The massive and illegal firings of federal workers across the government will have devastating consequences in communities across the country.
Now, a new report from The Century Foundation, authored by former U.S. Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, zeroes in on how cuts to one particular agency, the Department of Labor, will impact workers and their families.
Su, who served under President Joe Biden, imagines a future in which 13-year-old children work the night shift in meatpacking plants; working people put in 50-hour weeks but get paid for a fraction of those hours; and coal miners are forced to work in mines that haven’t had safety inspections.
“These are the nightmares that could become the norm in a country without a strong U.S. Department of Labor,” Su writes.
Her warnings are not hyperbole.
Consider that under Biden, the Labor Department secured more than $1 billion in back wages and damages for workers, according to the report. The agency also created new policies to restrict deadly silica dust in mines and expand overtime pay. And it protected retirement and health benefits for workers and their families.
The Labor Department enforces laws that keep workers safe and protects them against wage theft, and it promotes economic growth, among other things.
But the new administration’s indiscriminate firings of Labor Department personnel will severely compromise the department’s ability to fulfill its mission.
The report explores the impact that such deep cuts in resources and personnel might have on communities across the nation.
Su touches on worker safety, especially in mines; worker compensation and wage theft; families’ access to health care and retirement benefits; the ability of workers to speak up without fear of retaliation; discriminatory practices in the workplace; and more. All of this is at stake under the new administration.
“The anticipated drastic cuts to the DOL are anti-worker,” Su concludes. “They are part of the administration’s war on workers that includes obliterating union protections, stripping workers of collective bargaining rights, and attacks on federal employees and the workers who depend on them. These cuts mean that workers will be even more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.”
AFSCME is fighting back against the illegal firings of federal workers, as well as attacks by billionaires and anti-union extremists.
Our union’s Get Organized campaign is all about making sure everyone understands what’s at stake in this fight. It’s about protecting our union power and defeating any efforts to gut Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. And it’s about giving more working people a voice on the job and say in the future of this country.