Rescission of Coordinated Enforcement Regulations

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR <CFR>29 CFR Part 42</CFR> <SUBAGY>Employment and Training Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. ETA-2025-0003]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1205-AC27</RIN> <SUBAGY>Wage and Hour Division</SUBAGY> <RIN>RIN 1235-AA50</RIN> <SUBAGY>Occupational Safety and Health Administration</SUBAGY> <RIN>RIN 1218-AD53</RIN> <SUBJECT>Rescission of Coordinated Enforcement Regulations</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Wage and Hour Division, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and Employment and Training Administration, Labor. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Labor (the Department or DOL) proposes to remove the regulations that set forth the procedures within the Department for the coordination of enforcement activities by the Wage and Hour Division (WHD), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) relating to migrant farmworkers. The Department is proposing this removal because these regulations limit the Department's discretion, impose unnecessary and duplicative internal procedures, and prevent the Department's agencies from coordinating with regard to migrant farmworkers in more efficient, effective ways. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before September 2, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket No. ETA-2025-0003 and Regulatory Identification Number (RIN) 1205-AC27, by the following method: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov</E> . Search for the above-referenced RIN, open the proposed rule, and follow the on-screen instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the agency name and docket number for this rulemaking or “RIN 1205-AC27.” Please be advised that the Department will post comments received that relate to this proposed rule to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. The <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website is the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal and all comments posted there are available and accessible to the public. Please do not submit comments containing trade secrets, confidential or proprietary commercial or financial information, personal health information, sensitive personally identifiable information (for example, social security numbers, driver's license or state identification numbers, passport numbers, or financial account numbers), or other information that you do not want to be made available to the public. Should the agency become aware of such information, the agency reserves the right to redact or refrain from posting sensitive information, libelous, or otherwise inappropriate comments, including those that contain obscene, indecent, or profane language; that contain threats or defamatory statements; or that contain hate speech. Please note that depending on how information is submitted, the agency may not be able to redact the information and instead reserves the right to refrain from posting the information or comment in such situations. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> (search using RIN 1205-AC27 or Docket No. ETA-2025-0003). If you need assistance to review the comments, contact the Office of Policy Development and Research at 202-693-3700 (this is not a toll-free number). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Luke Murren, Acting Administrator, Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Labor, 200 Constitution Avenue NW, Room N-5641, Washington, DC 20210; telephone (202) 693-3700 (this is not a toll-free number). For persons with a hearing or speech disability who need assistance using the telephone system, please dial 711 to access telecommunications relay services. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The Department proposes to remove the regulations at 29 CFR part 42 which set forth procedures within the Department for the coordination of enforcement activities by WHD, OSHA, and ETA relating to migrant farmworkers, authorized under 29 U.S.C. 49 <E T="03">et seq.;</E> 29 U.S.C. 201 <E T="03">et seq.;</E> 29 U.S.C. 651 <E T="03">et seq.;</E> 29 U.S.C. 3101 <E T="03">et seq.;</E> 5 U.S.C. 301. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. 201 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> and the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act, 29 U.S.C. 651 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> and other applicable statutes provide employment protections, inter alia, to migrant farmworkers. These statutes are administered by the Department, which is also responsible for providing services to migrant farmworkers through ETA. In 1980, the Department issued a final rule which established a program of coordinated farm labor law enforcement followed by OSHA, ETA, the Department's Office of the Solicitor (SOL), and the then-Employment Standards Administration (ESA) (a now-defunct agency that incorporated WHD at the time the Department promulgated Part 42). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <E T="03">See</E> 45 FR 39486 (Jun. 10, 1980). At that time, the Department had become increasingly concerned about the employment-related problems of migrant farmworkers and sought to coordinate efforts to enforce its protective statutes on behalf of migrant farmworkers. <E T="03">Id.</E> The purpose of the final rule, which was codified at 29 CFR part 42, was to “[e]nsure effective enforcement efforts under [certain] protective statutes,” specifically, the OSH Act, the FLSA, and the Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act of 1963, Public Law 88-582, 78 Stat. 920 (FLCRA) (repealed 1983) (previously codified at 7 U.S.C. 2041 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), to “[e]nsure that the enforcement efforts of DOL agencies are coordinated to maximize their effectiveness, yet minimize unnecessary duplication,” to “[f]ocus the attention of DOL agencies upon the special employment-related problems faced by migrant farmworkers,” to “[c]oordinate DOL enforcement efforts with related activities of farmworker groups, federal and State agencies, and other concerned parties outside the Department of Labor,” and to “[e]stablish an information exchange which will afford the Department, farmworker groups, and other concerned parties outside the Department of Labor the opportunity to exchange information concerning wages, hours and working conditions.” 29 CFR 42.2. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  In 2009, ESA was dissolved, and the Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division was delegated the relevant authorities of the Assistant Secretary for Employment Standards. <E T="03">See</E> Sec'y's Order 09-2009, 74 FR 58836, 2009 WL 3782835 (Nov. 13, 2009). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Discussion</HD> The Department has engaged in regulatory review of 29 CFR part 42 in accordance with Executive Order (E.O.) 14192 “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation” 90 FR 9065 (Jan. 31, 2025). This E.O. states that “It is the policy of the executive branch to be prudent and financially responsible in the expenditure of funds, from both public and private sources, and to alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens placed on the American people.” <E T="03">Id.</E> The Department believes that taking a deregulatory action under E.O. 14192 by rescinding 29 CFR part 42 in its entirety would be a reasonable and effective means of maintaining its responsibilities for coordinated enforcement, while improving efficiencies and removing unnecessary restrictions on the Department. The coordinated farm labor law enforcement regulations codify requirements for the Department to maintain several processes and structures including: (1) establish a National Farm Labor Coordinated Enforcement Committee (National Committee) with membership by the Under Secretary of Labor (now the Deputy Secretary), <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> SOL, ETA, OSHA, and then-ESA, and supported by a staff level working group, to review the sub-agencies' policies and enforcement strategies and develop an annual coordination plan; (2) establish a Regional Farm Labor Coordinated Enforcement Committee (Regional Committee); (3) designate Farm Labor Specialists in ESA and compliance officers in OSHA to serve as farm labor contact persons, and (4) collect and review specific data pertaining to enforcement of protective statutes to be reviewed by the National Committee and to be used to inform future agency efforts. The regulations also prescribe specific frequency of meetings for the National Committee and the Regional Committee, and public attendance at certain of these meetings. The Department believes that these regulations limit the Department's discretion, impose bureaucratic processes, and prevent the Department from coordinating internally in more efficient, effective ways. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Department of Labor Executive Level Conforming Amendments of 1986, Public Law 99-619, 2(a)(1), 100 Stat. 3491 (Nov. 6, 1986). </FTNT> Moreover, the regulations, promulgated 45 years ago, in 1980, are outdated and no longer reflect the current organization of the Department or the legal landscape pertaining to migrant farmworkers. For instance, under the regulations, the National and Regional Committees, as well as the Regional Committees' annual public meetings, are required to be run, in part, by officers of an agency within the Department that no longer exists, ESA, which was dissolved in 2009. Also, the regulations require that written coordinated enforcement plans detail the Department's enforcement of a statute that is no longer in effect: FLCRA, which Congress repealed in ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━