# Department of Labor The **Department of Labor (DOL)** administers the federal floor of worker protections — wage-and-hour law through the Wage and Hour Division, workplace safety through OSHA and MSHA, pension and benefit standards through ERISA, unemployment statistics through the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and anti-discrimination enforcement on federal contractors through OFCCP. Established in 1913 (split from Commerce), its founding mission is "to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners" — a mandate the contemporary right reads as inherently biased toward labor over employers. For the KB, Labor matters as a **deregulation theater** and, increasingly, as the home of a politically explosive data function: the **Bureau of Labor Statistics**, which produces the monthly jobs report and the Consumer Price Index. In an administration with strong incentives to contest unfavorable economic numbers, the independence and integrity of BLS becomes a live concern — the question of whether the government can be trusted to report honest data about its own economy. ## Leadership (2025–) **[[Lori Chavez-DeRemer]]** — a former Republican congresswoman from Oregon with an unusually pro-union voting record for her party — was confirmed Secretary of Labor on March 10, 2025, by a 67–32 vote, drawing notable Democratic support and some Republican skepticism. Her selection reflected the administration's courtship of the working-class and building-trades vote, even as the broader [[Project 2025]] agenda points toward deregulation. ## Major agencies Tracked as plain references until individual pages are built: - **Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)** — workplace-safety standards and enforcement. - **Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)** — the jobs report, CPI, and the official economic data; an independence flashpoint. - **Wage and Hour Division** — minimum-wage, overtime, and child-labor enforcement. - **Employee Benefits Security Administration** — ERISA and the regulation of retirement plans (the fiduciary-rule fight). - **Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP)** — anti-discrimination rules on federal contractors; a DEI-rollback target. ## The capture lens The [[Project 2025]] agenda points Labor toward rolling back protections and reorienting the department away from worker advocacy. The patterns the KB tracks: - **Overtime and child-labor rollback** — narrowing overtime eligibility and weakening child-labor enforcement amid a wave of state-level rollbacks. - **OSHA retreat** — reduced inspection and enforcement capacity. - **BLS politicization** — pressure on the agency that produces the numbers the administration is judged by. - **OFCCP/DEI dismantling** — gutting the contractor-discrimination enforcement apparatus. ## See Also - [[Project 2025]] - [[Cabinet Departments Hub]] - [[Federal Agencies]]