Trump’s war on workers

NEW THREAT TO SAFETY

government is retreating from aggressively protecting workers,” Gerstein said. “There’s an even greater concern . . . about how to ensure that there is some governmental presence in places where state authorities are not looking to protect workers’ rights,” she said.

Gerstein also noted that enforcement of Labor Department wage and overtime protections could suffer because of Trump’s hard-line stance on deporting undocumented immigrants — many of whom are exploited at the workplace but are too afraid to talk to authorities.

“Even in the best of circumstances, it’s hard to get undocumented workers to talk to government . . . . The whole situation greatly exacerbates what was already very challenging for labor law enforcement,” Gerstein said.

Within the Labor Department, the “chilling effect” of Trump’s policies is already being felt — and the worries about what actual programs will be cut are under constant discussion, said Ian Pajer-Rogers of Interfaith Worker Justice, a Chicago-based nonprofit that deals with some 60 worker centers across the country. His organization coordinates with grass-roots community groups to form a bridge between undocumented and other vulnerable workers and the government agencies tasked with protecting them, he said. In recent years the group collaborated closely with the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division — the enforcement arm that investigates allegations of pay theft and overtime abuses. Interfaith Worker Justice operated in tandem with the Wage and Labor Division’s CORPS — Community Outreach and Resource Planning Specialists — to investigate possible violations without costing workers their jobs or putting them in jeopardy of deportation.

Since Trump’s proposed budget cuts were announced, Pajer-Rogers said, he’s already been told by Labor Department workers that most enforcement efforts will go away. “I’ve been told, directly, that when the agency has moments like this when work is defunded and deprioritized, they have to revert to ‘engagement’ efforts,” he said. “So it’s going out to educate companies about how not to commit wage theft as opposed to going out to enforce laws to punish those committing wage theft.”

While there’s still hope that state agencies can pick up some of the slack around pay and overtime violations, Pajer-Rogers fears a far more apathetic Labor Department under Trump and his labor secretary, Alexander Acosta.

“Without the resources there ... well, laws are good only as long as you have enforcement around them,” he said.

Training and enforcement and union jobs are needed now more than ever. In our city, 33 construction workers have died at work since 2014.

Thirty-three funerals, 33 families mourning the loss of their loved ones. Ninety percent of these workers were not union members.

As the federal government strips our rights away, the city needs to protect workers with construction training legislation. New York State must increase penalties for criminally negligent contractors to $1 million from $10,000 — creating real consequences for employers who disregard workers’ lives — and maintain the Scaffold Safety Law. That law requires contractors to provide proper safety equipment for workers at high elevations.

We can do better as a country, and the city and state must step in where and when the federal government leaves workers out.

As a nonprofit organization that fights to extend and to defend safe and healthy workplaces, we anticipate challenges to come. Our job won’t be easy with the Trump administration’s attempts to gut