WHEREAS:

Federal regulations dictate how statutes passed by Congress will be implemented and enforced, providing substantial protections for American workers and their families, on a range of issues such as health and safety, wage and hour and more; and

WHEREAS:

Though much attention was given in 2017 to the stalled legislative agenda of President Trump and Republican leaders in Congress, less scrutiny has been applied to the Trump Administration’s rollback of regulations meant to protect workers, and the devastating impact this will have on union members and all working people in the United States; and

WHEREAS:

Republican leaders in Congress used the Congressional Review Act, which had previously been used only once, to eliminate, without a single Democratic vote, 14 federal rules issued by the Obama administration; and

WHEREAS:

The first bill President Trump signed after taking office repealed the “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” rule, requiring companies bidding on federal contracts to disclose their history of violations of labor and employment laws relating to workplace safety, discrimination and minimum wage and overtime pay, as well as prohibiting companies from denying employees access to court-based remedies for sexual harassment by requiring them to submit to employer-selected arbitration processes; and

WHEREAS:

The Trump administration repealed a rule to provide a safe harbor for state-run retirement savings that would have exempted them from ERISA, and which will likely have a chilling effect on more than a dozen states that were considering creating such plans, leaving millions of private sector workers without any retirement savings; and

WHEREAS:

The Trump administration repealed the OSHA recordkeeping rule, which required employers in hazardous industries to maintain accurate records of serious work-related injuries and illness, because under-reporting and falsifying records to hide injuries are rampant in many sectors; and

WHEREAS:

The Trump administration has repeatedly delayed implementation of the fiduciary rule, which targets advice given by investment advisers against the clients’ best interest, and would prohibit common practices such as steering clients toward investments paying a commission to the adviser, but providing a lower return to the client, which is projected to cost retirement savers $18.5 billion over 30 years. That rule has now been held up in the courts and the Department of Labor is seizing on this opportunity as an excuse to withdraw the rule; and

WHEREAS:

The Trump administration repealed an Obama rule allowing for drug testing of unemployment insurance (UI) beneficiaries in certain categories, but then issued a new rule, in direct violation of the Congressional Review Act’s prohibition of issuing a rule on the same subject as repealed, to apply drug-testing even more broadly within UI; and

WHEREAS:

Trump’s Secretary of Labor has indicated he will pull back a rule that would expand the number of workers eligible for overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act to more than 12 million workers.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:

That AFSCME will continue to oppose the Trump administration’s campaign to roll back regulations protecting American workers and their families, and will work with allies to build public awareness about the devastating impact these repeals have on individuals throughout the United States; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:

That AFSCME will advocate for the reinstatement of strong rules protecting workers especially with regard to safety and health, the fiduciary duty of investment advisors and improved labor standards.