Here are Trump and Harris’ positions on 5 issues affecting workers.

Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have promised to improve the lives of workers if elected. However, the presidential candidates differ on many issues affecting workers, including the minimum wage, overtime pay and the power of unions.

Here are five key questions that differentiate candidates:

1. Minimum wage

Since 2009, the federal minimum wage has been set at $7.25 per hour. Harris called it a “poverty wage,” noting that for full-time workers it’s $15,000 a year. She told NBC News she would like to increase the pay to at least $15 an hour, acknowledging that she would need congressional support for the change.

During a presidential debate four years ago, Trump said he would consider a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage if it didn’t hurt small businesses. Last month, during a photo op at McDonald’s, the former president dodged a question about whether he would support raising the minimum wage, instead praising workers and the franchises that employ them.

2. Overtime pay

Many Americans work long hours, and both candidates seem to acknowledge this. But they disagree on who should be entitled to time and a half pay for working more than 40 hours a week.

Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris administration finalized a rule making 4 million more workers eligible for overtime pay. This rule faces numerous legal challenges.

As president, Trump refused to defend a similar Obama-era rule, instead announcing his own rule that left far fewer people eligible for overtime pay.

Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation project for Trump’s second presidency, proposes an overhaul of federal overtime rules that would give employers more flexibility.

Trump tried to distance himself from the document. But at campaign events this fall, he admitted that as a private sector employer, he hated paying overtime and sometimes hired more workers to avoid it.

“I would say, ‘No, hire me 10 more guys. I don’t want to have time and a half,” Trump said in Saginaw, Michigan, on October 3.

However, Trump has tried to use the issue to win over working-class voters with a proposal to exempt overtime wages from taxes. Many policy analysts have criticized the idea, finding that it could cost the government more than $1 trillion in tax revenue over the next decade.

By the way, Trump, and then Harris, proposed getting rid of tip taxes. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that even this more limited step would significantly increase the budget deficit while also worsening inequality.

3. Job creation in manufacturing

It is clear that no president can restore America’s industrial glory of yesteryear. But Trump successfully won over many white working-class voters by promising to bring back and protect their manufacturing jobs, including by lowering the corporate tax rate on domestic manufacturers and imposing tariffs on all imported goods.

Economists, however, warned that Trump’s proposed tariffs would lead to higher prices everywhere, including for American manufacturers.

Harris is trying to win back those votes. She points to legislative successes over the past four years, including the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, which have created jobs in manufacturing and construction. She promised to expand tax breaks for companies that create union jobs in steel, smelting and other industries, and to prioritize retooling existing plants in factory towns.

Both candidates said they would seek to lift regulatory burdens on manufacturers, allowing them to build new factories faster.

4. Trade unions

Perhaps where the two candidates differ most is their views on unions.

Harris wants to strengthen unions and has vowed to push for passage of the PRO Act. Legislation aimed at making it easier for workers to organize has been stalled in Congress for years. She called on the federal government to become a model employer by giving federal employee unions more space at the bargaining table and directing agencies to make sure their employees know they have the right to join a union.

Under the Biden-Harris administration, the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that adjudicates labor disputes, has taken an aggressive approach to protecting workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain. Critics argue that the agency interprets these rights too broadly. Several companies, including SpaceX and Amazon, have filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the NLRB’s very existence.

By contrast, while in the White House, Trump has gutted federal employee unions and expressed support for right-to-work laws that weaken unions by allowing workers to opt out of paying union dues. He staffed the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board with corporate-friendly appointees. Project 2025 details additional steps he could take to render unions powerless.

In an interview with SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk in August, Trump joked that he liked Musk’s approach to workers. “They go on strike and you say, ‘It’s okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. Every single one of you is gone,” Trump said.

Still, the former president retains strong support among some groups of union workers. In an informal poll taken by the Teamsters union this summer, union members said they preferred Trump to Harris by a 2-to-1 margin.

5. Non-competitors

Non-compete agreements, which prevent workers from taking a job with a rival company or starting their own, have not been a hot topic in the presidential race. However, the future of these employment provisions may depend on who wins the election.

An estimated 30 million Americans have signed non-compete agreements with their employers. The Federal Trade Commission voted along party lines in April to ban such agreements, finding they suppress wages and stifle innovation.

The ban faced immediate legal challenges, and in August a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas blocked the rule from taking effect nationwide. U.S. District Judge Ada Brown ruled in favor of Ryan LLC, a Dallas tax services firm, finding that the Federal Trade Commission had indeed exceeded its authority.

The Federal Trade Commission appealed the decision.

While Harris did not talk about noncompetes on the campaign trail, she has previously voiced support for the FTC ban. calling such agreements “anti-labor”.

Trump also did not address the non-compete issue in his campaign.

Notably, among the lawyers representing Ryan LLC in the lawsuit against the Federal Trade Commission is Eugene Scalia, who served as Trump’s labor secretary from 2019 to 2021.

And in 2016, Politico reported that the Trump campaign included a broad non-compete clause in its employment agreements that prohibited employees, volunteers, contractors and employees of contractors from working with any other presidential campaign for the duration of the election.