If you go to the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor here in Washington and stand well back across from the building in that mini park on Constitution Avenue to get a panoramic view of the edifice, you will see two enormous banners honoring American workers for the nation’s 250th anniversary next year. Each banner also bears the image of a U.S. president: on the left is Donald Trump; on the right is Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt was a labor reformer even before he became governor of New York, and before he would become U.S. president. But before that, as a member of the New York State Assembly, he was at first a reliable anti-union vote. Then he had an epiphany when he began learning about ordinary people’s working conditions. His education included visiting workplaces and seeing firsthand the appalling conditions that prevailed.
Here is a description of Roosevelt’s work in labor reform, taken from a blog at the Theodore Roosevelt Center that credits a report at the Library of Congress as its ultimate source:
“As Governor of New York, Roosevelt further pushed for labor reform, especially through enforcement of existing legislation. He pushed for the passage of employers’ liability and sweatshop laws, essentially a continuation of the crusade he had picked up from his meetings with [the union leader] Samuel Gompers. Although he could not get [those] passed, he was able to sign a number of individual bills regulating tenement house manufacturing. Other bills he signed regulated the labor of women and children, as well as that of teachers and municipal employees. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, he passed and strictly enforced an eight-hour law.”
Under President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903, a Department of Commerce and Labor was formed. In 1913, under President William Howard Taft, the separate Department of Labor was formed, and the original “Commerce and Labor” entity continued as the singular Department of Commerce. The Department of Labor, to which Roosevelt could rightly claim parentage, says this about itself:
“The Department of Labor (DOL) administers federal labor laws to guarantee workers’ rights to fair, safe, and healthy working conditions, including minimum hourly wage and overtime pay, protection against employment discrimination, and unemployment insurance.”
President Theodore Roosevelt has a highly positive legacy in relation to labor. But what about Trump? What does the record show so far of his attitude to labor?
In a word: enmity.
It is rich that his face is plastered on a banner at the Labor Department building honoring the American worker. Trump has a bad history with labor, starting in his business life, where he was sued by individuals and by small contractors who alleged that he stiffed them by refusing to pay for work they had completed. In his first term as president, he attacked the labor unions representing federal employees and also treated those employees — essentially his own workers — as enemies of the American people. The courts helped to restrain him that time around.
In his second term, he came loaded for bear. He returned to Washington accompanied by Elon Musk as his hatchet man. Musk set about sacking tens of thousands of federal workers. There is a civilized way to reduce headcount, and the abrupt and cruel way it has been done in a matter of months this year by the Trump administration is not it. The result has been lives upended and multiple government agencies thrown into chaos, their work undercut and their remaining employees feeling terrorized.
And Trump’s tariffs are coming for the American private-sector worker. Watch what tariff-induced inflation will do to consumer demand, the profitability of companies, the cost of living, and, ultimately, the level of unemployment.
Trump is no friend of American workers. He is a fool flailing about pretending to be doing work when in fact he is causing destructive chaos. That his face appears on a banner honoring this country’s workers for the nation’s 250th anniversary is an insult to American labor.
Look for Trump’s image to continue to occupy top billing as the celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary advances. For him, the event is not about the country’s endurance as an experiment in democracy. It is simply about the glory of Donald Trump.
Democracy Warrior 