Ralph Nader: The Trump Agenda Is Bad For Labor, Bad For America – OpEd
Trump’s callous disregard for workers’ well-being knows no bounds – even children would not be safe under a second Trump presidency. Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump administration, calls for teenagers to be trained on dangerous machinery. At the state level, Republicans are already weakening child labor laws, which have led to tragedies like the death of 16-year-old William Hampton, who died after being pinned between a semi-truck and a trailer while working at a recycling plant in Lee Summit, Missouri.
As president, Donald Trump reduced the number of OSHA inspectors to the lowest levels in history, lowered OSHA standards meant to protect workers from getting sick, and weakened penalties for companies and bosses that break the law. In short, Trump has made it crystal clear that he doesn’t care whether workers get home to their families safely after a backbreaking day of work.
While in office, Trump vowed that he would veto legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Today, 21 million workers still make under $15 per hour. Trump wants American workers to continue scraping by on poverty wages.
Trump even changed the rules on overtime pay, disqualifying more than 8 million workers. By rigging the system against workers, he took billions each year out of their paychecks.
Donald Trump has railed against “job-killing” trade deals and companies sending jobs overseas. But given the chance to crack down on greedy corporations taking jobs away from American workers to save a buck, Trump made it even easier – by forcing through a corporate tax cut that gave these very companies a 50% tax break on foreign profits. Trump made it easier and more profitable than ever for companies to offshore American jobs.
As president, Donald Trump packed the National Labor Relations Board with anti-worker cronies who sided with the bosses. These Trump lackeys did everything in their power strip away workers’ freedom to organize, while making it easier for greedy executives to fire or punish workers for speaking up.
Trump, with his Republican accomplices, jammed through the appointments of three hard-core anti-worker justices to the Supreme Court. These right-wing politicians in robes have done everything in their power to curb the power of workers and the agencies that seek to protect them on the job.
If enacted, the Trump 2024 platform would tear American public education apart. Beyond “ending Teacher Tenure” – in other words, stripping teachers of their union protections and making it easier to oust teachers in witch-hunts fueled by disinformation – Trump’s platform calls for “Universal School Choice.” “School choice” is simply a euphemism for using public taxpayer money to send children to private schools.
Trump keeps making it perfectly clear which side he is on.