Trump's Labor Pains

The Trump regime is moving ahead with a major priority in the workplace and one I warned for years was coming: allowing any federal contract employer to obtain a religious exemption in order to nullify existing fair labor and discrimination laws.

The 46-page draft rule from the Labor Department would apply to a range of so-called religious organizations — including corporations, schools, and societies — provided that they claim a “religious purpose.”

Labor Department spokesperson Megan Sweeney confirmed to BuzzFeed News on Wednesday that the rule would apply to for-profit corporations with federal contracts. This would allow those companies discriminate and keep their contract, given that they obtain a religious exemption.
The Trump administration makes clear that a corporation needn’t focus entirely on religion to qualify, saying, “The contractor must be organized for a religious purpose, meaning that it was conceived with a self-identified religious purpose. This need not be the contractor’s only purpose.”

“A religious purpose can be shown by articles of incorporation or other founding documents, but that is not the only type of evidence that can be used,” says the rule, which grants companies many opportunities to claim that faith or morals guide their intent.

The National Center for Transgender Equality said in a statement the rule could allow “firing or refusing to hire someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It could also lead to federal contractors refusing to hire women or unmarried workers who are pregnant or parents, or even discrimination on the basis of race.”

For example, the policy could allow a company that supplies machinery to the federal government to fire a woman simply because she’s a lesbian if it obtains a religious pass.

Workers could still take employers to court, but there is no federal law explicitly protecting LGBTQ workers. And under the proposed rule, the Labor Department wouldn’t need to take enforcement action or cancel lucrative contracts with businesses that make religious claims as the basis for bias.

The new rule would not eliminate longstanding nondiscrimination executive orders — such as a 2014 order banning LGBT discrimination — but rather create a pathway to get around them.

Echoing a sentiment from a Labor Department press release, Sweeney tried to downplay that fact that the plan would allow discrimination, saying in a statement, “The proposed regulation does not exempt or excuse a contractor from complying with other applicable requirements outside of the religious employer exemption.”

But this ignores the heart of the plan: The draft rule exists to create a carveout that protects businesses that raise a religious motive. The Labor Department, according to the proposal, “will find a violation of [the nondiscrimination order] only if it can prove by a preponderance of the evidence that a protected characteristic other than religion was a but-for cause of the adverse action.”

So, all a federal contractor has to do is go to the Trump Labor Department and request a religious exemption.  Once that's granted, the business is free to do what it wants as far as employees hired and fired that work on federal contracts.

That's expected to affect about 450,000 employees, but it's only the beginning of this mess.