't stop there. The Trump Department of Labor also wants to stop coordination between the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, OSHA, and the Employment and Training Administration on enforcement of farmworker protections. These agencies are supposed to work together to stop abuse.

Corrupt recruiters have infiltrated the H-2A program, charging workers illegal fees and taking advantage of the most desperate migrant workers and actually facilitating human trafficking.

The administration's answer? Make it harder to investigate them; make it harder to kick these abusive recruiters out of the H-2A system; and, against their own promises, let the trafficking continue.

Let's be clear again. The H-2A program is one of the largest sources of labor trafficking in the United States.

The safety regulations the Department of Labor is going after were designed to keep workers safe, but Trump's regulatory changes sent a clear message to employers. Retaliate against your workers, is what the administration is saying. Trump says: Silence them all you want. No one is coming to stop you.

This doesn't just hurt migrant farmworkers. It drags down the working conditions and wages of all agricultural workers in America. Every time protections are stripped away from one group, it undercuts the baseline for everyone else.

This is all by design. While this administration is gutting legal protections, they are slashing transparency, too. The National Agricultural Statistics Service just announced it will eliminate the Farm Labor Survey, the very tool we use to understand what farmworkers are paid and how they are treated. This survey informs wages for H-2A jobs. Eliminating it makes exploitation easier and accountability harder.

Mr. Speaker, the cruelty here is not accidental. It is deliberate. It is rooted in a despicable framework that sees farmworkers, particularly those from other countries and those that are Black and Brown, as disposable.

These workers feed America. They feed you every night. They do the work most people can't and won't.

Instead of protecting them, this administration wants to strip away their voice and hand power to the very people who exploit them.

Omar) to discuss the tools available to OSHA to keep Americans safe at work.

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Mrs. McIVER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. Omar) for joining me tonight and for her remarks.

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to Trump's attacks on the diversity of our workforce, the Department of Labor is his biggest cheerleader and superfan. As a matter of fact, they are president of the fan club.

After Trump rescinded the Equal Employment Opportunity executive order, the Department of Labor proposed to remove the requirement that those who do business with the Federal Government cannot discriminate in hiring.

On top of that, Trump is demanding that companies send proof that they are eliminating their antidiscrimination programs and show proof that they abandoned affirmative action plans.

Federal contractors may sound to some people like a narrow, far-off group. Who even are they? In reality, Federal contractors are a massive segment of our economy, and chances are that you or someone you know relies on Federal contracts for work.

Under Trump, their employers would no longer be able to even collect data on the racial, ethnic, and gender makeup of their workforce. Let me repeat that: The Federal Government is proposing that contractors no longer even track discrimination.

If you stop collecting the evidence, you can pretend the crime no longer exists. The result: an older, Whiter, more male-dominated workforce that doesn't really reflect the diversity of backgrounds that makes our Nation great.

Let's call it what it is: a calculated, careless, cowardly rollback of hard-won protections carried out under false pretenses and driven by an agenda that wants to take us back to 1964.

If that weren't enough, just weeks after the Trump administration announced its plans to eliminate the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the agency charged with enforcing antidiscrimination in Federal contracting, the Department of Labor has now launched a full-scale attack on workers with disabilities. It is shameful.

Trump's DOL is dismantling the requirement that Federal contractors take steps to employ qualified individuals with disabilities. At a time when disabled Americans face historic employment gaps, this administration wants to turn back the clock and undo the progress that we have made over decades of disability work. As my colleagues have mentioned, they even want to bring back the cruel, outdated policy of allowing employers to pay disabled workers less than minimum wage, often pennies on the dollar. How disgusting for someone who is doing the same work as everyone else each and every day.

My colleagues across the aisle want you to be afraid of Federal DEIA programs, maybe even to think they are stopping you from getting a job. In reality, these are things like paid internships, so you don't have to come from a well-off family to work a Federal job, or basic disability accommodations in the office, like making sure the office coffee pot is in reach of someone in a wheelchair.

Are these destroying our workforce like the President says?

These moves are not about fairness. They are about power and about stripping protections from the most marginalized so that the powerful can operate without accountability.

We need to be open and honest about the truth. These actions will increase discrimination in the workforce. They will make us less productive, not more productive. They will turn the focus of Federal hiring away from merit.

Some of these rollbacks, Mr. Speaker, are terribly awful, but some of them seem like they are just torn from a law textbook. Seriously, the administration wants to get rid of the minimum lighting standards for construction sites. Let me say that again for the public who may be watching. This Trump administration wants to get rid of the minimum requirement for lighting standards for construction sites.

For those of you watching at home, I know that, sometimes, what we do here is a bit hard to follow, and maybe you don't want to sift through the jargon that gets thrown around. Let me just read to you the standard that this administration wants to get rid of. Here is what Trump wants to take out of the Code of Federal Regulations. It reads as follows: ``Construction areas, aisles, stairs, ramps, runways, corridors, offices, shops, and storage areas where work is in progress shall be lighted with either natural or artificial illumination.''

This gets rid of the requirement for good lighting on construction sites so that you can't see the nail you are hitting. Who okayed this?

Seriously, let's just think about this for a second. If you are working on a construction site, under the Trump administration, your boss does not have to make sure that any electrical equipment rooms, first aid stations, and the rest of the job site actually have enough light to allow you to see what you are doing.

We hear all day about the regulations supposedly weighing down our economy and all about the red tape. Without a doubt--I sit on the Committee on Small Business--I am happy to talk about red tape, but these are basic safety standards.

What do I know, right? I am here to represent the people of New Jersey's 10th Congressional District. I don't work on a construction site every day. Like me, you may want to know what the experts think. In 1962, Congress created the Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health to answer just that question.

Mr. Speaker, guess what. The Trump administration fired all the members of the committee, and OSHA just issued a final rule removing the requirement that it consult with the committee before modifying or repealing construction safety regulations. Trump's OSHA doesn't have to consult the experts because it said so. It is just because they said so. It is truly unbelievable.

Let's make something clear, Mr. Speaker: The administration's actions at the Department of Labor aren't just tinkering, and they are not just some complicated, bureaucratic procedure. They are life-and-death decisions that, right now, the Department of Labor is rolling back protections on that generations of miners fought and died for.

Earlier this year, the Department of Labor planned to shutter dozens of the Mine Safety and Health Administration field offices across the country. These are the frontline offices that work to keep mines safe and help to review plans, inspect sites, and make sure someone is there to look out for workers when lives are on the line.

Eventually, when that plan came to light, the administration changed course and announced that it would not close the 34 offices it wanted to. Mr. Speaker, they are now trying to shutter the offices another way: by gutting the rules that give the Mine Safety and Health Administration the power to act, even if the offices stay open.

Let me walk you through just how dangerous these rollbacks are.

One repeal removes the requirement to inspect drilling areas for hazards before operations begin and gets rid of the need to repair dangerous drilling equipment.

Another rollback narrows the training protocols that the Mine Safety and Health Administration district managers can require before approving mining operations. In fact, Trump wants to limit what can be required in a roof control and ventilation plan, which would help protect miners from roof collapses and toxic dust in the air. He wants to deregulate roofing and necessary ventilation.

Mine operators are no longer required to give workers hard copies of hazard communications, or HAZCOM. Historically, employers are required to inform their employees in a mine of what chemicals or hazards they may face to help prevent injury and illness. Trump and his cronies are even going after the tools used to measure lighting and visibility underground, as I mentioned about the construction sites, as well.

As we speak, Trump is working to give more control to mine operators about their safety and health plans, even when we know that injuries and deaths will follow.

We know what keeps miners safe, but this administration doesn't think we should let the Mine Safety and Health Administration require it. Maybe the most unbelievable decision is the delay of the toxic silica rule, a rule 40 years in the making.

The science is crystal clear: Silica exposure causes lung cancer, chronic respiratory disease, black lung, and even death.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration itself had estimated this rule would prevent more than 1,000 deaths and 3,700 cases of silica- related illness, but the Trump administration says it is on hold.

What are we talking about here?

Weakening or removing respiratory requirements, fit testing, medical evaluations, and training for exposure to some of the most dangerous substances like asbestos, lead, vinyl chloride, and more.

Look, colleagues and Americans watching at home, the administration says it is too prescriptive to ensure workers don't inhale poisons that actually kill them. It is too much of a burden to make sure a respirator actually fits. It is too much red tape to make sure a worker's lungs can survive the shift.

What do you say?

Let's be clear: Miners and workers didn't ask for these rollbacks. The only people calling for these changes are the lobbyists and executives who have never stepped foot inside of a mine, who have never watched a coworker die in a collapse, who have never buried a friend with black lung.

Safety cannot be optional. Miners cannot be expendable. Congress cannot stand idly by while the Labor Department turns on the people it was created to protect.

Stansbury).

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Mrs. McIVER. Thank you so much to the gentlewoman from New Mexico for joining us and for your remarks.

Mr. Speaker, tonight we have heard about the increased discrimination in the workplace, the repealing of protections for those with disabilities, and the dangerous construction sites our neighbors are forced to show up to.

All of this is part of the dangerous campaign the Department of Labor has launched to dismantle decades of progress for working Americans. These rollbacks are a direct assault on workers' safety, wages, and dignity.

From healthcare workers, many of them women and women of color, at risk of losing minimum wage and overtime protections; to construction workers who could now be forced to operate in unsafe conditions with no guarantee of adequate lighting or visibility standards; to farmworkers who already endure grueling conditions are being stripped of hard- fought protections.

None of this is okay. This is not normal.

Allow me to say this plainly for the second time tonight: If you work in America today, you are less safe than you were a year ago. You are more likely to be underpaid, exploited, or ignored. This is unacceptable.

I am proud to have led 64 of my colleagues in urging the Secretary of Labor to reverse course, and I am proud of the work we have done here tonight to make sure that none of this goes unnoticed.

This work is about the people, the people we serve and every single American. It is about the home care worker pulling double shifts. It is about the construction worker trying to make it home to his kids. It is about the farm worker who feeds our families and us but can't protect their own families.

We have heard about the rules that will put America's workers in danger, and if we do not do something about these rules, things will get worse for American workers. They are unsafe and underpaid, and it is time we do something about it.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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