MAY DAY. May 1 is International Workers’ Day, a day when many countries around the world commemorate the working class of their nation. The “obrero” or workers and their supporters took to the streets to fight for workers’ rights, better working conditions and equitable pay. In the United States, this year’s commemoration is especially significant given how the Trump administration has been leading the way toward retrogression in the nation’s goal and aspiration to help the working class.
In fact, on December 14, 2017, President Donald Trump held a press conference to take credit for the “most far-reaching regulatory reform in history,” and took pride in announcing that his administration has been responsible for more than 1,500 cancelled or delayed regulatory action, many of which were Obama-era regulations. Trump and the Republicans in Congress declared war on regulations over the last year by rolling back rules that were intended to protect workers, consumers, and public health.
According to Economic Policy Institute’s Perkins Project on Worker Rights and Wages — workers’ health, safety, and pay are among the casualties of Trump’s war on regulations.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) “is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank created in 1986 to include the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions. EPI believes every working person deserves a good job with fair pay, affordable health care, and retirement security. To achieve this goal, EPI conducts research and analysis on the economic status of working America. EPI proposes public policies that protect and improve the economic conditions of low- and middle-income workers and assesses policies with respect to how they affect those workers.”
The EPI lists the following “casualties” of Trump’s year of deregulation:
Deregulation casualty #1: Workers’ health and safety
• Rolling back a rule that required employers to keep accurate records of workplace injuries and illnesses
• Delaying a rule requiring employers submit injury and illness records electronically to OSHA. This Obama-era rule aims to identify patterns so that workplace hazards can be addressed and worker injuries and illnesses prevented. And because this information will be easily accessible to a broad audience on OSHA’s website, employers are more likely to comply with workplace safety rules to protect their workers—knowing that they’ll have to answer to the public if they don’t.
• Delaying a rule protecting workers from exposure to harmful silica dust This Obama administration rule lowered workers’ permissible exposure limit to deadly crystalline silica dust. cancer-causing respirable crystalline silica. Studies have linked exposure to silica to lung cancer, silicosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and kidney disease. About 2.3 million workers are exposed to respirable crystalline silica in their workplaces, including 2 million construction workers who drill, cut, crush, or grind silica-containing materials such as concrete and stone
• Rolling back protections for workers exposed to beryllium, exposure to which causes significant risks of chronic beryllium disease and lung cancer for workers
• Proposing to weaken the inspection rule for metal and nonmetal mines. Under the Obama-era rule, mine safety inspectors were allowed to conduct a safety examination at any time, including during the mineworkers’ shifts, which allows inspectors to spot unsafe practices and stop them before someone gets hurt.
• Considering a proposal to increase poultry line speeds, endangering workers by placing poultry slaughter and processing workers at increased risk of injury, illness, or death
• Proposing to weaken protections for farmworkers, The Trump Environmental Protection Agency proposed weakening regulations protecting farmworkers from harmful effects of pesticide exposure. Roughly 2,000–3,000 cases of acute pesticide exposure occur amon.
Deregulation casualty #2: Workers’ wage
• Proposing to make it legal for employers to take workers’ hard-earned tips
• Taking money out of workers’ pockets by weakening the overtime rule
Deregulation casualty #3: Workers’ savings
• Rolling back rules that made it easier for workers to save for retirement
• Delaying a rule providing protections for retirement savers. The rule simply requires financial advisers to provide what most clients probably already think they are receiving: advice about their retirement plans untainted by conflicts of interest. Conflicted advice leads to lower investment returns, causing real losses for the clients who are victimized.
Deregulation casualty #4: Workers’ safety nets
• Putting the EEO-1 pay data rulePutting the EEO-1 pay data rule on hold. “Collecting pay data is a significant step forward in addressing discriminatory pay practices. This information will assist employers in evaluating their pay practices to prevent pay discrimination and strengthen enforcement of our federal anti-discrimination laws.”
ª Proposing to roll back an SEC rule that requires disclosure of CEO-to-employee pay ratios. Rolling back the rule will simply deny workers and shareholders information necessary for them to evaluate CEO compensation and performance and determine the fairness of their own compensation structure. This allows corporate interests to operate behind closed doors with less accountability to the public and to workers. In 2016 CEOs in America’s largest firms made an average of $15.6 million in compensation, or 271 times the annual average pay of the typical worker.
Deregulation casualty #6: Workers’ rights to organize and join a union
• Rolling back a transparency rule that would allow workers to know when their employer has hired outside anti-union consultants during a union election
• Rolling back rules to modify and streamline union elections
Deregulation casualty #7: Consequences for employers who violate workers’ rights
• Rolling back the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule. This rule would have helped ensure that federal contracts (and taxpayer dollars) are not awarded to companies with track records of labor and employment law violations. Workers, taxpayers, and law-abiding contractors would have benefited from this rule.
Having known these, are the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress really looking after your rights and protection as workers?
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
