Trump 2.0: Something Wicked This Way Comes

It’s time to turn off the endless World Series clips, crawl out from under the bed, collect the newspapers moldering on the front lawn, plug the TV back in, cancel Twitter (and sign on to Bluesky), put the bourbon away (at least before sundown), admit that this is not a nightmare I will ever wake up from, and figure out how we’re all going to survive the next four years.

Yes, I’m back after a short mental health break.

Actually, I still can’t really think about what’s about to happen in this country. But if I try really hard, I can start to think about what’s about to happen  to workers with respect to my own little narrow area of expertise — workplace safety and health — and, of course, the labor movement which made safe workplaces possible (if not still a reality for too many workers.)

I’m writing about not just what might possibly happen when the barbarians pour through the gates, but maybe a few thoughts about how to limit the damage and keep the incoming cult administration from killing and sickening too many workers.

So what are we dealing with here?

Well so far, we don’t know exactly what will happen with OSHA or MSHA, nor who will be the next Secretary of Labor, much less Assistant Secretary for OSHA or MSHA. But given that Trump has so far nominated the worst people anyone can imagine for Attorney General, Defense Secretary, Director of National “Intelligence” and Secretary of Health and Human Services — and let’s not forget the “Department” of Government “Efficiency”  — I can just imagine who or what we’ll get for Secretary of Labor.

Actually, I can’t imagine. Someone suggested the Pillow Guy, and given Trump’s other appointments, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. I also hear that Kari Lake is looking for a job.

So let’s first try to understand what we may be looking at. Then we’ll look at how we’re going to fight it. (This is, of course, an iterative process. Whatever we expect now may be nothing like what we actually get. And our strategies to fight back will inevitably have to change as the circumstances deteriorate.)

OSHA

In General

We can’t see the future, so it’s hard to know what will happen in the Department of Labor or OSHA.

People ask, “will Trump get rid of OSHA?” Eliminating government agencies that have been established by law is not possible.  Funding could be cut, the agency could be hollowed out. Some have even suggested that Trump might move agencies outside of Washington, hoping everyone will quit.

I don’t think any of the doomsday scenarios will come to pass.  But we may be able to glean some cues from past Republican administrations, the behavior of Trump 1.0 and the schemes concocted in Project 2025.

Normal Republicans and Trump 1.0

In his last administration, Trump’s OSHA behaved similarly to past “normal” Republican administrations. Policy-wise, we know that normal Republicans (remember them?) hate OSHA. And more specifically hate OSHA standards (burdensome, expensive, one-size-fits-all, soul crushing, job-killing regulations!!), hate enforcement for any companies that aren’t the worst of the worst, hate anything that might adversely affect small businesses (or large business that pretend to be small businesses), hate anything that might enhance the power of workers, and love, love, love, any program that offers benefits and favors to companies that “voluntarily” agree to not kill too many workers — at least not too many workers on the same day.

But, of course, penalties are lower during Republican administrations, willful and egregious violations are rare as are General Duty Clause citations.

In his first term, Trump didn’t do any major damage to the agency.  Until rising public outrage about OSHA’s failure to protect workers during COVID, the agency was basically ignored, moving through the entire four years without a confirmed Assistant Secretary.  As expected, no major standards were issued. Some newly issued recordkeeping regulations were rolled back and Congress used the Congressional Review Act to repeal the Volks Rule.  Enforcement carried on and violations were issued (at least until COVID), although the number of inspectors dropped because the agency failed to backfill positions to address normal attrition. The budget held relatively steady and the Susan Harwood Worker Training Grant Program survived attempts by the White House to zero it out.

Otherwise the agency didn’t do too badly the Trump administration dropped the ball on COVID with catastrophic consequences for health care, meatpacking and other “essential” employees.  Once the peak of Covid had passed, the Biden administration was able to repair much of the damage done by the first four years of Trump, although the budget continues to disappoint.

OSHA Enforcement

The general belief among Republicans and right-wing ideologues is that the only thing needed to convince employers to provide a safe workplace is less “confrontation” (e.g. citations and penalties) and more information and handholding (fact sheets, VPP, etc). Citations and penalties should be reserved for the few very, very bad actors.

But generally, Republican administrations have continued to enforce the law when employers flagrantly violate OSHA standards and endanger or kill workers– because citing employers who violate the law is, after all, written into the Occupational Safety and Health Act. And dead or injured workers are hard to ignore.

On the other hand, during Republican administrations penalties levels fall, the number of willful violations decrease, and there is less use of the General Duty Clause to cite unsafe conditions where no OSHA standard exists, such as heat and workplace violence.   That’s the way traditional Republican administrations act. We’ll see if Trump decides not to enforce the law, and what the courts say about it.

Related to enforcement and citations are the press releases announcing major citations. During the Obama administration, we issued more and harder-hitting press releases after major citations (anything over $40,000 or General Duty Clause violations).  The business community threw fits and in response, the Trump administration issued no press releases for its first few months. It got so bad that we here at Confined Space started issuing OSHA’s press releases.

The administration finally figured out that Press Releases made it look like they were actually doing something and resumed the practice, if not quite as many, and not quite as hard-hitting. We’ll see what happens this time.

OSHA Standards

Republican administrations don’t issue OSHA standards. In fact, no Republican administration since George Bush the First has issued a single major OSHA standard unless ordered by the courts. and we can expect the same from the Trump Administration. Some standards that are currently on the Regulatory Agenda will be removed and others just left to lie dormant for the next four years. One exception may be OSHA’s Tree Care Standard which would protect the lives of tree care workers.  The tree care industry has been lobbying hard for this standard (probably in an effort to eliminate the lower-priced, less professional competition among landscapers and what I often refer to as “two guys in a pickup truck.”)

In terms of specific rollbacks, OSHA hasn’t issued any final standards recently (or in this entire administration), so there’s nothing to repeal using the Congressional Review Act.  The most vulnerable achievement of this administration may be the walkaround regulation that allowed workers to choose their representatives to walk around with OSHA inspectors even if they don’t work in a union workplace. The case is currently before a Texas court. If that court, as expected over turns it, it is unlikely that Trump’s Department of Labor will appeal. Even if the courts uphold the rule, there is nothing to stop the Trump administration from beginning the process to repeal it.

VPP

Republicans traditionally love the Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) and see VPP as the future of OSHA VPP was created over 40 years ago, in 1982, during the Reagan administration. Its purpose was to recognize the best companies and after a rigorous audit of the worksite and the plant’s injury and illnesses statistics, performed by OSHA staff, award them with the VPP designation. If the VPP applicant was unionized, the union would have to agree to VPP participation. Every three to five years, OSHA would perform a re-approval, which involved an additional audit.

The designation earned VPP companies an exemption from “programmed” inspections, those resulting from various OSHA emphasis and inspection targeting programs. VPP participants could still be inspected (and cited) as a result of a fatality, catastrophe, worker complaint or referral.

The Bush II administration saw VPP as the future of OSHA and wanted to grow it exponentially.  But several problems emerged from the  VPP expansion. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned in 2004 that the uncontrolled growth of the program threatened its integrity and sapped OSHA’s enforcement resources. GAO noted that “the percentage of resources dedicated to voluntary compliance programs and compliance assistance activities has increased by approximately 8 percent since 1996…while the proportion of resources OSHA dedicated to its enforcement activities fell by 6 percent.”

In addition, OSHA no longer had the resources to maintain the integrity of the program and sites were admitted to the program without full qualifications. OSHA almost never kicked a site out of the program, even when their injury and illness numbers rose. Even where workers were killed on VPP sites and the company was cited — for willful violations — companies were almost never removed from VPP.

The Obama administration maintained, but de-emphasized VPP, mainly due to budgetary priorities, and cracked down on VPP participants who no longer met the criteria, and where workers were killed at VPP sites.

Below the Floor

Project 2025 also suggested that unions should be allowed to treat safety and health standards as negotiable defaults rather than non-negotiable floors. In other words, the goal would be to change employment law to allow employers to bully or blackmail weak unions into accepting weaker safety protections than the law currently allows.  OSHA, Wage & Hour or organizing rules would no longer be the floor that we accept today; unions would be “free” to negotiate even lower standards. I’m not an attorney, so I don’t know exactly what laws would need to be modified in order to make that bad idea happen, but that seems to be the intent.

Finally, in the spirit of solving problems that don’t exist Project 2025 proposed stopping OSHA from inspecting peoples’ homes (which OSHA doesn’t do) and prohibit OSHA from requiring COVID vaccinations (which the agency never did).

OSHA’s Budget

Trump isn’t, of course, the only problem workers or OSHA have to face.  Both Houses of Congress will also be controlled by the Dark Side (at least for the next two years.) And Congress determines the federal budget.  Republicans in Congress have traditionally been no friend of OSHA’s budget, especially the line items covering enforcement and standards. And Republicans in Congress have consistently tried (and failed) to eliminate OSHA’s Susan Harwood Worker Training Grant program.

Note that the Harwood program is only funded at around $10 million, a figure completely invisible in the federal government. But its evil lies in the fact that it provides funding to unions and worker groups representing vulnerable workers (e.g. low income, immigrant, etc.) Of course, it also provides funding to small business associations who have a real interest in the health and safety of its members’ workers, but that doesn’t fit well in the Republican narrative, so…

Regarding funding for the Department of Labor and its agencies, Project 2025 also recommends that Congress “reduce the agencies’ budgets to the low end of the historical average.” No one knows exactly what that means, but it can’t be good.

Happily, as long as the filibuster remains, Republicans will have a hard time dismantling OSHA’s already meagre budget.

Sadly, the President-elect’s posse is trying to figure out a way around Congress, which could help Musk’s DOGE decide that OSHA’s entire budget is “inefficient.”

Although changes to government spending typically require an act of Congress, Trump aides are exploring plans to challenge a 1974 budget law in a way that would give the White House the power to unilaterally adopt the Musk commission’s proposals, one of the people said. It is unclear if Trump will ask Congress to approve changes to the budget law or first appeal to the courts to do so, though aides have previously endorsed either approach… That effort, if successful, could give Trump far greater authority to remake the federal budget on his own, altering the balance of power among the branches of government.

The Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 prohibited the President from refusing to spend (or “impounding”) money that Congress had allocated. It was a response to Richard Nixon’s attempt to impound funding across a broad array of domestic programs, such as farm assistance and water grants. Trump could try to challenge the law and hope that the Supreme Court would declare it unconstitutional. Or he could just blatantly violate the act, and by the time the courts overturned his actions, the damage would be done.

Crystal Ball

I don’t have a crystal ball. Although Trump generally behaved like a “normal” Republicans with respect to OSHA last time around, (aside from screwing up the COVID response), the nominations of Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth — as well as the elevation of Elon Musk — indicate that we could be in for something completely different and unpredictable this time around. Something beyond even my fevered imagination.

On one hand, OSHA is a tiny agency with a tiny budget and the ability to reach every workplace in the country only every 185 years. On the other hand, hatred of OSHA within the business community and right-wing anti-regulatory ideologues is disproportionately fierce considering the small size and tiny budget of the agency.

And hostility remains from OSHA’s ill-fated “Test or Vaccinate” standard Although that standard was overturned by the Supreme Court, in some MAGA minds that standard lingers like the smell of a bad cheese as a symbol of extreme government (Biden) over-reach.

Will OSHA remain too insignificant to earn the overt animosity and crippling wounds by the Trump 2.0 administration?

We shall see.

Project 2025

Worshipping at the Alter of Small Business

As I mentioned before, Republicans worship at the alter of small business, and Project 2025 accordingly states that “Congress (and DOL, in its enforcement discretion) should exempt small business, first-time, non-willful violators from fines issued by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.”

In Republicans’ mindset, workers who happen to be employed by a “small business” have less of a right to come home alive an health at the end of a day than workers in large businesses.

Yes, somehow, in Republicans’ mindset, workers who happen to be employed by a “small business” have less of a right to come home alive an health at the end of a day than workers in large businesses.

And let’s not forget that we don’t really agree what a “small business” is.  Officially, it depends on what kind of “small”  business we’re talking about. For example, the Small Business Administration’s Table of Size Standards provides definitions that vary widely by industry, revenue and employment. It defines small businesses by firm revenue (ranging from $1 million to over $40 million) and by employment (from 100 to over 1,500 employees).

Republicans also conveniently forget that small businesses are already, in effect, “exempt” from first time violations.

“Huh?” you say.  Yes, OSHA’s best kept secret (because the ideological business associations like the Changer of Commerce would rather businesses not know about it) is OSHA’s Onsite Consultation Program. That’s where a small or medium size business can get a free consultation from each state’s consultation program. Those programs are 90% funded by OSHA and operate independently of OSHA’s enforcement program.

Schedule F

Trump has made no secret of his antipathy toward the “Deep State.”  (The Deep State being those federal employees that actually take seriously their oath and the laws they administer.)

The President already has an enormous amount of power to appoint agency head and other top positions in all of the agencies.  As of 2016, there were around 4,000 political appointment positions which an incoming administration needs to review, and fill or confirm, of which about 1,200 require Senate confirmation. The Secretary of Labor, as well as the head of OSHA must be confirmed by the Senate, but people like me, who served as Acting Assistant Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary of OSHA, don’t have to be confirmed by the Senate (thank God!).

But that’s not good enough for Trump. At the end of his first administration, Trump implemented “Schedule F” which would have reclassified an estimated 50,000 career civil servants to positions that, like current political appointees, could be fired at will. President Biden revoked the order shortly after his inauguration, and issued regulations making it harder to re-implement. But Trump and Project 2025 still think it’s a great idea to have more political appointees who are more concerned with their political connections than performing their appointed jobs.

And, of course, let’s not forget what soon-to-be-Vice President J.D. Vance said a few years ago:

“I think that what Trump should—like, if I was giving him one piece of advice—fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state,” Vance said on a 2021 podcast appearance. “Replace them with our people. And when the courts—because you will get taken to court—and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

Child Labor

Republicans are also not opposed to making child labor great again, and if Trump goes through with even a small part of his immigrant deportation plan, labor shortages will skyrocket, increasing the need for shorter workers to solve worker shortages. Project 2025 sees no problem with child labor because “Some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs.”

If Trump goes through with even a small part of his immigrant deportation plan, labor shortages will skyrocket, increasing the need for shorter workers to solve worker shortages.

That may be true. But those of us who have teenagers, or had teenagers at one time, or who were teenagers back in the day know that “some young adults” do all kinds of crazy shit that society has wisely decided might not be in their best interest or in society’s best interest. Maybe older children young adults are actually interested in operating power-driven machinery in meatpacking plants, including meat grinders, slicers and power-driven conveyor belts; and operating nonautomatic elevators, lifts or hoisting machines, including motorized pallet jacks and lift pallet jacks. But does that make it a good idea?

Elon

I will be writing more about Trump-bro Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency a bit later. But suffice to say from what we have seen, Elon, who has a net worth of somewhere around $300 billion, probably doesn’t have a whole lot of patience for some punk-ass, shriveled $635 million government agency telling him, a Master of the Universe, how to run his businesses efficiently.

What is to be Done?

OK, enough of the bad. I’m sure I’ve barely scratched the surface of what some of the more anti-government, anti-labor MAGATs have in mind for OSHA and workers’ right to a safe workplace.

So what are we going to do about it? Here are a very few very general initial suggestions exclusively from my own head, not yet having the energy to actually discuss strategies with anyone else. As time goes on, and the dust clears a bit, organizations from the grass roots to large national think tanks and unions will be developing focused strategies to fight specific attacks, and we’ll be covering those closely, especially as they pertain to workplace safety and labor issues.

But in the meantime….

Defend OSHA: OSHA is an extremely underfunded agency with low penalties that has enormous difficulty issuing standards and getting to more than a relatively small number of workplaces every year. But despite its smallsize and other difficulties, the Occupational Safety and Health Act remains the law of the land and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which implements the law saves workers’ lives and health every single day.

Even if it’s almost impossible to issue new standards, OSHA enforces hundreds of life-saving standards currently on the books, and issues citations and penalties. The penalties may be too small to impact large companies, but they do have an impact on small and medium size companies, and the stigma of an OSHA citation — especially a willful violation — is a black mark that even large companies would rather not experience.

If (when) OSHA’s budget, or it regulations come under attack, make sure your legislators know who you feel about the importance of the agency.

Talk to the Press: Without either House of Congress, it will be difficult to conduct any kind of serious Congressional oversight over OSHA’s failures for at least two years.  For effective oversight, we need to turn to the press, which  has recently done great oversight over child labor, Elon Musk, trench hazards and many other OSH-related issues.  NPR, Reuters, ProPublica, Public Health Watch, Resolve and other news outlets have gone deep into companies who kill workers. And they’re primed to continue that work and expand it to the transgressions of the incoming administration.

Despite its small size and other difficulties, the Occupational Safety and Health Act remains the law of the land and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which implements the law saves workers’ lives and health every single day.

But they need our help. If you have good stories or interesting ideas, contact your local news outlets (if you have local news outlets) or any of the investigative news organizations mentioned above. Or let me know. Confined Space doesn’t have a huge circulation, but a lot of journalists subscribe, looking for interesting stories to investigate.

Go Local: Given OSHA’s weaknesses, the best way to secure your safety and health at work is — and always has been — to act locally. Obviously, that works best for workers who are union members. Unions can educate workers about the hazards they face, their rights under the law, and protect them from retaliation much more effectively than OSHA can.  Acting locally is more difficult for workers who don’t belong in unions. But a growing number of worker centers, COSH groups and other organizations can also help workers exercise their right a safe workplace. I will be overhauling my list of resources (above). Any assistance would be much appreciated.

And don’t forget that you can be your own OSHA inspector when you see hazards in your neighborhood.  Talk to the supervisors and if they don’t fix the problem, file an OSHA complaint.

Don’t Let a Good Disaster Go to Waste: It’s an unfortunate historical phenomenon that big changes generally only follow major disasters. And it’s true in workplace safety.  The Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1912 led to significant improvements in labor law and workplace safety. The mine disasters of the 1960 led to the Mine Safety and Health Act and the Sago disaster of 2006 led to significant improvements of that law.  The Bhopal disaster and numerous refinery explosions in the US led Congress to mandate OSHA’s Process Safety Management Standard, and EPA’s Risk Management Program.

But improvements do not always follow disasters.  And when they do, it’s not automatic. If decisive and rapid action isn’t taken, the moment passes and the forces of reaction reassert themselves quickly. We had a moment where significant change was possible following the West Texas ammonium nitrate explosion in 2013, but it took us so long at OSHA to act on the improvements needed after that disaster, that the moment was lost. Even after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, improvements only came after long years of fighting the business lobbies that resisted change. (Read Triangle: The Fire That Changed America. Turns out “changing America” wasn’t so easy, even after a mass catastrophe.)

State Plans: We are looking forward to four years of federal OSHA doing nothing to issue new standards, including its much needed heat, infectious disease and workplace violence standards.  OSHA state plans, however, can issue standards that federal OSHA doesn’t have (or strengthen standards that OSHA does already have.) California leads the pack with standards covering ergonomics, workplace violence and heat.  Other states, such as Oregon, Washington, Minnesota and Maryland also have heat standards.

There are 21 state OSHA Plans, as well as 6 state plans that only cover public employees. Realistically, only states with Democratic governors (and/or Labor Commissioners) are likely to pass any standards that OSHA won’t issue.  Those include Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Minnesota, Maine and Maryland. North Carolina has Democratic Governor, but an elected Republican Labor Commissioner. Vermont has a fairly liberal Republican governor.

All of the 6 public employee only state plans (Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Illinois) have Democratic governors. And even if workers in the private sector will fall under Trump OSHA’s inaction, public employees in those states would benefit from better protections.

But workers in states with Republican governors should not stop organizing, especially around heat. If next summer, as expected, sets yet another heat record, and workers continue to die in larger and larger numbers from preventable heat-related disease, even Republican states can be forced to act. Workers, unions and health and safety advocates to start tomorrow urging their state OSHA programs to being work on a heat standard — as well as other needed standards.

Note: Any state, or city or county (except in Texas or Florida) can pass laws or ordinances adopting health and safety protections that OSHA doesn’t already have (like heat) —  even if they aren’t OSHA state plan states. The problem is that in cities, counties or states without an OSHA program, there is often no agency that has the staff or infrastructure to effectively enforce those laws.

Don’t Forget About Unlikely Allies: We complain a lot here about the damage corporate America wants to do to unions and the effort to maintain safe workplaces. But not all businesses and business associations are evil.  Workplace regulation works for many businesses and industries because it levels the playing field. Regulations don’t let the bottom-dwellers undercut responsible businesses who comply with the law and actually care about their employees. OSHA has been diligent about ensuring that many of the smaller business associations receive Susan Harwood grants if they can show there are sincerely interested in improving safety conditions in their members’ workplaces. Some of these associations can be convinced to defend the program in Congress.

And if you see that a worker has been killed in your area, make sure your Congressman and Senators know about it, about how it could have been prevented and how it would have been prevented if the company had complied with OSHA standards. It’s harder to attack an agency when its efforts could have saved the life of one of your constituents.

Don’t Ignore Politics: It’s a frightening thought, but the 2026 mid-term elections are just around the corner. We have no chance of taking the Senate back in two years (barring exceptionally bad Republican candidates), but it is possible –even likely — that we can take back the House of Representatives. That means oversite hearings and investigations, and the possibility to pass legislation in the House of Representatives that will likely not be signed into law, but can set the agenda for the next Democratic administration. So take a well-deserved break now. But as 2026 approaches, let’s all get out there again. And make sure worker issues are at the front of the conversation.

On a Personal Note

I am supposedly retired and if Kamala Harris had won the election, I was seriously considering folding up shop here and moving on to other things that retirees do. (Whatever those are…)

But, now that isn’t possible. Not that the world necessarily needs my words of wisdom, but my sanity demands that I write, whoever may or may not be reading this. And given that OSHA is too small to ever make the headlines unless there’s a major disaster, I think there is a need for  Confined Space (or something similar) to inform workers, unions and other advocates about what’s going on behind the scenes that they wouldn’t otherwise learn from the major media or even labor publications.

I am planning to make some changes, however.  First, I need to stop writing the Weekly Toll. It just takes too much time, and I think there are other important workplace safety and health issues I will need to spend my Confined Space time on.

As Mother Jones might have said: Mourn for the past, but fight like hell for the future.

This is an extremely painful decision. The list of people killed on the job every single day is an important reminder of the carnage that continues in American workplaces — tragedies that are all too easy for Americans to overlook, partly because there is no place other than the Weekly Toll that tells these workers stories, that says their names, that reminds us of the need for strong workplace safety and health laws and the need for workers to be able to act to protect their lives on the job without being threatened with retaliation.

But the fact that I will stop writing it hopefully doesn’t mean that the Weekly Toll will disappear. I will be looking for volunteers to carry it on. It takes around three to four hours a week and I will be sending out a call for volunteers. And by “volunteer,” I mean VOLUNTEER. Unfortunately, I don’t have money to pay anyone. Last time I gave up The Weekly Toll, Tammy Brownfield — who had lost her brother in a combustible dust explosion — heroically stepped in. Hopefully, we’ll find someone else — or even several people to take it over.

So, rest up, spend quality time with your family, friends and loved ones this season.  And then, refreshed and energized, to the barricades next year.  As Mother Jones might have said: Mourn for the past, but fight like hell for the future.

Finally, be of good cheer. This too shall pass.

Now, back to the World Series clips…