‘Like working in a prison’: cuts, fear and understaffing at Trump’s labor department | Trump administration

An enormous banner that includes a serious-looking Donald Trump now hangs down the entrance of the Division of Labor’s Washington DC workplace. Masking the home windows of almost three flooring, the poster reads: “American Employees FIRST.”“Mr President, I invite you see your large lovely face on a banner in entrance of the Division of Labor since you are actually the transformational president of the American employee,” the labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeReme, mentioned final month at a cupboard assembly with the president.Employees on the company say they produce other issues. “Everybody thinks it’s a joke as a result of it’s a joke. There are components of the constructing that haven’t been fastened. Now we have closed bogs all over. The entrance door doesn’t work, it’s been damaged for 2 months, however now we have cash for a silly banner,” mentioned one employee, who requested anonymity for worry of retribution.“Seeing her in that cupboard assembly the place she begged Trump to have a look at it, it’s embarrassing. Fawning over the president, no matter who the president is, appearing that method means she will be able to’t give him exhausting or dangerous information and you must be capable of do this when you’re a frontrunner.”Staff on the division and labor advocates say the Trump administration is undermining the company’s mission to foster and promote the welfare of job seekers, wage earners and retirees by way of drastic cuts, deregulations that embody pay cuts for employees, and mistreatment of these employed on the company.About 20% of employees on the US Division of Labor have resigned or retired forward of threatened cuts on the company.The company has additionally proposed almost 150 deregulatory actions, together with a proposal to eradicate minimal wage and extra time protections for 3.7 million home care employees, along with cuts undertaken by the so-called division of presidency effectivity (Doge) resembling workplace lease cancellations, and chopping thousands and thousands in worldwide labor grants.“They’re gutting us. They’re taking away all the things that makes us useful to the residents of the states we work in,” mentioned a present worker on the division’s wage and hour division who requested to stay nameless for worry of retaliation. “They are saying they’re altering issues for the American employee. I used to be born within the US and am a veteran. I’m an American employee and so they don’t care about us.”The secretary of labor’s chief of employees despatched out a memo in April 2025 to all division staff warning they may face “critical authorized penalties” in the event that they communicate to the media. Below the Nationwide Labor Relations Act, staff have a protected proper to talk to the media about their working situations and labor issues.“A federal employee shouldn’t be scared to talk the reality. For me to even be involved about talking is ridiculous, it’s how we stand as much as shield ourselves and people round us,” they mentioned.The employee defined they now must get any fieldwork accepted beforehand, and it needs to be tied to a pre-existing case. Within the meantime, employers are being pushed to carry out self-audits.This, coupled with the drastic staffing cuts confronted all through the US Division of Labor, they argued, is undermining the division’s means to implement wage and hour legal guidelines.“We don’t have manning to do these enforcement, day-in-day-out, jobs,” they added. “The division has tried to push these self-audits, the place they’re permitting dangerous actors to self-audit,” they mentioned. “These dangerous actors are going to basically get away with it.”The Division of Labor solely offered touch upon the upkeep and repairs, claiming they had been working to enhance the general upkeep of the constructing, and claimed all 91 bogs had just lately been repaired.“This pretend information hit piece is strictly why public belief within the mainstream media is at historic lows,” mentioned a labor division spokesperson, Courtney Parella.Morale has plummeted because the nationwide workplace amid all of the cuts on the company, threats, harassment and intimidation from the administration, and new insurance policies, resembling safety bag screenings to get into the constructing on daily basis, mentioned employees.“It’s form of like working in a jail,” they added. “It’s very clear how they deal with us is a bellwether for a way they need different employees to be handled.”“The Division of Labor is being deployed totally as one arm of this president’s conflict on employees, which is much more painful on condition that the mission of the Division of Labor is to guard employees,” mentioned Julie Su, who served as secretary of labor underneath the Biden administration. “The best way you deal with your personal employees is an indication of the way you imagine employees generally should be handled. And this administration has taken a really damaging method to its personal employees.”Su additionally criticized the Division of Labor’s adoption of rhetoric from the Trump administration, in claiming to “put American employees first” and usher in a “golden age” for “American employees”.“This administration, they always speak about doing proper by American employees. That’s a fairly coded method of claiming what they need to say, which is that they not imagine that immigrant employees deserve safety and that’s a part of their general conflict on employees,” Su mentioned. “It’s an anti-immigrant philosophy of your entire administration, however for the Division of Labor to undertake it’s particularly dangerous, as a result of so many employees who maintain our economic system going are immigrant employees.”She cited different examples of insurance policies that hurt employees being pursued by this administration, from chopping $500m in grants devoted towards preventing little one labor and compelled labor overseas, delaying implementation of a rule to guard coalminers from silica mud publicity, pushing to create an exemption for employers to the overall obligation clause of the Occupational Security and Well being Act that obligates employers to maintain employees secure on the job, and ceasing enforcement of expanded labor protections for immigrant farm employees on H-2A non permanent visas.Among the many deregulations being pushed by the Division of Labor embody proposing a rule to exempt 3.7 million house well being and private care employees within the US from minimal wage and extra time protections.These employees are predominantly girls and paid low wages, with immigrants comprising a major and rising portion of the workforce.“What the US Division of Labor is proposing is the Trump administration reversing historical past, and saying, no, wait a minute, house care employees will not be deserving of extra time protections, of minimal wage, and that simply units us again into a complete different period,” mentioned Arnulfo De La Cruz, president of SEIU Native 2015, which represents over half one million long-term care employees in California. “This modification would undo a decade of progress towards recognizing house care as actual skilled work, and that is yet one more Trump administration assault on employees. This comes all the way down to particular pursuits who need to enhance their earnings by paying employees much less.”Astrid Zuniga, a house care employee in Modesto, California, and president of United Home Employees of America, UDW/AFSCME Native 3930, mentioned she would stand to lose about $1,200 a month if extra time protections are eliminated for care employees, which she depends on to cowl the prices of medicines her son wants, who has autism, epilepsy and different mental disabilities, and who she cares for twenty-four/7.Astrid Zuniga, house care employee in Modesto, California. {Photograph}: Courtesy of AFSCME“To lose that a lot cash a month, when most of us already stay paycheck to paycheck as it’s, can be damaging to many households,” mentioned Zuniga. “If you go and also you implement these sorts of cuts to the low-wage workforce, that solely hurts the employees and most of those employees are making proper at about minimal wage.”She emphasised house care employees had been already bracing for the affect of Medicaid cuts to advantages and companies that may even lower their means to supply companies to shoppers.“House care is the fastest-growing sector of employees throughout the nation. It’s the highest in demand. No one is getting any youthful or any more healthy,” she added. “Cuts shouldn’t be made to these kind of companies,” she mentioned. “And if we’re not making this a fascinating workforce and never making investments into these sorts of home- and community-based companies that our most susceptible communities depend on, what are we doing?”“I feel the message is that they suppose employees have it too good, too many protections, too excessive of wages, an excessive amount of safety. Their view is that employees are too snug,” added Su.