Rescission of Coordinated Enforcement Regulations
Key claim: The Labor Department is dropping old rules that required Wage and Hour, OSHA, and the Employment and Training Administration to follow formal joint procedures when enforcing labor laws covering migrant and seasonal farmworkers, saying those procedures are outdated and no longer needed.
Abstract
(Rule · Labor Department, Employment and Training Administration, Wage and Hour Division, Occupational Safety and Health Administration) The Department of Labor (Department) is rescinding the regulations that established formal procedures for coordination of enforcement activities among the Wage and Hour Division (WHD), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and Employment and Training Administration (ETA) with respect to migrant and seasonal farmworkers. The Department is rescinding these regulations because they are obsolete, no longer reflect the Department’s organizational structure or operational practices, and are not needed for effective coordination among the relevant component agencies. This action will remove unnecessary regulatory burden and align the Department’s enforcement strategy with modern, effective, and flexible coordination models already in use.
Why this matters
For workers, the rescission removes a formal internal DOL commitment that Wage and Hour, OSHA, and ETA would jointly plan and coordinate farmworker enforcement, potentially weakening a structured backstop even though the underlying MSPA, FLSA, and OSH Act protections remain in force. For employers in agriculture, it reduces one layer of prescribed interagency procedure that shaped how inspections and referrals were sequenced. The status is a final rule framed as administrative cleanup of obsolete procedures.