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Article snippet: Even by the standards of the Trump era, one of the more unusual departures from recent Washington practice came in June, in a case before the Supreme Court involving worker rights. The Trump administration felt so strongly on the issue — that employers can force workers to forfeit their rights to bring class-action lawsuits — that it reversed the government’s position, something that has rarely happened in a pending case. “What’s pretty unprecedented is that they came to a different conclusion in the Supreme Court case,” said M. Patricia Smith, the solicitor at the Labor Department under President Barack Obama. (A Justice Department spokesman said that every administration sometimes departs from the position of its predecessors in new Supreme Court cases.) It is one of a series of actions that have reversed course on rights and protections for workers. The administration had proposed a 40 percent cut for the government agency that conducts research into workplace hazards, undone Obama-era guidances on enforcement of employment laws and sought to eliminate a roughly $10.5 million program that helps some unions and nonprofit organizations — whose efforts many business and free-market groups consider nettlesome — to educate workers on how to avoid injury and illness. Championing the American worker was a central theme of Mr. Trump’s election campaign. He made inroads into the traditionally Democratic union vote, and echoed the words of labor leaders on themes like t... Link to the full article to read more