Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have promised to make life better for workers if elected. But the presidential candidates’ stances are miles apart on many issues affecting workers, including the minimum wage, overtime pay and the power of labor unions.
Here are five key issues that set the candidates apart:
1. Minimum wage
The federal minimum wage has been set at $7.25 an hour since 2009. Harris has called it "poverty wages," noting it amounts to $15,000 a year for full-time workers. She told NBC News she wanted to increase it to at least $15 an hour, acknowledging that she’d need support in Congress for the change.
During a presidential debate four years ago, Trump said he’d consider a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage, if it does not hurt small businesses. Last month, during a photo-op at a McDonald’s, the former president dodged a question about whether he’d support raising the minimum wage, instead praising the workers and the franchises that employ them.
2. Overtime pay
A lot of Americans work overtime, which both candidates appear to recognize. But they differ on who should be eligible to earn time-and-a-half pay for work exceeding 40 hours a week.
Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris administration finalized a rule making 4 million more workers eligible for overtime pay. The rule is facing multiple legal challenges.
As president, Trump declined to defend a similar Obama-era rule, instead promulgating his own rule which resulted in far fewer people eligible for overtime pay.
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint for a second Trump presidency, proposes an overhaul of federal overtime rules that would give employers more flexibility.
Trump has tried to distance himself from the document. But at campaign events this fall, he admitted, as a private-sector employer, he hated paying overtime and would sometimes hire more workers to avoid it.
"I'd say, 'No, get me 10 other guys. I don't want to have time and a half,'" Trump said in Saginaw, Mich., on October 3.
Still, Trump has tried to use the issue to win over working class voters, by rolling out a proposal to make overtime wages tax-free. Many policy analysts have panned the idea, finding it could cost the government well over $1 trillion in tax revenues over the next decade.
On a side note, Trump — followed by Harris — proposed getting rid of taxes on tips. The Yale Budget Lab estimates even this more limited move would significantly increase the budget deficit while exacerbating inequities.
3. Manufacturing job creation
It’s clear no president will be able to restore America's manufacturing glory of yesteryear. But Trump has successfully drawn many white, working class voters into his fold by promising to bring back and protect their manufacturing jobs, including by lowering the corporate tax rate for domestic manufacturers and imposing tariffs on all imported goods.
Economists have warned, however, that Trump’s proposed tariffs would result in higher prices all around, including for U.S. manufacturers.
Harris has been trying to recapture those votes. She points to legislative wins over the past four years, including the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, that have created manufacturing and construction jobs. She's pledged to expand tax credits for companies that create union jobs in steel, iron and other areas of manufacturing and prioritize the retooling of existing plants in factory towns.
Both candidates have said they'd seek to remove regulatory burdens on manufacturers, allowing them to build new factories more quickly.
4. Labor unions
Where the two candidates perhaps diverge the most is on their view of unions.
Harris wants to strengthen unions and has vowed to get the PRO Act passed. The legislation, aimed at making it easier for workers to organize, has been stalled in Congress for years. She called on the federal government to be a model employer, by giving federal employee unions a bigger seat at the table and directing agencies to make sure their employees know they have a right to join a union.
Under the Biden-Harris administration, the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that hears labor disputes, has taken an aggressive approach to protecting workers' rights to organize and collectively bargain. Critics charge that the agency's interpretation of those rights is overly broad. Several companies, including SpaceX and Amazon, have filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the NLRB's very existence.
By contrast, while in the White House, Trump gutted federal employee unions and expressed support for Right to Work laws, which weaken unions by allowing workers to opt out of paying union dues. He stacked the Labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board with corporate-friendly appointees. Project 2025 details more steps he could take to render unions powerless.
In an interview with SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk in August, Trump joked that he liked Musk’s approach to workers. “They go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s OK, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. Every one one of you is gone,’” Trump said.
Still, the former president maintains strong support among some pockets of union workers. In informal polling conducted by the Teamsters union this summer, Teamsters members said they preferred Trump over Harris by a 2-to-1 margin.
5. Noncompetes
Noncompete agreements, which prevent workers from taking a job at a competing business or starting one of their own, have not been a hot topic in the presidential race. Still, the future of these employment clauses could hinge on who wins the election.
An estimated 30 million Americans have signed noncompete agreements with their employers. The Federal Trade Commission voted in April along party lines to ban such agreements, finding that they suppress wages and stifle innovation.
The ban faced immediate legal challenges, and in August, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas blocked the rule from taking effect nationwide. U.S. District Judge Ada Brown ruled in favor of Ryan LLC, a tax services firm in Dallas, finding that the FTC had indeed overstepped its authority.
The FTC has appealed the ruling.
While noncompetes aren’t something Harris has spoken about on the campaign trail, she has previously voiced support for the FTC's ban, describing such agreements as "anti-worker".
Trump has not addressed noncompetes in his campaign, either.
Notably, among the lawyers representing Ryan LLC in its lawsuit against the FTC is Eugene Scalia, who served as Trump’s labor secretary from 2019 to 2021.
And in 2016, Politico reported that the Trump campaign included a broad noncompete in its own employment agreements, barring staff, volunteers, contractors and contractors' employees from working with any other presidential campaign for the duration of the election.
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