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The past decade has reshaped American life and culture, with a global pandemic shifting identity concerns and shifting labor arrangements, all reshaping work and life. With President-elect Donald Trump back in the White House and immigration issues front and center in the national consciousness, however, in many ways, the end of 2024 feels like the end of 2016.
“We expect that under the Trump administration […] There will basically be a border closure almost immediately,” Jorge Lopez, a Littler Mendelson shareholder and chair of the law firm’s global immigration and mobility practice, told attendees of a pre-election webinar that Littler held on October 30 An immediate and stricter approach. Immigration is likely to affect industries such as construction, hospitality and manufacturing, he said.
Lopez, along with Jim Paretti, Littler’s shareholder and former senior adviser to the acting chairman of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Michael Lotito, Littler’s co-chairman Labor Policy Instituteand Shannon Meade, executive director of the Workplace Policy Institute, shared a number of other predictions about how President-elect Trump might act on employment issues in his first days in office.
1. Immigration enforcement raids will be back on the table.
Immigration reform will be “a priority,” Meade said.
In the workplace, a second Trump term will likely become “supply-side enforcement” of immigration law in the workplace, Lopez said, meaning raids, in which government officials they arrive at a place with the intention of arrest of undocumented workerswill probably be used again. The Biden administration, instead, used “demand-side enforcement,” Lopez said, characterized by focusing the concern on “whether or not an employer is intentionally or unintentionally hiring undocumented workers.”
On the immigration side, there will likely also be a sharp increase in I-9 audits, he said. Lopez noted that there were roughly 12,000 I-9 audits during Trump’s last year in office, compared to about 400 during Biden’s last year.
2. Agency chairs will be replaced.
The White House has limited control over the agencies, Paretti noted, with commissioners and board members shielded for cause. However, President Trump will be able to replace the chair, an action he will likely take immediately.
“It’s clear that on day one, a Trump administration would appoint a new chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, and it’s almost certainly going to be Marvin Kaplan, because he’s going to be the only serving Republican member,” Paretti said. “Similarly, at the EEOC, they are appointing, presumably, Commissioner Andrea Lucas, who is the only Republican commissioner serving in the agency at this time.”
Although leadership will likely change hands among various agencies, these chairmen may still find themselves minority members on their own commissions, such as at the NLRB and the EEOC.
3. Regulatory activity will decrease considerably.
Between the new overtime rule, the noncompete rule, and the independent contractor rule, to name a few, employers have encountered a flurry of activity at the NLRB, the EEOC, and the U.S. Department of Labor. USA during the last year. while not all proposed rules have been successful in court, agencies in some cases have continued to push challenges and judicial decisions.
“I think the first thing the Trump administration does is dismiss the appeal and withdraw the appeal,” Paretti said of the pending challenges. “We’ve seen this happen in other transitions, especially, and that’s why I think it’s worth noting that two significant Biden regulations, both white-collar overtime and independent contractor status, were intended to repeal and replace the rules that the Trump administration himself had issued.”
Paretti specifically noted that under an EEOC Chairman Lucas, some of the less popular The regulations of the Fairness of Pregnant Workers Act could be brought back. “She was not quiet about her dissatisfaction or concern with the final regulations that the EEOC issued,” he said.
4. Limitations could be set on DEI.
DEI is one area where there will be significant change in a second Trump term, Paretti said.
“We saw during the [first] The Trump administration issued an executive order that sought to ban or limit certain concepts in diversity and inclusion training. […] This was repealed by the Biden administration. That executive order was subject to judicial challenge,” he said. “But I would say in the intervening years, certainly on the Republican side, there hasn’t been a waning of interest here or anything. It’s picked up a little bit more.”
An EEOC under Trump will likely take a “more limited view of what is permissible under DEI initiatives,” said Paretti, who again pointed to Lucas’ public comments about how certain programs may violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act .
“I think DEI in a Republican administration is going to be under a lot more scrutiny, a lot more constraints, through the government’s power of the purse,” he said.
