Trump’s Labor Secretary, Son of Antonin Scalia, Is a Wrecking Ball Aimed at Workers

This administration has never been about the people, safety, employees rights to even be able to go to work secure knowing that they will work in a safe environment. Profit always above lives.

Last September, Scalia became the Secretary of Labor. The son of the late Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Antonin Scalia.... Like many other Cabinet officials in the Trump Administration, Scalia had credentials that suggested an antagonism toward the agency he was appointed to run.

Since Trump entered politics, he has surrounded himself with grifters and figures of gross incompetence. Scalia is part of a smaller cohort: distinguished conservatives who have joined the Administration to advance their own ideological goals.

The official role of the Labor Department is “to foster, promote and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers and retirees of the United States.”

As an attorney, Scalia had spent decades helping corporations gut or evade government regulations, including worker protections.

Scalia, unsurprisingly, is a no fool and is expertly destroying the agency he "leads."  Profit over people. Corporations over compassion. There has never been less protection of the human race from greed.

Scalia has an intellectual pedigree that most members of Trump’s inner circle lack.  Temperamentally, he has little in common with the bombastic President.  Yet, like virtually everyone in the Republican Party, Scalia has chosen to view this Administration chiefly in opportunistic terms.

His longtime agenda has been curtailing government, and at the Labor Department he has overseen the rewriting of dozens of rules that were put in place to protect workers. As the coronavirus has overrun America, Scalia’s impulse has been to grant companies leeway rather than to demand strict enforcement of safety protocols.

Seems like Scalia is doing exactly what Trump and the GOP put him there to do. 

Since the pandemic began, OSHA has received more than ten thousand complaints alleging unsafe conditions related to the virus. It has issued just two citations under the General Duty Clause.

Even as millions of workers were risking their health to perform jobs deemed essential, OSHA had done little more than issue a modest list of voluntary safety guidelines.

On April 28th, Richard Trumka, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., sent Scalia a letter accusing the Department of Labor of forsaking its mission....  demanded that Scalia impose emergency temporary standards that would require companies to follow specific rules to slow the spread of COVID-19, such as providing employees with personal protective equipment and adhering to social-distancing guidelines established by the Centers for Disease Control.

Scalia’s response was... unyielding.  Imposing emergency temporary standards was unnecessary, Scalia wrote....

Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate won’t sign any pandemic relief legislation that doesn’t release businesses from liability for not protecting their employees from COVID risks.

Read the full story at our source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/26/trumps-labor-secretary-is-a-wrecking-ball-aimed-at-workers