Labor Department Targets Dozens of Rules for Deregulatory Push

The Trump administration’s deregulatory push has landed at the US Labor Department, with the agency advancing a slew of proposals to tweak or scrap policies across several of its subagencies.

Rules on the chopping block include minimum wage and overtime protections for certain health aides, anti-discrimination requirements for apprenticeship programs, union organizing protections for foreign farmworkers, and demands for employers to record work-related musculoskeletal disorders.

Three final rules from the DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration and more than a dozen from DOL’s worker safety agencies are also targeted for rescission or major changes.

The overhaul of these rules mark the full-scale arrival of President Donald Trump’s “massive deregulation initiative” at the agency that enforces dozen of laws governing the workplace, though these efforts could be subject to legal challenges.

Absent from the regulatory onslaught were proposals to address the Biden-era independent contractor rule, Davis-Bacon prevailing wage update, and ESG retirement investing rules, all of which the Trump-led DOL has said it plans to revisit in court filings.

Already, the agency has shifted into a compliance-assistance focus, establishing a opinion letter program aimed at producing more guidance on how labor law applies to specific employer situations and announcing it would no longer seek pre-litigation double damages in wage and hour cases against employers, a departure from Biden-era policies.

That change is welcomed by employers.

“The message here is that this Department of Labor is looking to give employers a fair chance, not a free ride, but a fair chance,” said Marc Freedman, vice president of workplace policy at the US Chamber of Commerce. “They will still be enforcing, and there are still going to be employers who earn their enforcement, but they’re looking at things through a different lens.”

But a former DOL official says that worker safety advocates are particularly concerned about proposed changes to rules surrounding use of N-95 respirators and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s general duty clause, which allows the agency to cite employers for failing to maintain a safe workplace.

“In reality, OSHA doesn’t have that many regulations, period, that you could change without having dire consequences on health and safety,” said Debbie Berkowitz, a former OSHA senior policy adviser under President Barack Obama.

But ultimately, cuts to OSHA staff, budget, and research work, are “going to have the biggest impact on worker safety, she added.

Ten-Out, One-In

The effort stems from Trump’s January executive order directing agency heads to repeal 10 regulations or guidance documents for every new one issued. Many of the rules advanced Monday described themselves as a “deregulatory action” under the January order.

The agency is trying to remove regulations that are outdated, include onerous or unnecessary requirements, or that don’t comply with the law, the Trump administration says.

Trump and Chavez-DeRemer “want to unleash the economy for growth and job creation while also maintaining needed protections for American workers,” said Thomas Beck, a former Jones Day partner that served as an adviser to the Trump transition team. “They’ll vigorously enforce workplace safety, wage payment, and other laws where needed to protect workers,” he said, and at the same time “they’ll streamline or rescind unnecessary job-killing regulations that bureaucrats love but benefit no one else.”

There are currently 16 proposed DOL regulations that are pending or have recently cleared review at the White House budget office, according to its website, the last stop before rulemakings become public.

Monday’s release included:

• A proposal to officially cancel the regulations underpinning the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the subagency that policed government contractors for anti-discrimination and affirmative action compliance.
• Three direct final rules scrapping Employee Benefits Security Administration interpretive bulletins and regulations from 1975, 2000, and 2008, regarding prohibited transactions, fiduciary safe harbor rules, and transitional rules for certain plan contracts.
• A proposed rule to remove certain affirmative action and nondiscrimination requirements for registered apprenticeship operators.
• A rulemaking to rescind a 2024 rule that extended collective bargaining protections to temporary workers in the H-2A farmworker program.
• A proposal to exempt certain home health aid workers from minimum wage and overtime requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act.