Year In Review: Trump’s 2025 Record on Employee Rights

If you care about labor and employment law issues, you should down a stiff drink and then contemplate this incomplete list of Trump’s destruction of those rights during the first ten months of his second term: 

Employment discrimination 

• Trump revoked Executive Order 11246, issued by Pres. Lyndon Johnson in 1965, which prohibits employment discrimination by federal government contractors. 

• He instructed the Department of Justice to ensure that federal contractors and other private parties do not promote Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (“DEI”) programs, without defining just what is a DEI program. 

• Elimination of DEI programs has resulted in a decline in the hiring of employees of color and of women, and it has increased the incidence of discrimination and bias in the workplace. 

• He issued several executive orders claiming that there are only two genders and targeting trans people for unequal treatment in a variety of areas, including in the military, in prisons and in passports. 

• He removed two commissioners and the general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) without cause. 

• The EEOC, under its new leadership, has dismissed all of its discrimination cases alleging bias against trans people, removed a rule that said that abortion-related restrictions constitute pregnancy discrimination, and has filed cases involving employees’ religious observances, with a particular focus on “eradicating anti-Christian bias.” 

• The EEOC has dismissed cases alleging disparate-impact discrimination, that is, where a facially neutral practice has a disproportionately adverse effect on a protected class of employees. 

• The EEOC has claimed that programs designed to train, mentor or sponsor employees because of their sex, race or national origin are discriminatory. 

U.S. Department of Labor 

• Trump reduced the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors. 

• The U.S. Department of Labor (“USDOL”) has proposed abolishing more than 60 regulations, including: 

• Eliminating federal minimum wage and overtime protections for home health care workers. 

• Providing that disabled employees can be paid a sub-minimum wage, depriving them of the same minimum wages enjoyed by other employees. 

• Eliminating anti-retaliation protections for migratory farmworkers. 

• Rescinding a rule that requires employers to provide seat belts in employer-provided transportation for farmworkers. 

• Rescinding a rule that requires employers to provide adequate lighting at construction sites. 

• Limiting the scope of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s general safety rule, that applies whenever no specific safety rule is in place. 

• Stripping Mine Safety and Health Administration district managers of their authority to require mine owners to submit plans for ventilation and to prevent roof collapses in coal mines. 

• The USDOL has stated that it will not enforce a Biden rule on when a worker is an independent contractor, and has stated that it will revise that rule in a deregulatory direction. 

• The USDOL has informed an appellate court that it is considering revising a Biden rule that substantially increased coverage of the overtime provisions for salaried employees. 

• The Trump administration has moved from expansive federal oversight of employment of minors to targeted enforcement and employer-led compliance of federal child labor laws. 

• Trump has proposed repealing a USDOL policy that restricts 16- and 17-year-old employees from using powered patient lifting devices in nursing homes. 

National Labor Relations Board 

• He removed the general counsel and one of the members of the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”), leaving only two members of that five-member board. 

• As a result, the Board does not have a quorum and is not able to adjudicate cases, including complaints that employers have committed unfair employment practices. 

• Trump effectively eliminated the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (“FMCS”), an agency that assisted in assisting employers and labor unions in the collective bargaining process. 

Federal Employees’ Rights 

• Trump fired the chairwoman of the Federal Labor Relations Agency (“FLRA”), an agency that adjudicates disputes between federal agencies and labor unions. 

• Trump excluded more than 1 million employees in more than 30 federal agencies from union representation. 

• Trump fired the chair of the Merits Standards Protection Board (“MSPB”), a federal agency that hears appeals of federal employees’ disputes.  Combined with the resignation of another member, that action deprived the MSPB of a quorum for more than eight months. 

• MSPB hearing officers, their numbers trimmed by budget cuts, are dealing with an overwhelming number of appeals, resulting in delays in resolving their cases.  

• Trump revoked the federal labor-management forum program, which had enabled federal agencies and their employees to collaborate with each other. 

• Trump attempted to narrow a Biden executive order that had required federal contractors to sign project labor agreements with subcontractors and associated unions. 

• Trump fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel, an agency that is supposed to protect federal whistleblowers.  He then nominated Paul Ingrassia to fill that position. 

• Ingrassia withdrew his nomination because, incredibly, he told a group of fellow Republicans in a text chain that the MLK, Jr., holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and that he has “a Nazi streak.” 

Layoffs of Federal Employees 

• About 300,000 federal employees have been laid off. 

• Trump accomplished this by stripping some federal employees of their federal protections, fired probationary employes, urged employees to resign, shut down agencies, implemented reductions in force, and claimed to layoff employees during the shutdown of the federal government. 

• These layoffs are being contested in the courts, and many have been reversed.  The shutdown-related layoffs have been reversed by statute. 

Written By Barry Roseman, Secretary of the SU4W Board