Philly on track to get more worker protections while federal policies are rolled back under Trump

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As federal labor policies face rollbacks, Philadelphia is poised to bolster protections for some of its more vulnerable workers.

City lawmakers are expected to approve a bill in the coming months that would expand legal protections for domestic workers.

The POWER Act would enable the Philadelphia Department of Labor to investigate and penalize employers for retailing against domestic workers for asserting their rights on the job in the city. That includes protection from employers threatening retaliation against workers based on their immigration status.

There’s already a veto-proof majority of Philadelphia City Council members who co-sponsored the bill.

“Under President Trump’s anti-worker, anti-immigrant agenda enforcing our local labor laws are more important than ever,” said councilmember Kendra Brooks.

The Donald Trump administration removed Democrat-appointed Gwynne Wilcox, a National Labor Relations Board member before the end of her term, which stunted the board’s ability to make decisions because it lacked quorum.

Trump appointed William Cowen as the new general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, who has already rescinded nine labor policies.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement have also used administrative warrants searching for individuals not authorized to be in the U.S. to detain immigrants at workplaces – including in Philadelphia.

Among the rescinded federal labor policy orders, it included the right for student athletes to unionize, prohibiting employers from requiring nondisclosure agreements for laid off workers to receive severance packages, banning noncompete agreements and even limiting the electronic monitoring of employees by companies outside of work hours.

It’s not unusual for the National Labor Relations Board to roll back regulations under a Republican president.

“Every time the party of the president changes, they change the composition of the National Labor Relations Board to the point that sometimes rulings on particular cases get reversed, so the law can flip flop,” said Todd Vachon, assistant professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University.

But it’s unlikely that the Trump administration would be able to stop Philadelphia from passing stronger labor laws at the city level.

“The federal government is not likely able to stop cities from enacting laws but what the federal government can do is threaten withholding certain types of federal funding that cities and municipalities may rely on or punish them by reducing funding if they enact certain laws,” Vachon said.

In some Republican-led states with progressive cities, states may have preemptive laws on the books that prohibit municipalities from enacting anything that would circumvent state law, which is what happened in Texas. 

But that’s not the case with labor protections in Pennsylvania, though it does have preemption laws around gun control. 

Councilmember Brooks said her focus is on holding employers accountable for any violations of labor such as not offering paid sick leave, overtime pay, fair work week scheduling, written contracts and wage theft.

“We need to make sure that we’re protecting workers against wage theft and for the laws across the city to be streamlined to make it easier for employees, employers and our labor department to manage them,” said Brooks, who worked as a nanny herself during college.

The bill still must have a hearing, which has been postponed until late April, and go through the rest of the legislative process. A council briefing on the bill was held last week that outlined the proposed changes.

The legislation is co-sponsored by 14 members of city council, the remaining lawmakers, Michael Driscoll, Brian O’Neil, Katherine Gilmore Richardson, did not respond to comment for this story.

The Philadelphia Office of Worker Protections was created five years ago after a city-wide vote to establish a Department of Labor.

Philadelphia already has the strongest labor protections on the books compared to peer cities like Washington and Seattle, and its framework is being used as a model in other communities — like an effort to get a domestic workers bill of rights in Miami.

“There is an epidemic of wage theft and basic labor law violations because low wage workers are often in vulnerable jobs like domestic work where they are isolated and they don’t have job security,” said Ai-jen Poo, president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.

The following states already have domestic worker protections: New Jersey, New York, California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and Rhode Island.