Budget thwarts labor, employment enforcement hopes

Congress finally succeeded in passing a 2022 budget, but the administration’s ambitious hopes for rebuilding the labor and employment enforcement agencies were completely abandoned. Although passing this budget is something of a bipartisan achievement with war clouds over Ukraine, the treatment of the workplace enforcement agencies reveals that deep partisan splits remain.

President Joe Biden’s original budget included double-digit—and more—increases for enforcement agencies like the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), both of which had been depleted during the prior administration. However, a unified Republican opposition in a narrowly divided Senate—and the exigencies of aid to Ukraine—yielded a radically altered final bill.

The DOL won an overall funding increase of about $14 billion for fiscal year 2022, with more than $10 billion of the additional funding earmarked for workforce training and apprenticeship programs sponsored by the Employment and Training Administration. Yet the overall increase was miniscule, less than 1%.

Enforcement agencies stiffed