May 2, 2025
Sarah Anderson
Image by Kayla Velasquez.
This week marks the end of the first 100 days of the second Trump administration. The president campaigned as a champion of working class voters. But straight out of the blocks, his policy choices have undermined labor at nearly every turn.
Gutting Worker Rights
President Donald Trump has acted aggressively to reverse recent progress on worker rights. He started by illegally removing National Labor Relations Board Chair Gwynne Wilcox for allegedly favoring workers’ interests over employers. This robbed the NLRB of the quorum necessary to act and also gutted the agency’s independence. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to reinstate Wilcox, but on April 9, the Supreme Court blocked this action while litigation is pending.
Through a series of executive orders, Trump has also removed long-standing job protections for federal career employees, making it easier to fire these workers for any reason and taking away the rights of federal workers to collectively bargain.
The Trump administration’s assaults on union rights will have damaging ripple effects throughout our economy. Unionized workers earn on average 13.5 percent more in wages than their non-unionized peers and they enjoy better access to health care, paid sick leave, and retirement benefits. Union wage boosts are even higher for workers of color.
Opposing a Minimum Wage Hike
During their confirmation hearings, President Trump’s picks for Treasury and Laborsecretaries made clear they do not support raising the minimum wage, even though it has been stuck at just $7.25 per hour since 2009.
Many states have raised their own wage floors, but 20 states still use the federal minimum. The annual income of a single adult working full time at the federal minimum leaves this individual below the official poverty line in 2025. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 14 million U.S. workers earn less than $15 per hour.
Trump also rescinded a Biden executive order that increased the minimum wage for workers on federal contracts. That rule set a floor of $15 an hour in 2022 and indexed it to inflation. This year it would’ve been $17.75 an hour. The Trump administration’s chaotic tariffs threaten to increase consumer prices, making it even more difficult for low-wage workers to get by.
Slashing the Federal Workforce
Led by Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the administration has been on a rampage against the federal workforce. As of the middle of April, the administration had fired at least 121,361 federal workers, with many thousands more pressured to resign and more rounds of layoffs to come.
These cuts are a particular blow to Black workers, who make up a disproportionately large share of the workforce at agencies targeted for mass layoffs, including 25.2 percent of Veterans Affairs and 29.2 percent of Treasury employees.
The administration has made arbitrary and reckless cuts to some of the most vital public agencies. For example:
+ The administration is planning to cut over 80,000 jobs from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the agency that provides health care for retired military personnel.
+ Labor Department cuts have led to the closure of more than 40 offices that inspect mines and other workplaces for safety. Additional planned layoffs will reduce the agency’s ability to ensure retirement benefits rights and prevent wage theft, discrimination, and child labor.
+ The slashing of 10,000 S. Agency for International Development employees is expected to lead to an additional 6.3 million people around the world dying from HIV-AIDS in the next four years.
+ The Social Security Administration has laid off7,000 employees and plans to cut 87 percent of regional office staff. These moves have already led to long wait times for support for people worried about losing this essential retirement benefit.
+ A judge is currently reviewing an order to fire 90 percent of the 1,700employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. During its 14-year history, the CFPB has won nearly $21 billion in compensation for victims of fraud, racial discrimination in lending, and other financial abuse.
At this key 100-day benchmark, the Trump administration is facing a barrage of lawsuits, growing protests, and falling approval ratings. And so while the these early actions against working people have inflicted devastating effects on families across the country, the battle is by no means over.
This commentary is drawn from Appendix 2 to the report “The High Moral Stakes of the Policy Battles Raging in Washington,” published by Repairers of the Breach, with research support from the Institute for Policy Studies and the Economic Policy Institute.
Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.
