Punching In: Trump’s Labor Department Picks Await Senate’s Return

Monday morning musings for workplace watchers

Noms Noms Noms | Nurses’ Union Trades Barbs With the VA

Rebecca Rainey: The Senate has a lengthy labor to-do list when it returns from August recess—10 nominees are pending for key enforcement positions at the US Labor Department.

Every single leadership position that requires Senate approval below the Secretary and Deputy Secretary slots at the DOL is currently under temporary leadership. A majority of the nominees, including Jonathan Berry to serve as Solicitor of Labor, Andrew Rogers to lead the Wage and Hour Division, and Daniel Aronowitz to head the Employee Benefits Security Administration, are waiting to be brought to the floor for a vote.

The slow pace of confirmations isn’t totally unusual. It took two years to confirm Biden’s wage administrator and over a year to confirm his pick for EBSA. However, Republicans say they’re looking up ways to speed up the process, including changing the rules to reduce debate and procedural votes.

The lack of confirmed leadership hasn’t hindered the Trump administration’s policy work, but it might affect litigation against the agency.

The DOL has proposed rescinding dozens of rules in recent weeks including ending minimum wage and overtime eligibility for certain health aides, canceling the regulations underpinning the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, as well as several guidance documents from various agencies that the administration deemed duplicative or outdated. The agency also rolled out a new opinion letter program and stood up several employer self-audit programs that can help companies avoid enforcement actions.

Attorneys say Trump’s decision to place former DOL officials atop the agency is key to its momentum despite the vacuum of leadership within its subagencies, and that officials aren’t waiting for nominees to get confirmed to advance its policy goals.

“This administration is not like a brand new administration,” said Paul DeCamp, a management-side attorney at Epstein Becker & Green. Deputy Secretary Keith Sonderling is “very familiar” with the agency’s limits when it comes to guidance and enforcement policies from his experience leading the WHD during Trump’s first administration and at other federal agencies, he added.

“That really gives the department a leg up on acting quickly in a way that it usually takes a new administration a year, year and a half, to kind of figure things out. They don’t have that learning curve now,” DeCamp said.

However, there are benefits to having confirmed leadership, says Timothy Taylor, an employment and litigation attorney at Holland & Knight LLP, particularly legal ones.

“It does complicate some things when it comes to such issues as who needs to sign off on rules, who needs to sign off on policies, questions around proper succession, proper exercise of authority,” he said, “and occasionally those things can trip people up in litigation if it’s not properly done.”

Nominees waiting on a Senate vote:

• Jonathan Berry, labor solicitor
• David Keeling, Occupational Safety and Health Administration
• Andrew Rogers, Wage and Hour Division
• Jeremiah Workman, Veterans’ Employment and Training
• David Castillo, chief financial officer
• Wayne Palmer, Mine Safety and Health Administration
• Henry Mack, Employment and Training Administration
• Julie Hocker, Office of Disability Employment Policy

Nominees waiting to clear committee:

• Anthony D’Esposito, inspector general
• Rosario Palmieri, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy

Ten Labor nominees await action by the US Senate.

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

Parker Purifoy: The Department of Veterans Affairs’ decision to terminate its collective bargaining agreements for hundreds of thousands of employees will undercut the power of the health-care providers that treat veterans, nurses at the agency say.

National Nurses United, the largest union for registered nurses, called the move by VA Secretary Doug Collins a “blatant attempt to bust our unions and to silence the nurses and workers.” The union represents 19,000 nurses at the agency.

Collins issued the notice to all of the unions representing department staff, including the American Federation of Government Employees, the Service Employees International Union, and NNU after President Donald Trump declared more than 1 million federal workers exempt from federal labor protections in the name of national security.

The VA employs more than 371,000 health-care professionals and support staff at 170 medical centers and 1,193 outpatient clinics, according to the department’s website. In its statement, NNU accused the Trump administration of seeking to privatize veterans’ care and move billions in taxpayer dollars away from the VA workforce.

Unions representing health-care workers frequently wade in on issues impacting patients, because patient safety is closely tied to working conditions, the NNU has said.

“As union nurses, we understand that collective bargaining rights are fundamental to carrying out our critical role as patient advocates,” NNU said. “It is because of VA nurses’ ability to speak up about patient safety through our union that our nation’s veterans receive the highest level of care.”

The VA, in its statement last week, accused organized labor of opposing the MISSION Act, which sought to expand access to care by expanding telehealth options. Unions AFGE, NFFE, and NNU said the legislation only served to lower the quality of veterans’ care. AFGE said it was being targeted by the agency for fighting Trump’s layoff plans in court and opposing an infrastructure review commission, which the union said would shut down rural VA clinics.

Trump’s executive order targeting union collective bargaining agreements is still being challenged in court and the Office of Personnel Management has advised to continue recognizing the pacts until the litigation is resolved.