Budget Cuts Series: The Department of Labor

This is the latest in the Budget Cuts Series which is an examination of White House proposed budget cuts to learn what's hidden beneath the surface.  We will later update based on Congressional budget proposals and actions.  This post examines the proposed 21% cut to the Labor Department, the key agency that protects U.S. workers from being killed on the job, protects their pay and benefits, helps them get retrained after job loss and provides unemployment benefits.  

The Trump budget proposal specifically calls out the Department of Labor: “With the need to rebuild the Nation’s military without increasing the deficit, this Budget focuses the Department of Labor on its highest priority functions and disinvests in activities that are duplicative, unnecessary, unproven, or ineffective.”

Trump's proposal requires the Labor Department to decrease federal funding for job training programs, turning over the responsibility to the states for keeping these programs alive. That includes closing job training centers for “disadvantaged youth” that do a “poor job educating and preparing students.”  The Trump administration would also put a job training program for senior citizens on the chopping block, which it claims will save $434 million.  

The Senior Community Service Employment Program, training grants at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and technical-assistance grants at the Office of Disability Employment Policy would all disappear.

Job Corps, which operating job-training centers and provides free education and training for disadvantaged children, faces significant cuts as alluded to above.  The proposed budget includes closing centers where 37,000 unemployed and underemployed youths receive job training.  It is the “only federal training program that has been shown to increase earnings for this population,” leading participants to go further in school, reducing their criminal activity, and increasing their average earnings for several years after the program, although the earnings gains were only sustained by older participants.

Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the upper chamber’s top Democrat on labor issues, said this is “yet another clear example of President Trump breaking his campaign promise to stand with workers.”  AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, who met with Trump recently, said, "President Trump's proposed budget attempts to balance the budget on the backs of working families. Working people in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn’t vote for a budget that slashes workforce training,” he said.

U.S. workers all deserve to work in a safe environment and be paid the wages and overtime they are owed. Without a fully functioning Department of Labor, workers will not have recourse when taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers, and employers who do want to follow the law will not have the assistance they need to comply. Congress should reject the president’s proposal and continue funding the agencies that protect workers on the job.

Sources: http://thehill.com/regulation/labor/324353-trump-proposes-25b-in-labor-cuts

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/trump-budget-dol/519933/