DOL heeds CEI’s advice on apprenticeship rule

Rather like its chief, the Biden administration has moments of lucidity. When that occurs, it is entitled to a measure of praise. Praise, and perhaps thanksgiving, is due because on the day before Thanksgiving, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs quietly withdrew the Department of Labor’s proposal to burden registered apprenticeship programs. Apprenticeship programs that are registered with the Department of Labor (DOL) are subject to departmental requirements and are eligible for subsidies.

DOL recognized a need to get more people to participate in registered apprenticeship programs and set out to meet that need by requiring them to fill out more forms. In a proposed rule that was a caricature of bureaucratic reflexes, DOL proposed to increase paperwork while decreasing flexibility.

As CEI explained in a comment it submitted to DOL, the increase in paperwork included mandatory (and detailed) reporting requirements imposed upon program sponsors and participating employers, as well as burdensome requirements for applications for suitability determinations, and for applications for program registration. The proposal would have established four different standards: standards for apprenticeship, national program standards for apprenticeships, national guidelines for apprenticeship standards, and standards for career and technical education apprenticeship.

DOL filled out its requirements with a heavy dose of jargon. Programs would be required to ensure that their instructors were trained in “adaptable learning styles,” whatever that is. Participating states would be required to “leverage” a wide variety of things.

DOL seems to have been guided by whole-of-government directives as much as by its own statutory authority. Pages of the proposed rules pursued two objectives that the National Apprenticeship Act does not authorize: the promotion of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility and the imposition of demands on state agencies. The National Apprenticeship Act authorizes the secretary of labor “to cooperate with State agencies engaged in the formulation and promotion of standards of apprenticeship.” DOL apparently interpreted “cooperate with” to mean command. 

The pointless multiplication of red tape would not have been costless. DOL estimated that the proposal would have covered 1,508,012 sponsors, employers, apprentices, and state agencies, wasted 1,313,437 hours of their time each year, and cost $44,755,449 annually.

CEI welcomes the reprieve and looks forward to ever more common governmental inaction.