Former Acting Labor Secretary Su Outlines “Risks” to the DOL Under Trump

Julie Su, acting secretary of labor in the Biden administration, wrote in a recent column that cuts being made by the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency Service Temporary Organization are putting workers, and retirement and benefit plans, at risk.

Julie Su

Su, who is now a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, published an article on April 3 discussing the DOL’s accomplishments during Biden’s tenure.

“That work will all be for naught if the Department of Labor is stripped and sold for parts to benefit corporations looking to pad their pockets at workers’ expense” Su wrote. “The DOL is facing significant cuts to staffing at the hands of the current administration’s chainsaw.”

Regarding health care and retirement, Su wrote that cuts to DOL will diminish enforcement and compliance efforts to “ensure employers are properly funding their retirement plans and that plans are making sound financial decisions to protect workers’ hard-earned retirement assets.”

The DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration oversees 800,000 private retirement plans, 2.6 million health plans and 500,000 other benefit plans, Su wrote.

“DOL’s investigators are already grossly outnumbered, with just one investigator for every 14,000 benefit plans,” Su wrote. “Cuts to DOL would eliminate benefits advisers who answer phones and then advocate alongside desperate patients who have received a ‘coverage denied’ letter from their health plan.”

The Senate in March confirmed former Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon as secretary of labor under President Donald Trump. A nomination hearing for Daniel Aronowitz, Trump’s nominee for assistant secretary of labor to lead the Employee Benefits Security Administration, has yet to be scheduled.

In addition to staffing cuts at the DOL and broadly across the federal government, advisory committees have also become targets, and the status of the ERISA Advisory Council is unclear.