Federal Enforcement of Worker Protections Likely Shifting in California Under Trump

The incoming Trump administration will likely impact federal workplace enforcement priorities in California and other states and unwind the Biden administration’s efforts to extend employee protections to millions more people in the U.S., according to several experts.

The U.S. Department of Labor has long aimed to ensure fair pay and safe working conditions for low-wage earners. The agency’s current leader, Julie Su, a former California labor secretary, has focused resources to prioritize protecting those who are most vulnerable to exploitation, including the immigrant workforce and migrant children who come to the U.S. without their parents.

Federal law protects workers, regardless of their immigration status. Judy Conti, government affairs director at the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group, expects the Department of Labor’s focus to shift under the administration of a president-elect who campaigned on deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. Tom Homan, Trump’s pick for border czar, plans for immigration agents to conduct more workplace raids as part of that crackdown.

“We know how hostile they are to immigrant workers and just downright disrespectful and disdainful,” said Conti, who has followed labor enforcement and the low-wage workforce for nearly three decades. “So I think you’ll probably see a big change there.”

California has the country’s largest undocumented workforce, with about 1.4 million people primarily working in the construction, agriculture and service industries as of 2022, according to the Pew Research Center. Nationwide, an estimated 8.3 million workers were unauthorized immigrants that year, about 5% of the total workforce.

Former president Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Labor Department, which has yet to be announced, will reveal more about the administration’s direction and priorities for the agency. Su, the acting secretary, will lose her job on Jan. 20. Her confirmation to the secretary post was stalled by Republicans in the Senate.

Su declined a KQED interview request through her office.

New leadership, especially a more pro-business one, will likely move to rescind or weaken some of the department’s recent regulations facing legal challenges from industry groups. One rule will make an estimated 4.3 million more salaried employees eligible to receive extra overtime pay after it goes fully into effect next year. Another makes it harder for employers to classify workers as independent contractors, who are often cheaper because they are not covered by minimum wage and workplace safety requirements, among other laws.

Paul DeCamp, an attorney who ran the wage and hour division under President George W. Bush, said the department could also be led with greater sensitivity toward the needs of working Americans because Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance aggressively courted blue-collar workers during the campaign.

“I don’t think that this administration wants to put a thumb in the eye of the working class,” DeCamp said. “If they start having their agencies take actions that are perceived as hurting blue-collar workers, that’ll kind of run contrary to the case that they made for why they should get elected.”

The Biden administration’s independent contractor rule, which went into effect earlier this year, allows labor enforcement actions against Uber, Lyft, Doordash and other companies that successfully fought to remain exempt from California state rules that attempted to require them to classify drivers as employees.

The regulation could also impact janitorial, domestic service, landscaping, trucking and other businesses in which misclassified workers lose income, said Samantha Sanders, a former policy adviser at the Labor Department’s wage and hour division during the Obama administration.

“These are workers who are already often facing difficult working conditions and very low pay. And when they are misclassified as independent contractors, they lose out on that even more,” said Sanders, who directs government affairs and advocacy at the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “It’s pretty safe to say that we’re expecting this new administration to be a disaster for workers.”

The U.S. Department of Labor investigates employers that cheat and exploit employees, unfairly competing with law-abiding businesses. The agency’s commitment to upholding worker rights has remained steady regardless of what party is in power, DeCamp said. However, the scope of some protections may differ, with Democratic administrations generally applying laws more broadly, DeCamp said.

He would not be surprised if a second Trump administration curtailed who qualifies for overtime pay when working more than 40 hours a week and reinstated a previous Trump-era rule that is less strict on which workers qualify as independent contractors.

“They’ve already got a rule they like,” DeCamp, who represents and advises businesses at the law firm Epstein, Becker, Green, said. “I don’t think they need to go back to square one.”

In California, worker protections on the books against wage theft or exploitative child labor are regarded as stronger than federal laws. However, the state agencies tasked with enforcing those rules, such as the California Labor Commissioner’s Office and Cal/OSHA, have struggled with an understaffing crisis for years, blunting their enforcement abilities.

The U.S. Department of Labor has functioned as an important source of relief for thousands of low-income workers in the state each year who were underpaid or suffered other abuses.

The department’s wage and hour division, charged with enforcing wage, child labor and other statutes, recovered $56.4 million in wages and damages for nearly 20,000 California workers in the last two fiscal years, according to figures provided by a labor department spokesperson. Businesses were assessed an additional $5.4 million in penalties during that time.

About nine in 10 employers agree to settle and pay wages or penalties as a result of an investigation, according to labor department officials, higher than the rate at state labor enforcement agencies in California.