Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but the Trump administration is taking aim at protections that have long been in place for women in the workforce.
The MAGAs are using the Department of Labor to try to rescind an executive order that allows workers to identify and challenge discriminatory pay without facing retaliation, because of course they are.
A second proposed DOL rule would eliminate obligations intended to help ensure that women have equal access to apprenticeship programs.
And then a third would roll back minimum wage and overtime protections for almost 4 million home care workers across the country, the bulk of whom – 87 percent – are women.
“Not only do women deserve access to economic advancement, women are central to the strength of the American economy,” members of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, led by Jennifer McClellan, D-Va., and Lateefah Simon, D-Calif., wrote in a letter to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
“Rather than stifle women’s progress in the workforce, we need to increase their wages, meet the needs of their caregiving responsibilities, and eliminate barriers to training programs for good paying jobs. Investments in women’s economic success are an investment in the success of the American economy,” the caucus wrote.
This one is bound to fall on deaf ears.
Chavez-DeRemer, on her way to being confirmed as Labor Secretary, got the throaty endorsement of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who let himself be fooled by who her father was.
Richard Chavez, according to his daughter’s biography, was a Mexican-American Teamster, which O’Brien, dupe that he is, said was great, because that means she “knows the importance of carrying a union card and what it means to grow up in a middle-class household.”
During her confirmation hearing, she said she opposes legislation overturning so-called right-to-work laws, the name attached – right to work – obfuscating what those laws really do, which is, make it hard for workers to organize into unions.
But, hey, Sean O’Brien still has his precious access to the halls of power, amirite?
So, now we have the DOL actively trying to suppress the rights of folks to challenge pay disparities, the federal government is killing apprenticeship programs aimed at getting more women into the trades, and home healthcare companies don’t have to worry about facing issue for underpaying their workers.
“These three proposed rules take away protections, pay and economic opportunity for women,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter to Chavez-DeRemer, who doesn’t care. “Women deserve access to good paying jobs and to be treated with fairness and dignity in every profession. When women thrive, the economy thrives.”
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Chris Graham
