Federal worker protections are under attack

Long-standing U.S. worker rights and protections are under acute threat. These include attempts to roll back standards that set a national floor for minimum wages, health and safety, nondiscrimination, unemployment insurance, and other rights and protections long taken for granted in most U.S. workplaces.

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Under the second Trump administration, intense attacks have proliferated by the day and taken many forms. Cuts to federal agency funding and mass firings of federal civil servants—targeting agencies like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the CDC’s National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the National Labor Relations Board, and U.S. Department of Labor units like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Wage and Hour Division—have quickly imperiled the federal government’s capacity to ensure U.S. workers get paid what they’re owed, stay safe at work, have the freedom to form a union, and work in environments free from discrimination. Simultaneously, executive actions have directly targeted rights of workers for elimination. Examples include decisions to lower wages of federal contractors; strip union rights of federal employees; revoke work authorization for hundreds of thousands of migrant workers; and block the implementation of new standards to safeguard workers’ overtime wages, freedom to change jobs, and right to organize. Most recently, the administration has  taken initial steps to roll back scores of wage and hour and health and safety standards via proposed regulatory changes.

At the same time, Trump’s escalating and often lawless attacks on migrant workers are fostering a climate of fear that will worsen workplace conditions across the country and make it harder for workers to report labor abuses. The administration has also cancelled programs that protected workers from immigration-related retaliation when speaking up about labor violations or that helped prevent exploitative, illegal forms of child labor by allowing migrant youth fleeing neglect or abuse to petition for legal work authorization and a pathway to citizenship.

Trump’s attacks on workers run parallel to industry-backed attempts to ratchet down state labor standards while building pressure to erode federal standards for the whole country. For example, lawmakers in Ohio have repeatedly paired legislation to extend hours children can be scheduled to work on school nights (contradicting current federal guidelines) with concurrent resolutions calling on Congress to “change [the] Fair Labor Standards Act” to bring federal standards in line with weaker state rules. Project 2025, the policy roadmap closely followed so far by the second Trump administration, proposes allowing states to “opt out” of federal minimum wage, overtime, and child labor standards. If pursued, this drastic step would put workers at risk of extreme forms of exploitation.

The crisis calls for urgent action. At a minimum, states must be equipped to maintain and enforce basic protections should at-risk federal standards disappear. The crisis also presents opportunities for states to do much more to:

• remedy longstanding gaps and exclusions in weak or outdated labor and employment laws;
• advance new policies that address the pressing challenges of eroding worker power, growing income inequality, persistent racial and gender wage gaps, and declining job quality; and
• position states over the long term to assume more expansive, effective roles in enacting and enforcing key protections that form the bedrock of an economy that works for all.