The man in the McDonald’s suit insists unceasingly that he’s for working people, and huge portions believe him—but what do the facts of President Trump’s actual policies show? What does it mean to be for workers?
You’d think being “pro-worker” would mean things like lowering consumer prices and boosting wages. But the facts show the man in the McDonald’s suit isn’t doing either of those things—in fact, despite the president’s false protestations, he is doing the opposite.
Despite Trump’s profoundly Orwellian lies, prices are, in fact, UP from last year for most categories of daily life, according to the Trump administration’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics. Prices for food are up nearly 3 percent since this time last year. Workers’ grocery bills are spiking higher as supermarkets pass along Trump’s tariffs to consumers, as all critics predicted.
You’d think that being for workers would mean supporting higher wages, particularly for working-class and lower-income workers. But again, the man donning the McDonald’s outfit is in fact doing the opposite. As Economic Policy Institute reported, Trump “rescinded an executive order that raised the minimum wage for federal contractors,” effectively slashing these workers’ wages by 25% to 60%. This means that millions of federally contracted workers, some of whom make poverty wages, no longer get minimum wage protections because of Trump.
All of this pain and harm Trump is causing for workers is part of the plan, right out of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—promoting the profit and wealth interests of the rich and corporations over working people’s needs and survival.
Compounding all this harm, on Labor Day the Trump administration “will advance plans to eliminate federal minimum wage protections for millions of child care and home care providers,” the Center for American Progress reports. Think about that. Millions of low-paid domestic care workers will now lose federal minimum wage protections because of the man masquerading as a McDonald’s worker and man of the people.
With the help of a Trump-appointed judge in Texas, Republicans rescinded a Biden rule aimed at expanding overtime pay for millions of working Americans. That rule would have given overtime pay protections to 4 million workers. Seriously, does that sound pro-worker to you?
You might expect a “pro-worker” president to support middle-class jobs—wrong again. Is it “pro-worker” to fire and lay off hundreds of thousands of government workers, all to pay for tax cuts that almost entirely benefit the rich? This is precisely what Trump is doing. New government projections show Trump will have eliminated about 300,000 federal workers by the end of this year. Think about that, 300,000 people made unemployed by Trump. That is an entire city of middle-class workers, fired and laid off, now desperately scrambling to pay bills, buy groceries, and survive. Many will lose their homes if they don’t quickly find another middle-class job. Doesn’t sound very “pro-worker,” now does it?
Would a “pro-worker” president eviscerate worker safety and health protections on the job? That’s exactly what Trump is doing. His horrendous, harmful bill gutted the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, slashing staff and workplace inspections, the lifeblood of maintaining worker safety and health. More than 140,000 U.S. workers died from hazardous job conditions in 2023, according to the AFL-CIO’s annual “Death on the Job” report. That’s 383 Americans dying every day from dangerous working conditions that can be prevented by stronger regulations and enforcement—but the guy in the McDonald’s outfit is doing the opposite, erasing a stunning 30 percent of inspections while radically reducing penalties for endangering workers.
Deepening this harm, Trump eliminated nearly all workers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a small but important agency that produces critical research on work hazards, including maintaining a firefighter cancer registry and a lab that certifies respirators for many industries. The cuts are “a very pointed attack on workers in this country,” Micah Niemeier-Walsh, vice president of the NIOSH workers union told the Associated Press.
This same alleged “champion” of working people is deploying heavily militarized battalions of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to round up suspected undocumented immigrants—engaging in racial profiling, violating Constitutional due process, tearing apart families, deporting legal residents and some U.S. citizens, raiding farms and warehouses and day labor sites, putting millions of hard-working immigrant (and non-immigrant) families in danger and terror.
This self-anointed man of the working people has waged an all-out attack on the unions that make workers’ lives better, thrashing away at workers’ rights and unions’ ability to organize. On the Thursday before Labor Day, Trump spat out yet another anti-worker executive order aimed at erasing collective-bargaining rights from workers at the National Weather Service, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and other federal agencies, Huffington Postreported.
All of this pain and harm Trump is causing for workers is part of the plan, right out of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—promoting the profit and wealth interests of the rich and corporations over working people’s needs and survival. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Trump’s tax plan enriches the rich while taking from the poor, while adding trillions to the national debt. Those tax cuts primarily going to the rich are paid for in part by Trump’s gutting and slashing of workers’ rights and protections on the job.
Writing for The Nation this week, Robert L. Borosage and Sara Steffens summarized Trump’s wholesale assault on workers compellingly:
Employers are being empowered to act lawlessly toward their workers. Unions are being stripped of the legal structure that protected their existence. Immigrant workers are abused, hunted, and deported. Women and minorities will suffer from discrimination at rates not seen since the civil rights revolution. Workers’ families are shouldering higher costs for food, healthcare, and energy.
On Labor Day and beyond, when the guy the goody grin in the McDonald’s suit says he’s helping working people and making their lives “great again,” remember—all the facts show the opposite. The facts show the Trump administration is undermining workers, making their lives harder, exposing them to more life-threatening hazards, robbing millions of overtime pay, eliminating minimum wage protections for millions more, and attacking the unions that improve workers’ pay and rights and safety on the job.
Don’t buy Trump’s false “happy Labor Day” hype—it’s all lies with those fatty, greasy fries.