From “Trump Takes Aim at Minimum Wage: The current administration continues its assault on the working class” by Aurelia Glass at The Progressive: “For months, the Trump Administration has been waging a multi-front war on the working class: ending collective bargaining rights for more than one million federal workers, ripping up signed union contracts, muzzling the agency tasked with overseeing private sector bargaining laws, and strangling manufacturing jobs while driving up costs for working families with costly tariffs…Now President Donald Trump and his team are opening a new frontier by attacking minimum wage protections that benefit federal contractors, disabled workers, and home care workers… The first casualty was the minimum wage for federal contractors. In 2021, the Biden Administration upped the minimum wage for private-sector workers on federal contracts, giving an estimated 327,300 workers a raise of about $9,256 per year. When the Trump Administration assumed office this past January, these workers were earning at least $17.75 per hour—more than twice the current federal minimum wage. However, in March, the Trump Administration revoked President Joe Biden’s Executive Order, reducing the allowable minimum wage on federal contracts to $13.30 per hour… Next, the Trump Administration reversed a policy that would have prevented corporations from legally paying disabled workers far less than the minimum wage. Federal minimum wage law allows employers to apply for a certificate, called a Section 14(c) waiver, which allows them to pay some disabled workers an average of $4 an hour in some states, rather than the federal minimum wage of $7.25. As of July 2024, an estimated 38,000 people were earning subminimum wages due to these waivers, which are held by more than 600 employers…The Biden Administration was in the process of ending the use of these waivers. But as part of its agenda to “unleash prosperity through deregulation,” the Trump Administration withdrew the proposed rule change in July.” More here.

In “Working-Class Americans Are Hurting—And Traditional Statistics Aren’t Showing How Much: Recent data show the costs of groceries, healthcare, and electricity have all been rising faster than overall inflation,” Brad Reed writes at Common Dreams: “With the rising cost of groceries, housing, healthcare, and other essentials a central issue facing communities across the United States due to the Republican agenda, one expert believes that commonly cited economic statistics aren’t capturing the depth of working families’ struggles…Gene Ludwig, former US comptroller of the currency under President Bill Clinton, is arguing that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) no longer delivers an accurate portrait of families’ hardships because it does not focus enough on the core costs that impact working people on a daily basis…As reported by Bloomberg on Monday, Ludwig believes the CPI tracks too many goods that are either luxury purchases or are only bought sporadically. A relevant measure of inflation, he told the outlet, should primarily include goods that are essential to living, such as groceries, housing, healthcare, and energy…Ludwig and his colleagues at the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity have developed their own measurement called True Living Cost (TLC), which focuses on core household needs and excludes items such as plane tickets and golf carts that are included in the CPI formula…Prices as measured by the TLC have grown 1.3 times faster than prices as measured by the traditional CPI over the last 24 years, which may explain why US consumer sentiment has remained low even during times when the unemployment rate and the rate of inflation have been falling…The biggest gap between TLC and CPI has been in measuring the cost of healthcare, as TLC shows that the rise in costs has been much more severe than what has been shown in traditional inflation statistics.” Read on here.

“Majorities of adults see decline of union membership as bad for the U.S. and working people,” Ted Van Green reports at the Pew Research Center. As Green writes, “Majorities of Americans see the large reduction in the share of workers represented by unions over the past several decades as a bad thing for both the United States and its working people…

• 60% of U.S. adults say the decline has been bad for the country.
• 62% say this has been bad for working people.

The share of U.S. workers who belong to a union has fallen since 1983, when 20.1% were union members. In 2024, 9.9% of U.S. workers were in a union…The share of Americans who say this has been bad for the country is up 6 percentage points since last year (from 54%). The increase has come entirely among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents:

• Today, 82% of Democrats say this decline has been bad for the country, up from 69% who said this a year ago.
• 85% of Democrats also say the decline in union membership has been bad for working people, up from 74% in 2024.

By contrast, majorities of Republicans and GOP leaners continue to say that the decline in union membership has been good for the country (62%) and for working people (59%)…There are sizable age, income and educational gaps within the GOP about the impact of the union membership decline on working people. (The patterns are very similar on the question of its impact on the country.)

• 52% of Republicans under 35 say the decline of unions has been very or somewhat bad for working people. Smaller shares of older Republicans say this, including just 27% of those ages 65 and older.
• Lower-income Republicans (47%) are somewhat more likely than their middle-income (39%) and upper-income (35%) counterparts to say this.

Read more here.

Alex Samuels reports that “Trump won’t even discuss protecting health care for millions at Daily Kos: “President Donald Trump has blown up talks to avoid a government shutdown—just days before funding runs out…Congress faces a Sept. 30 deadline to keep the lights on. Without a deal, federal agencies will close and thousands of workers will be furloughed. Republicans have proposed a stopgap bill to maintain funding through Nov. 21 while they work on full-year spending bills. Democrats, meanwhile, are using the looming deadline to push for health care protections—and they were supposed to press their case directly to Trump this week…Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had requested a face-to-face meeting with the president to break the stalemate. By Tuesday morning, Trump had agreed. But just hours later, he changed his mind…In a Tuesday morning Truth Social post, Trump said he was canceling the sit-down with the two New York Democrats, dismissing it as pointless…Democrats want to protect health care for millions. Their proposal would reverse Republican-backed Medicaid cuts enacted under the GOP’s tax and immigration bill and extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are set to expire on Dec. 30…Republicans have flatly rejected rolling back the Medicaid cuts, calling it a nonstarter. And they’re accusing Democrats of using the threat of a shutdown to jam through their wish list…Schumer blasted Trump’s about-face, saying the president “ran away from the negotiating table before he even got there.”…“While Americans face rising costs and a Republican health care crisis, Trump would rather throw a tantrum than do his job,” Schumer told NBC News. “Democrats are ready to work to avoid a shutdown—Trump and Republicans are holding America hostage. Donald Trump will own the shutdown.”