After four years of constant attacks, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is hoping to be in a good position for the next fiscal year after President Biden proposed spending $14.2 billion on the Department, a 14 percent increase from the agency’s current budget.
While this is not the final budget, which is written by Congress, it is a proposal of how the President would like to see agencies that are under his control funded. The increases in funding are aimed at a few key areas that will aid in the workforce recovery from the pandemic. In his proposal, the Biden Administration proposes using the increased funding on workplace enforcement agencies. Some of this workforce training money would be used to fund a new initiative to retrain workers in Appalachian communities and reemploy them in clean energy jobs. They also want to use some of the money to provide support for states in processing unemployment claims.
APPRENTICESHIPS
Some $285 million –– $100 million more than the final Trump budget ––to expand registered apprenticeship programs, extend the programs into underrepresented, such as communities of color, and increase outreach to bring more women into apprenticeships.
WORKER PROTECTIONS
Under Biden’s proposal, DOL agencies that focus on worker protection would get a 17 percent increase ($304 million).
Agencies like the Wage and Hour Division and OSHA lost about 14 percent of their staff under the previous administration, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. That meant that both agencies were able to conduct fewer investigations, resulting in more employers getting away with taking advantage of their workers by not paying them overtime or minimum wages, or by putting them in dangerous working conditions. According to the White House, they hope to use the funding increase to boost efforts around investigating claims of misclassification of workers as independent contractors.
FUNDING TO CREATE UNION JOBS
He also requested $2 billion be used to fund clean energy projects to put “welders, electricians, and other skilled labor to work building clean energy projects across the nation. This investment supports a historic energy efficiency and clean electricity standard that would transform the electric sector to be carbon-pollution-free by 2035 and create good-paying union jobs,” said a press release from the White House.
The Biden budget also sets aside money for union members to expand broadband to rural communities and provide money to create 250,000 good-paying union jobs cleaning up abandoned wells and mines. Both of these proposals were also included in Biden’s recent infrastructure plan.
(Reprinted from UCOMM Blog)
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