Punching In: Chavez-DeRemer Kicks Off Apprenticeship Changes

Monday morning musings for workplace watchers.

Firefighters Get New Training Program| Democrats Outline Trump’s ‘Anti-worker’ Policies

Rebecca Rainey: The US Department of Labor has established its first-ever national apprenticeship program aimed at training firefighters and first responders, an attempt to address what one union says is a shortage of first responders.

In one of the earliest public events at the department’s headquarters under Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the DOL last week announced the new job training model created by the International Association of Fire Fighters.

“This program will not only give fire fighters in every jurisdiction a baseline of skills, but it allows those fire chiefs to tailor their training to the specific hazards they have in their jurisdictions—something that’s incredibly important,” General President Edward Kelly said at the event at the Frances Perkins Building.

Organizations can use the National Guideline Standards, like the new firefighter program, as a framework to set up a registered apprenticeship and are allowed to make modifications to meet state-specific rules.

“Any state in the United States can use this curriculum outline to build their firefighters, build their EMTs,” Chris Lake, deputy director of fire and EMS operations at the IAFF told PI. “And so the hope is that then it will be universal throughout the United States. So if you go through the apprenticeship program in Florida, and you want to move to California, those credentials can carry with you.”

The program will train apprentices on breathing apparatuses, health and safety, fire streams, ropes and knots, ladders, “all of the essentials that go into initial firefighter training,” according to Lake.

Expanding and streamlining the federal job training system has emerged as one of the first major policy moves at the DOL during Trump’s second term. The administration’s showcasing of the new firefighter program came just a week after the president issued an executive order directing an overhaul of federal job training funding and setting a goal of signing up one million new apprentices each year.

IAFF appeared in recent weeks to have the ear of the Trump administration. The union recently took credit for pushing White House and administration leaders to reinstate federal employees who investigate firefighter line-of-duty deaths.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer, US labor secretary, center, during a cabinet meeting at the White House April 30, 2025.

Ken Cedeno/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Robert Iafolla: Trump hobbled key worker protection agencies, rolled back pro-worker policies, and attacked the federal workforce in an unprecedented assault on workers during the first 100 days of his second term, according to the Congressional Labor Caucus.

The Labor Caucus, composed of 124 House Democrats, issued a report last week cataloging 25 separate Trump administration actions that the group considers anti-worker. It pointed to efforts to gut agencies, rescind Biden-era workplace rules, and fire swaths of workers across the federal government.

“The Trump administration is easily the most anti-worker administration since the 1920s, perhaps even the Gilded Age,” said Paul Ortiz, a labor historian at Cornell University. “When Trump uses the term revolution, I believe him. This is a revolution.”

Trump’s effort to void collective bargaining in much of the federal sector—which a federal court has temporarily blocked—is the “most devastating and most dangerous” of his anti-worker actions, Ortiz said.

The White House painted a different picture, saying that “Trump has fought in an unprecedented way for working families.” His trade policy is garnering “historic investments” to boost manufacturing and create jobs, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said.

“Meanwhile, his Department of Labor is carrying out his agenda to prepare our workforce for the future by focusing on sectors that first Made the American Economy Great, including construction, trades, and manufacturing,” Kelly said in a statement.

An administration official pointed to several of Trump and Chavez-DeRemer’s accomplishments for workers, including initial steps on expanding apprenticeships, DOL’s Wage and Hour Division holding more than 750 outreach events, the department’s disability employment office conducting more than 13,400 consultations on workplace accommodations, and expansions in the veterans’ employment and training program.

The administration’s budget calls for nearly a 35% cut in DOL spending. About 20% of the department’s workforce has opted to leave under the administration’s deferred resignation program

The Trump’s flurry of actions, meanwhile, has affected management as well as employees.

The upheaval during Trump’s first 100 days has been on a scale that’s reminiscent of when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country five years ago, said Emily Dickens, the Society for Human Resource Management’s chief of staff and head of government affairs.

The administration’s policies on immigration, tariffs, and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs have created “angst and concern” among HR professionals, Dickens said.

“We’re saying, ‘Take a deep breath, don’t make immediate changes, evaluate and then evolve,’” Dickens said. “This is a period of deep evaluation.”

For Cornell’s Ortiz, Trump has quickly moved the country so far in 100 days that it won’t return to how it was before.

“We’re in a new place now,” he said.

We’re punching out. Daily Labor Report subscribers please check in for updates during the week, and feel free to reach out to us.