It's Grim at the Department of Labor
One DOL staffer explains what we stand to lose.
Last night, a DC district court judge rejected an emergency lawsuit asking him to block DOGE, Elon Musk’s destructive minions, from accessing the Department of Labor. For now, there is nothing to stop Musk’s team from decimating the DOL as they have other agencies.
It is easy for the events at any individual federal agency to get lost in the torrent of bad news coming out of Washington. But each of these agencies exists for a purpose, and each is staffed with people who have spent their careers keeping our government running. All of those people are now, to varying degrees, terrified of what is coming next—for their agency, for themselves, and for the country. I spoke to one longtime DOL staffer to get a sense of the mood inside the agency. These remarks can help us understand the human costs of what is happening right now.
On the fears that DOL employees have:
“The job stuff, obviously. Employment. Fears of protecting each other. Like, what are you going to do? If you make a bad decision and you’re the only one who gets burned for it, that’s one thing. If you make a bad decision and other people do, that’s a different thing. I think that’s going on with a lot of people.
Then, it’s what happens to the work? What happens to investigations? We already saw what happened to discrimination stuff. People being put on administrative leave. Enforcement programs have been shut down. That’s not good.”
On the Trump administration’s January 24 decision to revoke a 1965 executive order that prohibited federal contractors from discriminating in employment:
“It’s really weird to learn you’re operating based on an EO from 50 years ago. In this environment, of course those things don’t survive. But to realize than an EO from Johnson survived though Nixon, and Reagan, and you were just assuming it would always be there is a strange, sort of unsettling thing to realize. But, you know, people marched and got beat up for it. It’s hard to balance that with the career employee kind of attitude of, ‘Look, this is an administration that has some authority to do some of these things, and you will see how the public reacts to them.’ There’s always been that lifeline, or safety net, of saying, ‘People will have a chance to weigh in eventually through this process.’ And I don’t know if that’s true any more.”
On how this time feels different from Trump’s first term:
“It doesn’t feel the same. I mean, there was outrage then. I didn’t know what to do with myself. We were all going to marches. We went to the Women’s March. And even being on Twitter all the time then, and not being on Twitter now.
And Project 2025 is a big difference too. Over the last four years, seeing that get organized, seeing the plan, having that waiting for us and knowing it’s there. It’s completely different. The DOGE thing is completely different.”
On the prospect for some form of organized resistance from agency employees:
“I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of appetite for that among career agency staff. Even last time, there was a level of distrust that made it hard for people to do anything. We weren’t even doing our normal jobs, because they weren’t giving us the work, because they didn’t trust us not to resist. '
There’s a lot of complacency. And I guess I get it. If you’re running workforce innovation projects, and you’re just funding state workforce agencies, that doesn’t seem like a job that would lend itself to any kind of agency, right? And that’s the thing that’s different about [the DOL during Republican administrations] too. It’s not like DHS, where they replace your agenda with a more reactionary agenda. They’re just leaving you alone, because they don’t want you to really exist. So it’s not like they’re trying to use you as a tool for their purposes, because they just have no use for you at all.”
On whether there is anything the public can do on behalf of federal workers right now:
“I would like to know that too. I don’t think so. There are a lot of people still there who are just trying to keep the lights on. And some lights go off, and you just keep on going with the light that you have, because you can’t turn them all off. Also, the public can not wait on the government to come tell them not to discriminate when they’re hiring people. You’re welcome to not discriminate, even if a tiny federal agency isn’t going to come after you.”
On what the public might miss about the DOL if it gets gutted:
“Nowhere to turn when you get stiffed by your employer. You sort of see the inadequacy that is built in already—if you think about OSHA, they’re always throwing around a stat about how it would take 150 years to inspect every worksite in their jurisdiction. So you know you’re already not protecting everybody. You pray that horrible Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fires don’t happen.
Maybe wages. But these are low wage people. That’s who is vulnerable, right? They’re not stiffing the people who have resources.”
On protecting immigrants:
“I do think people need to be aware of the possible inoperativeness of a lot of things we’ve said over the years about labor laws applying to everybody regardless of your immigration status. The stuff that we’ve tried to do to say that we’re here to make sure that you’re safe on the job, we’re here to make sure you’re paid what you’re owed, we’re not gonna ask you about your immigration status. There’s a lot of language saying that that’s just out there. I do worry that won’t be upheld. So if somebody sees something we said six months ago and says, ‘okay, these guys are safe to talk to’……..”
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Related reading: Dark Times Are Coming for labor; Looting Season in America; Listen: Republicans Do Not Want Unions to Exist.
I’m in DC this weekend. If you are a federal worker who wants to send me your thoughts on what is happening, or tip me to a protest, or leak me internal memos, email me.
This week, dozens of journalists at Huffpost, who are my fellow WGAE members, were laid off—including some of my own favorite reporters. It will be a great loss. You can help support them by donating to the GoFundMe for the laid off workers here.
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Grim times now, grim times later; these people must be heard -- they know what the stakes are. Cory Doctorow's latest post quoted Anna Merlan about DOGE and the carnage it is wreaking: "Now the whole country gets the experience of what it’s like when private equity buys the place you work." He then said, "That's exactly it. We are witnessing a private equity-style plunder of the entire US government – of the USA itself." In that light, DOGE's actions do look like a leveraged buyout by corporate looters: swoop in, remove all the safeguards, get rid of the experienced staff, exfiltrate data as fast as possible, and the Enabler-in-Chief you installed is unfazed about it because he's in on the potential take in case any of it succeeds in windfall profits for the investor class.
Four times in my career, I have been forced to seek employment elsewhere because vain MEN who lacked the vision to adapt. Who felt that those with ideas and years of real experience generated from beneath them were expendable insubordinates and therefore too costly to keep onboard their sinking ship.
I am proud to say that I watched each of those 4 ships sink within 3 years of my being “furloughed.” I didn’t have all the answers, but the collective perspectives of all those who “lost their jobs” would certainly have helped steer the ship toward a better outcome.
There were other times when my morals and values did not allow me to wait and I resigned in protest. In every case, the company failed within a year. Those were very hard times for me personally, but I was able to secure a better situation within a few months BECAUSE I left. Had I stayed, the hardship would have lasted much longer.