Senate takes up EEOC nominees

With help from Ian Kullgren

SENATE TAKES UP EEOC NOMINEES: The Senate HELP Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing this morning on two Trump administration nominees for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency that guards against workplace discrimination.


The first is Lt. Col. Daniel Gade, a former West Point professor of public policy and Iraq War veteran who lost his right leg in 2005 while serving as a tank company commander. Gade has a surprising take on veterans’ disability programs: He has said that robust payments to disabled veterans discourage them from working, make them more likely to abuse drugs and let their health deteriorate even further. “People who stay home because they are getting paid enough to get by on disability are worse off,” Gade told The New York Times in 2015. “They are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. They are more likely to live alone. You’ve seen these guys. And the system is driving you to become one of them, if you are not careful.”

Gade has supported programs that would give disabled veterans work incentives instead of disability checks. While he wouldn’t be dealing specifically with disability payments at the EEOC, he would be handling discrimination claims involving veterans.

Gade also has opposed allowing women to serve in combat positions, writing that “standards WILL be decreased,” in a comment on a military blog in 2011 (two years before the Pentagon lifted the ban on women in combat). In an interview with the Center for Investigative Reporting, which first reported the comments, Gade said he had since changed his views. “I now believe … that anyone who can meet the physical and mental standards of the profession should be allowed into the profession in ground combat roles, and whatever role they qualify for.” More here.

The second nominee is Janet Dhillon , a corporate lawyer who worked for U.S. Airways and J.C. Penney before moving over to Burlington Store, Inc. Read a profile of Dhillon by Erin Mulvaney and Mike Scarcella of the National Law Journal here. The hearing takes place at 10 a.m. in 430 Dirksen. Watch a livestream here.

GOOD MORNING. It's Tuesday, Sept. 19, and this is Morning Shift, POLITICO's daily tipsheet on employment and immigration policy. Send tips, exclusives and suggestions to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter at @tedhesson, @marianne_levine, @IanKullgren and @TimothyNoah1.

TODAY:

SANDERS HITS TRUMP ON JOBS: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will press President Donald Trump to deliver on jobs and wages during a Capitol Hill press conference this morning. The event marks the conclusion of a “Midwest pickup tour” that Sanders launched with a late August speech in Indianapolis. Since then, a caravan led by Good Jobs Nation (which represents low-wage federal contractors) has visited eight Rust Belt cities in states that Trump won (Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania).

Sanders will be joined today by at least four labor leaders: Chris Shelton, president of Communications Workers of America; Peter Knowlton, president of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America; Chuck Jones, former president of Steelworkers Local 1999; and Joseph Geevarghese, director of Good Jobs Nation. The event will take place at 10:30 a.m. in 608 Dirksen. Watch a livestream here.

WAGE AND HOUR POLITICAL APPOINTEE: Management-side attorney Keith Sonderling has joined the Labor Department as the Wage and Hour division’s first political appointee, a department spokeswoman tells Morning Shift. Sonderling will serve as a senior policy adviser for Wage and Hour, which enforces federal labor laws such as the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. He was previously at Gunster, an employment law firm based in Boca Raton, Fla. According to Sonderling’s biography on the firm’s website, he defended employers in legal disputes and helped investors in the EB-5 visa program pursue civil claims. The EB-5 program allows foreign investors to obtain green cards if they invest at least $500,000 in a commercial project that will create jobs, but has been criticized by both Republicans and Democrats as vulnerable to fraud. More here.

THE NOMINATION THAT WASN’T: Morning Shift dutifully reported last week that Trump would “nominate” — in the words of a White House press release — Bryan Slater for assistant Labor secretary for administration and management. But on Monday, an eagle-eyed source pointed out that the position doesn’t require Senate confirmation. A White House spokesman declined to comment. The full list of Senate-confirmed positions is here.

CUOMO, DE BLASIO JOIN SPECTRUM STRIKERS: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) joined striking cable workers for a rally on the Brooklyn Bridge on Monday, Erin Durkin reports in the New York Daily News. The workers, employed by Charter Spectrum (the entity that formed after Charter Communications bought Time Warner Cable last year), went on strike in March over possible changes to their retirement and health care plans. The frequently feuding Cuomo and de Blasio stayed on opposite sides of the bridge, the Daily News reports.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3, which represents the striking employees, walked away from the bargaining table in June, a Charter spokesperson told the Daily News. Retirement is a key sticking point: “The company is trying to scrap workers’ pensions in favor of 401(k) accounts with matching contribution and stop contributing to a union health fund, according to the union,” the Daily News reports. “But Charter says it has offered wage hikes averaging 22 percent, with some workers in line for wages as high as 55 percent, in addition to a 401(k) where the company would match contributions up to 6 percent of pay.” More here.

NO RAISE FOR YOU: The tight labor market isn’t likely to translate into bigger paychecks for most workers, John Simons reports in The Wall Street Journal. “Businesses are planning to keep budgets for raises relatively flat in 2018, while continuing to devote more payroll dollars to performance-based pay, according to a survey of salary planning at 1,062 organizations conducted by consulting firm Aon Hewitt,” Simons reports. “Despite low unemployment and increased competition for talent, companies are bearish on across-the-board pay raises, said Ken Abosch, an Aon Hewitt executive who works on the annual survey, now in its 41st year.”

The executive told the Journal that “for the first time since the recession,” businesses are feeling skittish about the years ahead. That said, top performers should still expect relatively handsome increases. “Companies are paying to keep their highest performers happy and in place, with an average 12.5 percent of payroll going to incentive and bonus pay next year,” the Journal reports. More here.

REFUGEE DIVIDE: The Trump administration is grappling with how many refugees to admit in fiscal year 2018, Felicia Schwartz and Laura Meckler report in The Wall Street Journal. The Homeland Security Department wants a ceiling around 40,000, while the State Department and Pentagon favor 50,000. In either scenario, refugee admissions would be far below the 110,000 President Barack Obama proposed last year — a goal that was never realized. The travel ban executive order Trump signed in January lowered the refugee cap in fiscal year 2017 to 50,000.

“The State Department, Pentagon and others are arguing that there are humanitarian and national security reasons for accepting a robust number of refugees, and are pushing to maintain the ceiling at 50,000,” the Journal reports. “They also point to economic benefits outlined in an internal study of refugees, part of which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. That report, which was ordered as part of implementing the president’s executive order, has been written but not yet submitted to the White House. The agencies found that refugees have a net positive fiscal impact on the government, when considering taxes paid, as well as benefits collected.”

The findings of the report mirrored research that shows refugees pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. “Specifically, over 10 years, refugees generated $63 billion for the federal, state and local governments combined,” the Journal reports. “When refugees and their non-refugee spouses and children are considered, they are still a net benefit to the federal government, but a net cost to state and local governments.”

Even a 50,000-refugee cap would be the lowest in the history of the program. “The U.S. began setting refugee admission caps in 1980, and until this year, the cap had never been set below 67,000,” the Journal reports. “In the early 1990s, it topped 110,000 every year, but more recently, the cap hovered between 70,000 and 80,000.” More here.

VIEW FROM CANADA: “Workers at a General Motors assembly plant in Ontario went on strike late Sunday as union leaders reported an impasse in talks to keep Canadian jobs from moving to Mexico,” Ian Austen writes in The New York Times. “It is the first strike at a Canadian auto assembly plant in 21 years. The roughly 2,750 unionized employees at the factory, in Ingersoll, Ontario, may have been emboldened because it builds the Chevrolet Equinox, a small sport-utility vehicle that is a sales success for G.M.” More here.

DHS EXTENDS TPS FOR SUDAN, SOUTH SUDAN: The Homeland Security Department will extend Temporary Protected Status for roughly 1,100 nationals of Sudan and South Sudan, the department announced on Monday. The status allows foreigners whose countries are beset by natural disasters, conflicts and other “extraordinary” events to remain in the U.S. and apply for work permits, but must be renewed periodically by the department. Sudan’s status will be extended for 12 months to allow for "an orderly transition" but will be terminated in November 2018, according to DHS. The status for nationals of South Sudan (an independent country since 2011) will be extended for 18 months due to an ongoing conflict. In total, more than 400,000 people receive TPS. More from POLITICO’s Ted Hesson here.

IMMIGRANTS FUEL MIDWEST GROWTH: “The Rust Belt states that tipped the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump could be among the biggest losers from the proposed reductions in legal immigration that he has endorsed, according to a new study released Monday,” Ronald Brownstein writes in the Atlantic. “The study, from the nonpartisan Chicago Council on Global Affairs, concludes that immigration has been ‘a demographic lifeline’ that has helped several Midwestern cities partially reverse decades of population loss among native-born residents.” The report looks at how immigration fueled population growth in the Midwest over the last century — and what might happen if legal immigration is cut in half, as the Trump administration has proposed. Read more from the Atlantic here and the study here.

TESLA WORKER SUIT EXPANDS: “Widening earlier claims of immigration fraud at the Tesla factory, a recently unsealed whistleblower suit says several other major automakers, including Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volkswagen, illegally used foreign construction workers to build their U.S. factories,” Louis Hansen reports in the Mercury News. “The charges expand on an investigation by [the Mercury News] last year into foreign construction workers building Tesla’s paint shop in Fremont. The federal suit charges that the carmakers used hundreds of Eastern European workers on suspect visas hired through subcontractors for the German company Eisenmann. … Tesla and Mercedes denied the claims. An Eisenmann spokesman said the company complies with U.S. immigration laws.” More here.

COFFEE BREAK

— “Trump’s childhood home becomes a crash pad for refugees after Oxfam rents it,” from the Associated Press

—“It's official: Foxconn will get $3 billion to build a plant in Wisconsin,” from CNN Money

—“Whites have a huge wealth edge over blacks (but don’t know it),” from The New York Times

— “Peter Robb, Trump’s pick for NLRB general counsel, is poised to pivot board,” from the National Law Journal

—“DACA recipients file suit over Trump's move to end program,” from POLITICO

— “NAACP sues Trump for ending DACA,” from the Hill

— “Pro-DACA protesters call Pelosi a 'liar,'” from POLITICO

— “U.S. farms see 20 percent increase in H-2A guest workers,” from ABC 10

THAT’S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT.

Follow us on Twitter Rebecca Rainey @rebeccaarainey