On March 14, President Donald Trump quietly rescinded a Biden-era executive order that raised the minimum wage for private sector employees on federal contracts. The move is just one part of a wider war the administration has launched against the working class since assuming power.
Executive Order 14026 was issued by former President Joe Biden in 2021. In addition to increasing the minimum wage rate for federal contractors, it set adjustments to account for inflation. The Department of Labor (DOL) estimated that some 327,300 workers saw their wages go up, with an average wage increase of over $5,000 a year. The 2025 rate was set to be $17.75 per hour.
“Because federally contracted work so often takes place in long racially segregated industries in states where corporate lobbyists and their lawmaker allies have unjustly suppressed wages, this action will also help begin to close the racial wealth gap,” noted National Employment Law Project (NELP) Executive Director Rebecca Dixon at the time.
Trump’s move could result in thousands of workers losing their pay increases, but its overall impact may be much more severe.
A full overturning of the rule means that some federal contractors will return Obama-era wage of $13.30 an hour, but Trump could undo the minimum wage for these workers altogether, meaning that some contractors could make just $7.25 an hour in some states.
“Lower-wage federal contractors include janitors who clean government buildings, food service workers on military bases, cashiers in gift shops in national parks and security guards protecting federal property,” Samantha Sanders, the Economic Policy Institute’s director of government affairs and advocacy, told Truthout. “This pay cut is a blatant attack on these workers — everyday people all across the country trying to make rent, buy groceries, and support their families.”
Lack of Enforcement
Trump rolling back the Biden order doesn’t mean the minimum wage for federal workers will immediately plummet. The DOL will have to go through a rulemaking process to determine how low to drop it.
However, that doesn’t mean that workers won’t end up making less, as the DOL has announced it won’t be enforcing the EO in the meantime. In other words, companies can illegally pay federal contractors less than the current minimum wage and face no consequences. It’s just the latest example of the White House openly ignoring the law.
Many workers technically have protections through labor laws like the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act and the Davis-Bacon Act, which are supposed to require prevailing wages by certain federal contractors. However, these laws have not been updated to keep up with inflation and are largely inadequate in the current economy. As a Center for American Progress report points out, many of the market wages established by these laws are less than the $17.75 hourly wage that Trump just nixed.
“A nursing assistant on a federal contract in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, has a minimum wage of only $13.17; a food service worker in parts of Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas has a minimum wage of $12.06; and a landscape laborer on a construction site in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has a minimum wage of just $10.47,” explains the report.
Anti-Union Moves
The Trump administration knows there is power (and thus protections) in a union, which is why it’s trying to prohibit federal workers from organizing in any way. The president’s recent flurry of anti-union measures makes the resistance to his wage cuts even more challenging.
In March, the administration moved to revoke collective bargaining rights with federal unions across several federal agencies. According to a report from Government Executive, the order could eradicate bargaining rights for about 67 percent of the federal workforce and for 75 percent of workers who currently belong to unions.
“This administration’s bullying tactics represent a clear threat not just to federal employees and their unions, but to every American who values democracy and the freedoms of speech and association,” said American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) National President Everett Kelley after Trump announced the order. “Trump’s threat to unions and working people across America is clear: fall in line or else.”
Shortly after the order was announced, Trump took the unprecedented step of suing the AFGE, the U.S.’s largest federal worker union, for allegedly constraining the executive branch. The lawsuit aims to invalidate a large swath of union contracts.
Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) also effectively shut down the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), an independent federal agency tasked with resolving work stoppages.
DOGE “basically decided to eliminate all but a few people from the agency,” an FMCS employee, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told The Guardian. “We don’t know the final count but maybe a dozen left out of an agency that had almost 200 employees through last year…. It is shocking as the agency does not regulate and has always been non-controversial.”
In yet another swipe against federal workers, Trump recently ended collective bargaining rights for nearly 50,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees. The move was a clear act of retaliation against the AFGE, which represents TSA employees and has continually sought to restrain the administration in court. The TSA negotiated a seven-year labor agreement last year, which included the addition of parental bereavement leave and expanded shift trade options for workers.
On April 8, Trump’s attacks on the federal workforce got a boost from the right-wing Supreme Court. In a 7-2 ruling, the court paused an order from a San Francisco judge that required the administration to reinstate the more than 16,000 workers who were terminated earlier this year.
Thousands more could be facing unemployment, thanks to a rule proposed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on April 18. The mandate would reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as “at-will” employees, stripping them of civil service protections and enabling Trump to fire them en masse.
“Moving forward, career government employees, working on policy matters, will be classified as ‘Schedule Policy/Career,’ and will be held to the highest standards of conduct and performance,” Trump wrote on social media after the rule was announced. “If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the president, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job.”
The OPM estimates that 50,000 workers would be reclassified, which is about 2 percent of the federal workforce.
Raise the Wage Act
While Trump aims to reduce wages, many lawmakers are pushing to raise them.
Led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Democrats recently reintroduced the Raise the Wage Act, which aims to bring the federal minimum wage up to $17 an hour by 2030. Despite the rapidly rising cost of living the United States, the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009, the longest period without an increase since it was established in 1938. An economic analysis of the move suggests it could provide a raise for some 22 million people.
“The $7.25 an hour minimum wage is a starvation wage. It must be raised to a living wage — at least $17 an hour,” said Sanders in a statement. “In the year 2025, a job should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, we can no longer tolerate millions of workers trying to survive on just $10 or $12 an hour. Congress can no longer ignore the needs of the working class of this country. The time to act is now.”
Earlier this month, Sanders forced a vote on the issue, as part of the Senate Budget Resolution, but it was rejected by the Republican majority.
A report from the NELP notes that the bill would particularly benefit women and workers of color. The group estimates that Black workers would make an additional $3,200 a year; nearly 25 percent of Latino workers would see a raise; and 1 in 4 women would get paid more.
It would also undoubtedly improve the overall economy.
“A $17 minimum wage by 2028 would generate $86 billion in higher wages for workers and would also benefit communities across the country,” explains the report. “Because underpaid workers spend much of their extra earnings, this injection of wages will help stimulate the economy and spur greater business activity and job growth.”
On the campaign trail, and even after winning the election, Trump waffled on the issue of raising the minimum wage.
When asked about potentially raising it in December 2024, he told NBC News, “It’s a very low number, I will agree, it’s a very low number. Let me give you the downside, though: In California, they raised it up to a very high number, and your restaurants are going out of business all over the place. The population is shrinking, it’s had a very negative impact. But there is a level at which you could do it, absolutely.”
It’s clear that Trump is no longer undecided on the issue.
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We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
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