If anyone still thought the Trump administration was on the side of workers, the Trump administration made yet another move to dispel that notion, this time releasing a report that detailed how they will try to take collective bargaining rights away from postal workers with regards to their ability to negotiate wages:
Federal News Network: Postal task force seeks to remove USPS compensation from collective bargaining
The White House’s postal task force is calling for rolling back collective bargaining rights for postal unions, and is not looking to undo the Postal Service’s obligation to pre-fund health benefits for future postal retirees.
However, in a long-awaited report released Tuesday, the task force, chaired by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, lacks clarification on steps the Trump administration would take to privatize USPS, as it telegraphed in June as part of its government reorganization plan.
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One of the biggest changes to the Postal Service’s business model the task force recommends is that the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act “be amended to apply to the USPS and its employees, and remove USPS compensation from collective bargaining,” which would mean changes to postal employees’ pay and benefits.
The Trump administration has made it quite clear that despite any lip service they might pay toward increasing wages, they actually do not want wages to increase. The reason is simple: wages are an expense. Most of the officials in the Trump administration who are tasked with economic policy decisions are either former executives and/or Wall Street veterans, so naturally they see wages as something that should be cut, because cutting expenses means greater profits, and profits is all they actually care about. They certainly don’t care about workers.
Take Trump’s economic advisor Larry Kudlow, for example. He thinks the federal minimum wage should be abolished.
The White House’s top economic adviser said Thursday that he opposes the federal minimum wage, arguing that the decades-old law is a “terrible idea” that drives up costs for small businesses across the country.
Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said that he would oppose any attempt to work with Democrats in Congress to lift the federal minimum wage should the party take back the House or Senate in the 2018 midterm elections.
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“My view is a federal minimum wage is a terrible idea. A terrible idea,” Kudlow said at a Washington Post Live event, adding that raising it would “damage” small businesses by forcing them to face higher payroll costs. Kudlow later called the idea of hiking the federal minimum wage “silly.”
The sentiment that wages are an expense that should be cut is not just held by Trump administration officials like Steve Mnuchin and Larry Kudlow. That sentiment is also held by Donald Trump himself, a man who had a long history of stiffing contractors who worked for him, and has shown the same disdain for his own workers now that he is at the head of the federal government. For example, in August, on the same day he voiced support for a tax break for the wealthiest Americans, Trump also said he would be cancelling the cost of living increases for federal workers:
WTOP: Trump nixes pay raise for federal employees
President Donald Trump says he plans to freeze automatic pay raises for civilian federal employees in 2019, citing the need for government belt-tightening.
In a letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Trump said he is zeroing out both across-the-board pay increases as well as locality pay raises that are based on where federal employees live. The scheduled pay raises were set to go into effect in January 2019.
“We must maintain efforts to put our nation on a fiscally sustainable course, and federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases,” Trump said in the letter.
Of course, Donald Trump is a Republican, so this anti-worker sentiment isn’t exactly unusual. It is practically Republican dogma at this point to oppose wage increases at all times. Michigan Republicans are the most recent example, as they have just now followed through on an underhanded scheme to prevent the people of Michigan from being able to vote for a minimum wage increase, instead passing a temporary increase just so they could come back later and repeal most of the wage increase:
Paid sick, minimum wage changes fly through Michigan Senate
The new minimum wage law from the initiative isn’t in effect until March of next year. As written, the law slowly brings minimum wage for tipped workers like waiters and bartenders up to the same level as regular minimum wage and raises minimum wage to $12 per hour by 2022.
But under the bill approved by the Senate Government Operations Committee, the minimum wage would raise more slowly, hitting $12 per hour by 2030 instead of 2022, and stopping there instead of indexing to inflation afterward.
In addition, the latest version keeps the wage for tipped workers lower than minimum wage instead of bringing tipped workers up to the same wage level as minimum wage workers.
Earlier this year, Republicans in both Iowa and Missouri also passed bills in order to repeal minimum wage increases that had been passed by counties and cities in their respective states:
The Gazette: Gov. Branstad signs bill to roll back minimum wage
Gov. Terry Branstad signed two major pro-business bills into law Thursday.
In back-to-back ceremonies, the governor signed a bill immediately barring cities and counties from setting minimum wages higher than the statewide $7.25 hourly floor and a separate measure making significant changes to the state’s workers’ compensation law.
Fox2Now: St. Louis minimum wage to revert from $10 to $7.70
Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens says he will let a bill repealing a St. Louis minimum wage become law without his signature.
The decision announced Friday by Greitens means St. Louis’ $10-an-hour minimum wage that has been in place since early May will come to an end Aug. 28 when new Missouri laws take effect.
The minimum wage in St. Louis had been scheduled to rise to $11 in January under the local ordinance passed in 2015. That’s significantly higher than Missouri’s minimum wage of $7.70 an hour.
A bill passed by Missouri’s Republican-led Legislatures prohibits local minimum wages and nullifies any already in effect.
The Republican party couldn’t make it any clearer. If you are a worker, you are seen only as an expense.
“Middle American Democrat opinion articles solely represent the views and opinions of Middle American Democrat, a private organization that is not affiliated with any national, state, or local political party.”
No, they’re my views here, too, and I’m sure millions of others.
All this put-down of the working person is symptomatic of this repuglican government. We spend way too much on military and border enforcement. We need to spend more on people. Has anyone taken a look at the pie chart of where the government money really goes??
TRUMP SAYS WE NEED GOV’T BELT TIGHTENING; HOWEVER LETS SPEND 5 BILLION FOR A STUPID WALL !!!!!! DUH!!!