New Yorkers voting on Election Day at a polling website within the East Village on Nov. 4, 2025.
Picture by Adam Daly
Although there have been no points on the poll final week that particularly addressed labor and employment points, over the previous 11 months I’ve had a number of alternatives to write down in regards to the erosion of worker protections beneath the Trump administration.
From coverage shifts and case dismissals on the Equal Employment Alternative Fee and U.S. Division of Labor, to the dismantling of the Nationwide Labor Relations Board and its powers, issues have been altering quick and furiously. On Tuesday, Nov. 4, voters throughout the nation selected Democrats — historically aligned with labor — in what’s being referred to as by pundits a “blue wave.”
The systemic dismantling of coaching applications, job alternatives, and protections for individuals within the office, are all integral elements of the “economy and shutdown” points which can be on the forefront of the election day post-mortems and deserve a while in these analyses.
Federal adjustments
From day one, the Trump administration has issued govt orders and company directives designed to be extra “employer friendly,” primarily by weakening and rolling again enforcement of office protections.
The U.S. Labor Division introduced two adjustments to its Truthful Labor Requirements Act enforcement. The company now not seeks liquidated damages for unpaid employee wages. Additionally they modified its impartial contractor evaluation to deal with employees’ management over their time and alternative for revenue and loss. The outdated rule additionally checked out a employee’s talent stage, length/permanence of the task, funding by the employee and the employee’s operate. It most of the time discovered worker protections to use.
Of their June funds, the feds proposed deep cuts to the places of work that implement federal protections — together with for wage and hour violations, employee security and well being violations, and oversight of retirement funds and plans. The funds eliminates the Workplace of Federal Contract Compliance and Job Corps and, most importantly, it slashes assets to the NLRB for unfair labor follow proceedings, union illustration proceedings and compliance proceedings.
Then, on Sept. 4, 2025, in celebration of Labor Day, the U.S. Division of Labor launched its “Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.” Billed as “reducing unnecessary burdens on employers” and “delivering the regulatory certainty that American workers and businesses need to thrive,” the proposals embrace revisiting the principles round joint employers, and altering the job duties and salaries required for time beyond regulation exemptions for govt, administrative, skilled, exterior gross sales and laptop workers.
The present federal authorities is participating within the systemic erosion of employee protections. That features a job market in which there’s alternative for everybody. They imposed layoffs, minimize funding to infrastructure and different essential initiatives that represented hundreds of jobs, and have now shut the federal government down altogether.
High quality jobs that meet some fundamental human requirements for all Individuals is clearly not a precedence for this administration, and persons are watching.
Native response
Although many really feel helpless within the face of unabashed disregard for the legal guidelines and requirements we’ve fought so onerous to realize and uphold for American employees, there have been stands taken by pockets of management. Right here in New York, a bundle of payments was signed in September particularly designed to “Ensure Protections for New York Workers in the Midst of Federal Uncertainty.”
The laws consists of the creation of recent union jobs, protections for civil service union members within the occasion of layoff or suspension, and a measure that expands apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship alternatives by way of faculty grants and contractor necessities. Most apparently, it authorizes the New York State Public Employment Relations Board to deal with circumstances concerning organized labor disputes when the NLRB is unable to behave.
It is usually price noting, as I’ve talked about earlier than, that New York State Division of Labor enforcement powers have been expanded considerably over the previous yr. Now, when the commissioner information a wage order with the county clerk, it turns into a lien with the total power and impact of a civil judgement. The commissioner was additionally granted the ability to impose a 15% surcharge on every of these wage orders (which can already embrace as much as 300% penalties). Most importantly, nevertheless, the NYS DOL commissioner now has all of the powers of the sheriff. The division can levy and promote an employer’s property to fulfill its findings.
Election Day 2025
Final week, NYC elected a mayor whose platform centered on affordability and a high quality of life customary that applies to everybody equally. Throughout the river, our neighbors in New Jersey, going through the slashing of hundreds of constructing commerce jobs as a result of the administration terminated funds to construct the Gateway tunnel, overwhelmingly elected a Democrat.
Although union and different workforce points have all the time been political in nature, the reality is that politics is the individuals and the individuals work for a residing. These insurance policies have an effect on us all and everybody — employers and workers — have to concentrate. Possibly they’re beginning to get the message.
Rachel Demarest Gold is a associate in Abrams Fensterman’s Lengthy Island workplace.
