Monday morning musings for workplace watchers.
Harris and Trump’s Labor Priorities|State Anti-Bias Expansion
Rebecca Rainey and Diego Areas Munhoz: Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump have overlapped in their campaign themes to boost manufacturing jobs and make tips exempt from taxes, however their plans for the US Labor Department and legislative goals are at odds.
At the DOL: If elected, Harris would inherit a US Labor Department that’s fending off lawsuits against rules that expand overtime eligibility to four million new workers, make it harder for businesses to classify their workers as independent contractors, and raise wages for workers on federal construction projects and contracts.
The DOL is also in the early stages of writing new regulations that would require employers to protect their workers from heat stress, expand reporting requirements for employers that spend money on anti-union consultants, and would limit instances where workers with disabilities can be paid a lower minimum wage. Those rules won’t be finished before this term is over, and would be left for Harris to shepherd if she’s elected in November.
Paid Leave: While Harris isn’t likely to steer from Biden’s approach to labor policy—which includes expanding access to unions and beefing up workplace protections—she is expected to bring a greater focus on issues like care workers and paid leave, advocates and lawmakers who have worked closely with her over the years—like California SEIU Local 2015 President Arnulfo De La Cruz and Rep.Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—told Bloomberg Law.
In her speeches, Harris often speaks of a need to establish paid family and medical leave rights on a national level and calls for more investment on child and elder care to boost working conditions for workers in those industries.
During her Senate tenure, Harris was an outspoken advocate for these issues. She proposed six months of paid family and medical leave in 2019 in her last campaign for president—a proposal even more generous than the 12 weeks proposed by Biden. She is also the original sponsor alongside Jayapal of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, legislation to extend several minimum wage and overtime protections to those workers.
Project 2025: The Democratic party has strongly criticized the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, making a theme of its convention in Chicago last week, and tying the document to Trump.
“We know what a second Trump term would look like. It’s all laid out in ‘Project 2025.’ Written by his closest advisors,” Harris said when accepting the Democratic nomination on Thursday. “And its sum total is to pull, our country back into the past.”
Trump and Vance have tried to distance themselves from the project.
On Trump: The Trump agenda, at its core, seeks to slash “job-killing” regulations that it says have kept businesses from expanding and putting more Americans to work. Conservative groups like Heritage are urging Republicans to reverse most labor regulations currently in place, crack down on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and pass legislation opposed by unions. They also want to drastically rewrite or scrap certain labor laws, like the Davis-Bacon Act and the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, have energized the populist wing of the Republican party and are seeking a closer relationship with organized labor that the party’s establishment has traditionally rejected. But don’t expect that to look anything like the strict enforcement approach the Biden administration has taken towards businesses, a shift that has been praised by unions and worker advocates.
Economic policy: The former president’s appeal to workers is instead likely to translate into more trade, tax, and border security policies rather than through stricter enforcement of labor and employment law or federal investments in unions. Trump has proposed a 10% across-the-board tariff on imported goods, and has committed to blocking the sale of US Steel to a Japanese company, an issue that is championed by the United Steel Workers.
He has also promised to make restaurant and service worker tips exempt from income taxes, an idea that has been endorsed in Congress by Democrats in Nevada, a battleground state filled with hospitality workers, and the powerful Las Vegas Culinary Workers Union Local 226.
Immigration: When it comes to foreign workers, the the Republican National Committee is proposing tougher border policies, although Biden’s own policies haven’t diverged far from his predecessor and says it will prioritize “merit-based immigration.” The RNC platform also signals a return to its previous “public charge” policy, which means restricting visas and residency status for immigrants who have benefited from government programs.
Return of one in, two out: On the regulatory front, Trump has vowed to continue his war on the administrative state, requiring federal agencies to toss out two regulations for every new rule they issue.
At the top of that list would be canceling rules allowing companies to consider environmental, social, and governance policies in retirement investments. Trump says he will issue an executive order on day one to bar companies “from considering any factor other than what will maximize benefits for retirees.”
Chris Marr: Workplace bias restrictions around employees’ family status, caregiving duties, and reproductive health choices continue to spread through the states, most recently in Illinois and Minnesota.
Both states updated their anti-discrimination laws this month to ban bias across a broader range of situations and characteristics.
Those legislative moves coincide with a wider policymaking push to better accommodate parents and other family caregivers in the workplace—albeit punctuated by the partisan fight over reproductive choices following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision rejecting a constitutional right to abortion.
At the federal level, Congress passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act with bipartisan support in 2022, but Republican attorneys general and religious groups now are fighting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s rules implementing the law that say its pregnancy accommodations extend to workers who undergo abortions.
This year’s changes in Illinois and Minnesota don’t go as far as expanding workplace accommodation requirements but focus on banning discrimination and retaliation.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) signed into law a handful of changes to the state’s human rights law, adding family caregiving responsibilities (HB 2161) and reproductive health decisions (HB 4867) to the categories protected against bias. The state also extended the statute of limitations (SB 3310) for bringing discrimination claims to two years after the incident, instead of the current 300-day limit. Those changes take effect Jan. 1, 2025.
“We are guaranteeing that women cannot be discriminated against in housing, employment, or public accommodations for reproductive health decisions, whether that be abortion, IVF, fertility treatment, and more,” Pritzker said while signing one of the Illinois bills Aug 7.
In Minnesota, a revision to the civil rights law (HF 4109) creating a broader definition of familial status took effect Aug. 1. Rather than applying only to a worker’s caregiving duties for a minor, the new language also covers caregiving for adults whose health problems prevent them taking care of themselves.
The changes follow a handful of others mostly in blue states. California lawmakers added reproductive health decisions to the list of protected categories under the state’s anti-discrimination laws in 2022, a few months after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. And legislators in Colorado expanded the civil rights law there to cover marital status.
At least a dozen states now ban workplace discrimination based on some version of family status, family responsibilities, or marital status. About half as many states have anti-bias protections explicitly covering reproductive health choices such as abortion. A longer list including many red states have bias protections more narrowly focused on pregnancy and childbirth.
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