Executive Orders and Memorandums

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    Biden Adopts Recommendations for Promoting Union Membership

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    The White House on Monday released a report outlining several dozen steps it intends to take to promote union membership and collective bargaining among both public and private sector employees.The report is the product of a task force that President Biden created through an executive order in April. A White House statement said the president had accepted the task force’s nearly 70 recommendations.Many of the steps would make it easier for federal workers and employees of contractors to unionize, including ensuring that union organizers have access to employees on federal property, which does not always happen today.The report also recommends creating preferences in federal grant and loan programs for employers who have strong labor standards, preventing employers from spending federal contract money on anti-union campaigns and making employees aware of their organizing rights.When the task force was created, some White House officials indicated that they supported considering labor union membership as a factor in awarding government contracts, but the task force recommendations generally did not emphasize this approach.Under federal procurement law, the government generally cannot deny contracts to companies it deems hostile to labor unions. But it may be able to consider a company’s posture toward unions as a factor in certain narrow cases — for example, when labor strife resulting from an aggressive anti-union campaign could substantially delay the provision of some important good or service.The executive order Mr. Biden signed creating the task force required it to submit recommendations within 180 days, at which point the president would review them.One key premise of the task force was that the National Labor Relations Act, the 1935 law that protects federal labor rights, explicitly encourage collective bargaining, and yet, according to the Biden White House, no previous administration had explored ways that the executive branch could do so systematically.The ambition of the task force was twofold: to enact policies for federal agencies and contractors that encourage unionization and to model best practices for employers in the public and private sectors.The president’s task force will submit a second report describing progress on its recommendations and proposing additional ones in six months.Union officials and labor experts consider Mr. Biden to be among the most pro-labor presidents ever. He moved quickly to oust Trump appointees viewed as unsympathetic to labor and to undo Trump-era rules that weakened protections for workers, and signed legislation that secured tens of billions of dollars to stabilize union pension plans.Mr. Biden has occasionally used his bully pulpit to urge employers not to undermine workers’ labor rights or bargaining positions, as when he warned against coercing workers who were weighing unionizing during a prominent union election at Amazon last year. He later called Kellogg’s plan to permanently replace striking workers “an existential attack” on its union members.Last week, Mr. Biden signed an executive order requiring so-called project labor agreements — agreements between construction unions and contractors that set wages and working conditions — on federal construction projects worth more than $35 million, a move that the White House estimates could affect nearly 200,000 workers. He had previously signed an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 per hour from $10.95.But despite Mr. Biden’s backing, and polls showing widespread public support for unions, the rate of union membership nationwide remains stuck at a mere 10 percent, its lowest in decades.The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, which Mr. Biden supports, would make it easier to unionize by preventing companies from holding mandatory anti-union meetings and imposing financial penalties on employers that retaliate against workers seeking to unionize. It passed the House in March but remains a long shot in the Senate. Democrats may seek to pass some of its provisions along party lines this year. More

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    $15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30.

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    Employees of federal contractors will make at least $15 per hour under a final rule that the Labor Department announced Monday, providing a likely wage increase for over 300,000 workers, according to administration estimates.The wage floor will affect contracts that are executed or extended beginning on Jan. 30, 2022. The current minimum wage for contractors is $10.95 under a rule enacted by the Obama administration in 2014 and is scheduled to rise to $11.25 on Jan. 1. Both rules require that the minimum wage increase over time to account for inflation.Paul Light, an expert on the federal work force at New York University, has estimated that five million people work for employers that have federal contracts, including security guards, food workers, janitors and call center workers, but most already make more than $15 per hour. The rule will also apply to construction contracts entered into by the federal government.Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh said in a statement that the rule “improves the economic security of these workers and their families, many of whom are women and people of color.”President Biden announced the rule in April when he signed an executive order directing the department to issue it. Mr. Biden’s announcement came amid a series of pro-labor moves by the administration, which included reversing Trump-era rules softening worker protections and enacting legislation that allocated tens of billions of dollars to strengthen union pension funds.Administration officials said they did not expect the minimum wage increase to result in significant job losses or cost increases, contending that the higher wage would improve productivity and reduce turnover, providing employers and the government with greater value.The federal minimum wage remains $7.25 per hour, though many cities and states have laws setting their wage floors substantially higher. The House of Representatives has passed a bill to raise the federal minimum to $15 per hour by 2025, but the legislation has not advanced in the Senate. More

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    A Planned Biden Order Aims to Tilt the Job Market Toward Workers

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    Noncompete clauses, licensing requirements and corporate mergers have tended to strengthen the hand of business.Hair salon employees can have onerous licensing requirements that vary from state to state. Some barbers have also encountered noncompete agreements.Annie Tritt for The New York TimesAccording to an increasingly influential school of thought in left-of-center economic circles, corporate mergers and some other common business practices have made American workers worse off. The government, this theory holds, should address it.It appears that school has a particularly powerful student: President Biden.This week, the White House is planning to release an executive order focused on competition policy. People familiar with the order say one section has several provisions aimed at increasing competition in the labor market.The order will encourage the Federal Trade Commission to ban or limit noncompete agreements, which employers have increasingly used in recent years to try to hamper workers’ ability to quit for a better job. It encourages the F.T.C. to ban “unnecessary” occupational licensing restrictions, which can make finding new work harder, especially across state lines. And it encourages the F.T.C. and Justice Department to further restrict the ability of employers to share information on worker pay in ways that might amount to collusion.More broadly, the executive order encourages antitrust regulators to consider how mergers might contribute to so-called monopsony — conditions in which workers have few choices of where to work and therefore lack leverage to negotiate higher wages or better benefits.The order will depend on the ability of regulators to carry out the rules the White House seeks and to write them in ways that survive legal challenges. And many of the policies that labor economists see as problematic, including licensing requirements, are set at the state level, leaving a limited federal role.Still, the planned order is the most concerted effort in recent times to use the power of the federal government to tilt the playing field toward workers. It builds on years of research that has made its way from the intellectual fringes to the mainstream.“It’s increasingly appreciated that lack of competition has held down wages and that there’s a lot of scope for government to improve that,” said Jason Furman, who was chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration’s second term. “I don’t think addressing competition issues will miraculously transform inequality in this country, but it will help. The government should be on your side when it comes to wages.”The council published research on these themes toward the end of the Obama presidency, but concrete policy steps were more limited than those the Biden administration is planning to seek. As vice president, Mr. Furman recalled, Mr. Biden was particularly energized by issues around wage collusion and noncompete agreements.Even with backing from the White House, a meaningful gap remains between what academics who study the labor market are finding and the laws governing the relationship between companies and their workers.Ioana Marinescu, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, analyzed data on 8,000 specific labor markets with two co-authors and found that when a job market was heavily concentrated among a few employers, it resulted in a 5 percent to 17 percent decline in wages.But she said regulators tend to be wary of trying to block a merger on the grounds of its potential labor market impact because of a lack of legal precedent.“Legally we’re on firm ground, but it may or may not be seen that way by some particular judge who has this on their desk,” Professor Marinescu said. “That creates a risk for the agency that doesn’t like the idea they might lose a case.”She said that having pressure from the White House to pursue those legal theories would help, but that congressional legislation explicitly charging antitrust regulators with focusing on labor market conditions would help more.There has been some bipartisan discussion on Capitol Hill about reining in noncompete agreements, particularly after the emergence of some outrage-stoking stories. (Sandwich shops and hair salons contractually barred workers from going to a competitor, for example.) These disputes tend to pit incumbent businesses — who don’t want their workers to be able to quit with potentially valuable information — against start-ups who want more ability to hire people at will.Occupational licensing is also an area with potential for bipartisan agreement, uniting those who want more widespread labor market opportunity with those opposed to excessive regulation. Many more jobs require occupational licenses than in decades past, and typically a license in one state is not easily transferable to another, potentially limiting workers’ ability to move to places where they can earn more. This is particularly problematic for military families, who typically have no choice but to move regularly.Still, there are potential negative effects with the Biden approach. By creating a barrier to entry for workers entering a field, licensing may also keep wages higher for existing workers in those jobs, meaning some people may stand to lose if requirements are revoked. Moreover, research by Peter Q. Blair of Harvard and Bobby Chung of the University of Illinois suggests that women and racial minorities experience less of a pay gap in fields that involve occupational licenses.Put it all together, and the Biden administration’s push for a more competitive, less corporation-friendly labor market is decidedly not a set of magic-bullet policies that will suddenly give workers more market power overnight.Rather, it’s part of a set of policies — other aspects of the president’s agenda very much among them — that over time would nudge the balance of power away from the prevailing order of most of the last 40 years. More

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    Biden to Order a $15 Minimum Wage for Federal Contractors

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    President Biden plans to sign an executive order on Tuesday raising the minimum wage paid by federal contractors to $15 an hour, the latest in a set of ambitious pro-labor moves at the outset of his administration.The new minimum is expected to take effect next year and is likely to affect hundreds of thousands of workers, according to a White House document. The current minimum is $10.95 under an order that President Barack Obama signed in 2014. Like that order, the new one will require that the new minimum wage rise with inflation.White House economists believed the increase would not lead to significant job losses, a finding in line with recent research on the minimum wage, and that it was unlikely to cost taxpayers more money, two administration officials said in a call with reporters. They argued that the higher wage would lead to greater productivity and lower turnover.The White House also contends that although the number of workers directly affected by the increase is relatively small as a share of the economy, the executive order will indirectly raise wages beyond federal contractors by forcing other employers to bid up pay as they compete for workers.Several cities have a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour, and several states have laws that will raise their minimum wage to at least that level in the coming years. There is so far little evidence on how a $15 minimum wage affects employment in lower-cost areas of such states.Two years ago, the House of Representatives passed a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, but the legislation has faced long odds in the Senate. Mr. Biden sought to incorporate such a measure in his $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package so that it could pass on a simple majority vote, but the Senate parliamentarian ruled that it could not be included.Mr. Biden’s executive order will also eliminate the so-called tipped minimum wage for federal contractors, which currently allows employers to pay tipped workers $7.65 an hour as long as their tips put them over the regular minimum wage. Under the new minimum, all workers must be paid at least $15 an hour.The order will technically begin a rule-making process that is expected to conclude by early next year. The wage will be incorporated into new contracts and existing contracts as they are extended. More

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    Amid Shortfalls, Biden Signs Executive Order to Bolster Critical Supply Chains

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmid Shortfalls, Biden Signs Executive Order to Bolster Critical Supply ChainsThe order is intended to help insulate the economy from future shortages of critical imported components by making the United States less reliant on foreign supplies.President Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order requiring his administration to review critical supply chains with the aim of bolstering American manufacturing.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesJim Tankersley and Feb. 24, 2021Updated 7:28 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Automakers have been forced to halt production because of a lack of computer chips. Health care workers battling the coronavirus pandemic had to make do without masks as the United States waited on supplies from China. And pharmaceutical executives worried that supplies of critical drugs could dry up if countries tried to stockpile key ingredients and block exports.Deep disruptions in the global movement of critical goods during the pandemic prompted President Biden on Wednesday to take steps toward reducing the country’s dependence on foreign materials. He issued an executive order requiring his administration to review critical supply chains with the aim of bolstering American manufacturing of semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and other cutting-edge technologies.In remarks at the White House, the president cast the move as an important step toward creating well-paying jobs and making the economy more resilient in the face of geopolitical threats, pandemics and climate change.“This is about making sure the United States can meet every challenge we face in the new era,” he said.But the effort, which has bipartisan support, will do little to immediately resolve global shortages, including in semiconductors — a key component in cars and electronic devices. A lack of those components has forced several major American auto plants to close or scale back production and sent the administration scrambling to appeal to allies like Taiwan for emergency supplies.Administration officials said the order would not offer a quick fix but would start an effort to insulate the American economy from future shortages of critical imported components.Mr. Biden discussed the issue in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon with nearly a dozen Republican and Democratic members of Congress. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, called for the crafting and passage of a bill this spring to address supply chain vulnerabilities.“Right now, semiconductor manufacturing is a dangerous weak spot in our economy and in our national security,” Mr. Schumer said. “Our auto industry is facing significant chip shortages. This is a technology the United States created; we ought to be leading the world in it. The same goes for building-out of 5G, the next generation telecommunications network. There is bipartisan interest on both these issues.”Republicans emerged from the White House meeting optimistic that such efforts could soon move forward. Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, said he was pleased to see that the White House made the issue a top priority and that the president was receptive. “His words were, ‘Look, I’m all in,’” he said.Mr. McCaul said that much of the conversation revolved around legislation that Congress had passed last year to incentivize the chips industry — but which still needs funding for research grants and a refundable investment tax credit — as well as the current chips shortage and possible looming job losses in the auto industry.“China is looking at investing $1 trillion in their digital economy,” Mr. McCaul said. “If we’re going to be competitive, we have to incentivize these companies to manufacture these advanced chips in the United States.”Mr. Biden called the meeting one of the best of his presidency so far. “It was like the old days,” he said. “People were actually on the same page.”A global semiconductor shortage has led to production delays for American automakers.Credit…Mohamed Sadek for The New York TimesThe president ordered yearlong reviews of six sectors and a 100-day review of four classes of products where American manufacturers rely on imports: semiconductors, high-capacity batteries, pharmaceuticals and their active ingredients, and critical minerals and strategic materials, like rare earths.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    Biden Tells OSHA to Issue New Covid-19 Guidance to Employers

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Biden AdministrationliveLatest UpdatesBiden Takes OfficePandemic Response17 Executive Orders SignedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBiden Tells OSHA to Issue New Covid-19 Guidance to EmployersUnions, which largely support the new president, had complained that the Trump administration did little to protect workers from the coronavirus.Carolina Sanchez, left, whose husband died after contracting Covid-19 while working at a meatpacking plant, is comforted at a protest outside the Occupational Safety and Health Administration office in Denver last September.Credit…David Zalubowski/Associated PressJan. 21, 2021Updated 6:37 p.m. ETPresident Biden directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Thursday to release new guidance to employers on protecting workers from Covid-19.In one of 10 executive orders that he signed Thursday, the president asked the agency to step up enforcement of existing rules to help stop the spread of the coronavirus in the workplace and to explore issuing a new rule requiring employers to take additional precautions.The other executive orders also relate to the pandemic, including orders directing federal agencies to issue guidance for the reopening of schools and to use their powers to accelerate the production of protective equipment and expand access to testing.Critics accused OSHA, which is part of the Labor Department, of weak oversight under former President Donald J. Trump, especially in the last year, when it relaxed record-keeping and reporting requirements related to Covid-19 cases.Under Mr. Trump, the agency also announced that it would mostly refrain from inspecting workplaces outside of a few high-risk industries like health care and emergency response. And critics complained that its appetite for fining employers was limited. Mr. Biden’s executive order urges the agency to target “the worst violators,” according to a White House fact sheet.Union officials and labor advocacy groups have long pleaded with the agency to issue a rule, known as an emergency temporary standard, laying out steps that employers must take to protect workers from the coronavirus. The agency declined to do so under Mr. Trump, but Mr. Biden supported the approach during the campaign.“We talked about a national standardized strategy for working men and women in this country to function under this cloud of the pandemic,” Rory Gamble, the president of the United Automobile Workers union, said after a meeting with Mr. Biden in mid-November. “He indicated he would do whatever it took.”OSHA’s oversight of the meatpacking industry under Mr. Trump attracted particular scrutiny from labor groups and scholars. A study published in the fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences connected between 236,000 and 310,000 Covid-19 cases to livestock processing plants through late July, or between 6 percent and 8 percent of the national total at that point.That figure is roughly 50 times the 0.15 percent of the U.S. population that works in meatpacking plants, according to the study, suggesting that the industry played an outsized role in spreading the illness.The study found that a majority of the Covid-19 cases linked to meatpacking plants had likely originated in the plants and then spread through surrounding communities.The Biden AdministrationLive UpdatesUpdated Jan. 21, 2021, 7:22 p.m. ETFauci offers reassurances on vaccines, but warns that virus variants pose a risk.Biden is invoking the Defense Production Act. Here’s what that means.The No. 2 official at the F.B.I. is departing.Despite the problems identified by the study, the Trump administration did not include meatpacking plants in the category of workplaces that OSHA should regularly inspect. Only a small fraction of the roughly $4 million in coronavirus-related penalties that the agency proposed under Mr. Trump targeted the industry. Fines for any given plant were generally below $30,000.The Labor Department under Mr. Trump said it had assessed the maximum fines allowed under the law. But former OSHA officials have said that the agency can impose bigger fines by citing facilities for multiple violations, which could raise proposed penalties to over $100,000.Even when it did inspect meatpacking plants and propose fines, OSHA rarely required these employers to place workers six feet apart, the distance recommended by its own guidance.During a court case involving a plant in Pennsylvania whose workers complained last year that they were in imminent danger because of the risk of infection, OSHA wrote in a letter on Jan. 12 that it was OK with spacing at the plant, even though some workers were spaced less than six feet apart. Separately, union officials at two other plants where OSHA issued citations said workers continued to stand close to one another after the citations.Debbie Berkowitz, a senior OSHA official during the Obama administration who is now at the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group, said she expected the Biden administration to issue a rule requiring meatpacking facilities to space workers six feet apart and mandating other safety measures, such as providing high-quality masks and improving ventilation and sanitation at their facilities.“OSHA had been sidelined under Trump,” said Ms. Berkowitz. “This is a signal they’re going to play a significant role in mitigating the spread of Covid-19,” she added, alluding to Mr. Biden’s executive order.The Biden administration is likely to revisit a wide variety of labor and employment issues from the Trump era, including a rule that would make it harder for employees of franchises and contractors to recover wages that were improperly withheld from them, and another rule that would likely classify Uber drivers and other gig workers as contractors rather than employees.On Wednesday, the new administration fired the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, a Senate-confirmed official who has wide latitude over which labor law violations the board pursues. The official, Peter B. Robb, was appointed by Mr. Trump and clashed frequently with unions.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    The Business Rules the Trump Administration Is Racing to Finish

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesHouse Moves to Remove TrumpHow Impeachment Might WorkBiden Focuses on CrisesCabinet PicksAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Business Rules the Trump Administration Is Racing to FinishFrom tariffs and trade to the status of Uber drivers, regulators are trying to install new rules or reduce regulations before President-elect Joe Biden takes over.President Trump is rushing to put into effect new economic regulations and executive orders before his term comes to a close.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJan. 11, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETIn the remaining days of his administration, President Trump is rushing to put into effect a raft of new regulations and executive orders that are intended to put his stamp on business, trade and the economy.Previous presidents in their final term have used the period between the election and the inauguration to take last-minute actions to extend and seal their agendas. Some of the changes are clearly aimed at making it harder, at least for a time, for the next administration to pursue its goals.Of course, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. could issue new executive orders to overturn Mr. Trump’s. And Democrats in Congress, who will control the House and the Senate, could use the Congressional Review Act to quickly reverse regulatory actions from as far back as late August.Here are some of the things that Mr. Trump and his appointees have done or are trying to do before Mr. Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. — Peter EavisProhibiting Chinese apps and other products. Mr. Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday banning transactions with eight Chinese software applications, including Alipay. It was the latest escalation of the president’s economic war with China. Details and the start of the ban will fall to Mr. Biden, who could decide not to follow through on the idea. Separately, the Trump administration has also banned the import of some cotton from the Xinjiang region, where China has detained vast numbers of people who are members of ethnic minorities and forced them to work in fields and factories. In another move, the administration prohibited several Chinese companies, including the chip maker SMIC and the drone maker DJI, from buying American products. The administration is weighing further restrictions on China in its final days, including adding Alibaba and Tencent to a list of companies with ties to the Chinese military, a designation that would prevent Americans from investing in those businesses. — Ana SwansonDefining gig workers as contractors. The Labor Department on Wednesday released the final version of a rule that could classify millions of workers in industries like construction, cleaning and the gig economy as contractors rather than employees, another step toward endorsing the business practices of companies like Uber and Lyft. — Noam ScheiberTrimming social media’s legal shield. The Trump administration recently filed a petition asking the Federal Communications Commission to narrow its interpretation of a powerful legal shield for social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube. If the commission doesn’t act before Inauguration Day, the matter will land in the desk of whomever Mr. Biden picks to lead the agency. — David McCabeTaking the tech giants to court. The Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust suit against Facebook in December, two months after the Justice Department sued Google. Mr. Biden’s appointees will have to decide how best to move forward with the cases. — David McCabeAdding new cryptocurrency disclosure requirements. The Treasury Department late last month proposed new reporting requirements that it said were intended to prevent money laundering for certain cryptocurrency transactions. It gave only 15 days — over the holidays — for public comment. Lawmakers and digital currency enthusiasts wrote to the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, to protest and won a short extension. But opponents of the proposed rule say the process and substance are flawed, arguing that the requirement would hinder innovation, and are likely to challenge it in court. — Ephrat LivniLimiting banks on social and environmental issues. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is rushing a proposed rule that would ban banks from not lending to certain kinds of businesses, like those in the fossil fuel industry, on environmental or social grounds. The regulator unveiled the proposal on Nov. 20 and limited the time it would accept comments to six weeks despite the interruptions of the holidays. — Emily FlitterOverhauling rules on banks and underserved communities. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is also proposing new guidelines on how banks can measure their activities to get credit for fulfilling their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act, an anti-redlining law that forces them to do business in poor and minority communities. The agency rewrote some of the rules in May, but other regulators — the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — did not sign on. — Emily FlitterInsuring “hot money” deposits. On Dec. 15, the F.D.I.C. expanded the eligibility of brokered deposits for insurance coverage. These deposits are infusions of cash into a bank in exchange for a high interest rate, but are known as “hot money” because the clients can move the deposits from bank to bank for higher returns. Critics say the change could put the insurance fund at risk. F.D.I.C. officials said the new rule was needed to “modernize” the brokered deposits system. — Emily FlitterNarrowing regulatory authority over airlines. The Department of Transportation in December authorized a rule, sought by airlines and travel agents, that limits the department’s authority over the industry by defining what constitutes an unfair and deceptive practice. Consumer groups widely opposed the rule. Airlines argued that the rule would limit regulatory overreach. And the department said the definitions it used were in line with its past practice. — Niraj ChokshiRolling back a light bulb rule. The Department of Energy has moved to block a rule that would phase out incandescent light bulbs, which people and businesses have increasingly been replacing with much more efficient LED and compact fluorescent bulbs. The energy secretary, Dan Brouillette, a former auto industry lobbyist, said in December that the Trump administration did not want to limit consumer choice. The rule had been slated to go into effect on Jan. 1 and was required by a law passed in 2007. — Ivan PennAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More