Trump has turned the Department of Labor into the Department of Employer Rights
No advocates for workers’ rights or labor were especially surprised last week when President Trump nominated Eugene Scalia for secretary of Labor, succeeding the utterly discredited Alex Acosta.
Scalia—son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia—had made his reputation in Washington as a lawyer for big corporations resisting labor regulations, after all.
He had helped Walmart overturn a Maryland law mandating minimum contributions by big employers for workers’ healthcare, defended SeaWorld against workplace safety charges after a park trainer was killed by an Orca (he lost that case), and had written extensively against a federal regulation expanding ergonomic safety requirements.