Could the Department of Labor (DOL) and Department of Education (DOE) possibly merge in the near future? President Trump thinks so and recently announced his desire to combine the two departments into a single federal agency to be called the Department of Education and the Workforce. According to a White House Statement, the new agency would be “charged with meeting the needs of American students and workers from education and skill development to workplace protection to retirement security.” The proposed restructuring would provide for four sub-agencies: K-12, Higher Education/Workforce Development, Enforcement, and Research/Evaluation.
Current Status
DOE is the smallest cabinet agency with just under 4,000 employees and a $68 billion budget, and oversees federal student loans, distributes K-12 education funding, and enforces civil rights laws at colleges. DOL, by contrast, has about 15,000 employees and a $13 billion budget to support its broad agenda of training programs, enforcement of wage and safety laws, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The proposal is part of a larger plan by the administration to reorganize and reduce the size of federal government agencies. Other combinations of sections of federal agencies have been discussed by the OMB, which itself may have a shrinking role.
Reactions to the Proposal
Not surprisingly, reaction to the proposed combination has been mixed. Current administration members support it. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos promoted the idea to help break down “artificial barriers” between education and career development. Mick Mulvaney, director of the federal OMB, spoke in favor of the plan to reduce the size of the federal government which he described as “bloated, opaque, bureaucratic, and inefficient.”
Opponents say it would be a bad idea. Chris Lu, a former Deputy Secretary of Labor under President Obama, pointed out that only parts of the two agencies deal with worker training because most of DOL consists of enforcement agencies such as OSHA, MSHA, Wage & Hour, and OFCCP that were created to protect workers. The National Employment Law Project (a union-backed think tank) denounced the proposal as a “half-baked idea” that would only betray the workers for whom President Trump pledged to advocate.
Members of the business community may welcome entities such as OSHA and MSHA falling under the DOE, which has a more educational (and less enforcement-oriented) focus.
Likely to Happen?
Odds of the combination actually coming to fruition seem unlikely. Congress has to approve a major reorganization of cabinet departments, which means 60 votes in the Senate. POLITICO (a Washington, D.C. political news outlet) surmised that the plan “would pose a heavy political and legislative lift” as previous attempts to eliminate the DOE have failed in Congress. President Obama had his own reorganization plan in 2012 that never went anywhere. Seth Harris, Deputy Secretary of Labor under President Obama, predicted that the merger will not happen.
From a high level, some of the mandates of these two agencies overlap. One pursues education to enter the labor force while the other focuses on the workforce (with some training programs). The proposed merger faces many obstacles before the finer details are even discussed, such as what (and who) gets cut. If nothing else, the announced plan has attracted attention, and it is worth keeping an eye on. Having DOL sections combined and altered with a focus on education (rather than just on enforcement) would certainly be a game changer for many employers.
