The Economic Policy Institute has tracked a recent overtime pay cut engineered by the Trump administration and calculated what the rule change is going to cost U.S. workers. Earlier this year the Department of Labor abandoned 2016 regulations that expanded 40-year-old overtime rules. The rules from the Obama DOL could have increased overtime pay for workers by billions. However, since the new regs were challenged in court in 2016 by a coalition of 21 states and business groups, President Trump recently dropped any federal effort to defend them. Failure to enact them, the EPI calculated, will cause the loss of $1.2 billion per year in lost overtime for workers.
In New England it looks like New Hampshire is a bigger loser of overtime than Vermont. EPI’s estimates show New Hampshire misses out on $6,078,793 per year without the updated overtime regulations compared to Vermont’s estimated loss of $3,032,958.
Here’s the state by state chart showing the numbers potentially lost for Vermonters.
We haven’t even mentioned yet the lost tax revenue for states on those wages.
And meanwhile overtime is definitely not a problem at the White House. It turns out President Trump’s daily schedule has been adjusted to allow “Executive Time” so he can spend three hours in the morning watching TV and head to the oval office later. Between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. Axios.com reports The Donald is having “Executive Time” in the Oval Office, but in reality: … [he] spends that time in his residence, watching TV, making phone calls and tweeting. […] Trump’s days in the Oval Office are relatively short – from around 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., then he’s back to the residence. During that time he usually has a meeting or two, but spends a good deal of time making phone calls and watching cable news in the dining room adjoining the Oval. Then he’s back to the residence for more phone calls and more TV.
The White House is calling it “Executive Time” but “Fox and Fury Time” might be more accurate given that his often rage-filled morning tweets tend to coincide with Fox News broadcasts. Often, Politico.com reports presidential tweets begin popping up minutes after a Fox report airs.
So welcome to America 2018 where President Trump – a self-described “very stable genius” – can happily spend three or more hours (in his pajamas?) every morning in front of his wide screens stroking his ego. But his Department of Labor won’t support or defend restructured overtime rules for workers. Just like that “tax cut” bill he signed: all the pie for the billionaires, none but crumbs for the workers.
Some people seem to think that because Trump is a buffoon he’s not getting anything done. In addition to the overtime theft, he has been busily and effectively rewarding his donors and making things worse for workers for a year now. Here are just a few more of his devastating actions:
Blocked an Obama rule making it harder for companies that violate labor laws to get federal contracts.
Delayed implementation of Obama “fiduciary rule” to require financial advisors to act in their clients’ best interest, instead of selling investments with the biggest fees at an estimated cost to savers of $3.7 million over the course of their retirement.
Delayed and then proposed partial roll-back of Obama-era safeguards to protect shipyard and construction workers from lung disease due to exposure to beryllium.
Delayed a rule, affecting over 2 million construction workers, that would limit exposure to crystalline silica, a workplace carcinogen that causes a potentially fatal lung condition.
Delayed a regulation to require mine owners to identify and inform miners of potential hazards before sending them into a given area.
OSHA has scrubbed workplace deaths from its home page.
Pruitt (EPA) signed a two-year delay to regulations to improve the safety of chemical facilities. The American Petroleum Institute argued that the rule, which followed several disastrous incidents at chemical plants, would be burdensome and do little to improve safety.
The Labor Department has proposed rescinding what’s known as the “persuader rule,” an Obama regulation that would ramp up disclosure requirements for employers who hire anti-union consultants.
As a candidate Trump said that American workers’ wages were too high. It’s no surprise that there has been no action on the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for eight years and is now worth 25 percent less than it was 50 years ago.
Cut funding for the agency that is supposed to enforce the rights of unions — the NLRB— while increasing funding for the agency that goes to bat for employers — the Office of Labor-Management Standards.
Because McConnell refused to move Obama’s nominees for the Federal bench forward, Trump has a record number of life-time judicial vacancies to fill. He is nominating judges with a history of ruling for corporations or defending them when they are sued by workers. If confirmed, these judges will be on the bench for decades. The current Supreme Court term, with Gorsuch, has the potential to gut public employee unions and keep more workers from suing their employers.
What Digby says on Trump’s buffoonery: even dumb authoritarians are dangerous