Proposed Cuts to Worker Protection Agencies & What They Mean

Updated July 15, 2024

Authors: Catherine Rowland, Legislative Affairs Director, Congressional Progressive Caucus Center; Margaret Poydock, Senior Policy Analyst, Economic Policy Institute; Jiayi (Sonia) Zhang, Policy Intern, Economic Policy Institute.

On July 10, 2024, the House Appropriations Committee approved the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (Labor-HHS-Education) funding proposal for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025. The bill, written by House Republicans, would slash the Department of Labor’s (DOL) funding to $10.7 billion—a 22 percent cut relative to FY2024. Additional cuts to other worker protection agencies are also included in the House Republican funding proposal.  

This explainer describes the impacts the House-proposed funding cut would have on specific worker protection agencies within DOL—the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Wage and Hour Division (WHD)—and on the independent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Table A below outlines the cuts each agency would endure and the implications for workers. 

Table A: House-Proposed Cuts to Worker Protection Agencies in FY2025

House-Proposed Cuts Fit into a History of Underfunding Worker Protections 

Figure A: Funding Enacted for Worker Protection Agencies from 2013 to 2023

As shown in Figure A, funding enacted for worker protection agencies such as the WHD, OSHA, and NLRB was almost stagnant between 2013 and 2023. This prevented agencies from building the capacity necessary to fulfill their missions: for example, after almost a decade without a funding boost, the NLRB was forced to enact a hiring freeze, despite staffing shortfalls in field offices across the U.S. This trend of nearly flat funding—paired with inflation and the growing demands for the agencies’ work described in Table A—leaves these agencies with little capacity to endure the steep cuts House Republicans have proposed without jeopardizing their ability to protect working people.

Conclusion

The cuts House Republicans have proposed are millions of dollars below the White House’s preferred figures. Specifically, the NLRB proposal is $120 million less than the White House’s request; the OSHA proposal is $98 million below the White House’s request; and the WHD proposal is $60 million below the White House’s request. As such, the Democratically-controlled Senate and White House may insist upon funding levels closer to the President’s proposals. 

Resolving these differences will likely take several months. If this year’s appropriations process mirrors that of recent election years, it’s unlikely that an FY2025 spending package will become law by the end of the fiscal year (October 1). But regardless of when lawmakers determine final funding levels for the three agencies above, those determinations will have far-reaching implications for working people, their safety, and their ability to exercise their rights.