Posts tagged Biden administration
Employee Advocate Supports Repeal of Biden-Backed Union Power Scheme Over Temporary Agricultural Workers
September 5, 2025 // National Right to Work Foundation comments: Biden DOL lacked authority to impose pro-union boss regulation over temporary agricultural workers
Op-ed: Celebrating the Decline of Big Labor
September 2, 2025 // New York and California have 17 percent of U.S. workers, but almost 30 percent of U.S. union members. The states with the lowest rates include the Carolinas, which do not allow collective bargaining in the public sector. More states should look to abolish public-sector collective bargaining, as Utah did this year. And more states should pick up where Republicans left off in the early-to-mid 2010s by passing right-to-work laws. The first order of business should be restoring Michigan’s law that Democrats repealed. In 24 states, private-sector workers can still be coerced to join or financially support a union.
Op-ed: A GOP-Teamsters Alliance Makes No Sense
August 24, 2025 // Republicans getting on board with these ideas aren’t just awkward—they’re incoherent. There’s little evidence that endorsements from Teamsters executives move the needle in general elections, for parties or for candidates. Can Republicans credibly argue that filling the Teamsters’ coffers (and campaign-donation kitty) will result in the sort of political realignment some hope for, or even a lasting political windfall? The only guaranteed outcome is more power for the Teamsters and other unions over U.S. labor relations. If these overtures to the Teamsters backfire, Republicans can’t say they weren’t warned. As one GOP politician running for Missouri attorney general tweeted in 2015, after labor-aligned Republicans derailed state right-to-work legislation, “time for an end to union-backed candidates in GOP.”
Plan Sponsors Get Go-Ahead on Alternatives as DOL Shifts Stance
August 22, 2025 // For plan sponsors, this regulatory shift provides much-needed clarity and removes a significant deterrent that had been hanging over alternative investment discussions. The DOL has essentially returned to a neutral, principles-based approach that allows fiduciaries to evaluate all investment options based on their merits rather than facing special scrutiny for considering alternatives.
Protect Worker Freedom to Best Help Black Women, All Workers
August 21, 2025 // The removal of DEI positions and programming under the second Trump Administration is also credited with having a disparate impact on Black women. This argument might sound reasonable to regular people, but data doesn’t prove it. Black women are overrepresented in federal jobs compared to private sector employment. They comprise 6.6% of the civilian workforce but 12.1% of the federal workforce, the largest differential among racial demographics.
DOL once again set to tackle joint employer, independent contractor regulations
August 20, 2025 // Meanwhile, DOL in May told the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that it would no longer defend the last administration’s rule allowing retirement plan fiduciaries to consider environmental, social and governance, or ESG, factors when making investment decisions from a lawsuit filed by several Republican-led states. In another shift, DOL in June said it would begin issuing opinion letters through five of its subagencies. The agency’s new regime published the first such letter in May on the subject of the independent contractor classification status for virtual marketplace company workers. The letter reinstated a stance DOL previously articulated in a 2019 letter that had been rescinded during the Biden administration.
Trump Just Saved Thousands of Disabled Americans’ Jobs
August 5, 2025 // Disability-rights advocates have long insisted that, as a matter of public policy, disabled people’s lives should resemble those of nondisabled people to the greatest extent possible. They have argued, for example, that “segregated” environments, which primarily or exclusively serve disabled people, violate the principle of normalization and ought to be abolished. And for decades, they have called for the repeal of Section 14(c), a provision of the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 that allows certified employers to pay disabled workers a subminimum wage commensurate with their productivity. Congress created the 14(c) program to enable people with severe disabilities to remain in the job market after the passage of the federal minimum wage. The Biden administration published a proposed rule in 2024 that would have phased out the program, claiming that it was “no longer necessary to prevent curtailment of employment opportunities.” But last month, the Trump administration announced it was withdrawing the proposal. In doing so, it preserved the jobs of thousands of severely disabled Americans who would have lost one of the staples of a “normal” life.
California Tries Another Tack to Crush Ridesharing
August 4, 2025 // The latest legislative effort is Assembly Bill 1340, which passed the full Assembly in June and was approved by the Senate Transportation Committee in early July. It would allow drivers to unionize and “promote collective bargaining rights for transportation network drivers and state intent that the state action antitrust exemption apply to … drivers and their representatives.” Democrats couldn’t kill the industry quickly, so they’ll try to destroy it slowly via collective bargaining.
New Game Plan: White House and Congress Move to Clarify Student Athlete Unionization Rights
July 31, 2025 // The SCORE bill’s ban is broad. Its key provision says, in part: “no individual may be considered an employee of an institution, a conference, or an interstate intercollegiate athletic association based on the participation of such individual on a varsity sports team or in an intercollegiate athletic competition as a student athlete.” In addition, the bill blocks states from enforcing any law that “governs or regulates the compensation, payment, benefits, employment status, or eligibility of a student athlete (including a prospective student athlete) with respect to participation in intercollegiate athletics.” It specifically blocks any state law that “relates to the right of a student athlete to receive compensation or other payments or benefits directly or indirectly from any institution, associated entity or individual, conference, or interstate intercollegiate athletic association.”
Unions rally in Pittsburgh against Trump’s cuts to worker protections and research funding
July 23, 2025 // The event was a stop on the AFL-CIO’s “It’s Better in a Union: Fighting for Freedom, Fairness & Security” bus tour. Labor leaders including AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, USW International President David McCall and Allegheny/Fayette Central Labor Council President Darrin Kelly took the mic to address the impacts of the administration’s cuts to university research funding, Medicaid and the firing of workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs, both in Pittsburgh and across the country. After the speeches, volunteers handed out a sheet of paper with a phone number to reach the House of Representative and a QR code with a prewritten email in support of a discharge petition to force a vote in that chamber on the Protect America’s Workforce Act, a bill that aims to reverse Trump’s executive order that eliminated collective bargaining rights for federal workers.