In April 2025, Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan voted against a budget amendment to protect federal workers' union contracts a week after the President ordered an end to bargaining at most agencies, against one to let the Senate raise the federal minimum wage to $17 an hour, and against one to protect home care workers. On July 1, 2025, he cast one of the 50 votes for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, whose tips and overtime deductions miss most low-wage workers and expire after 2028, and whose Medicaid work requirement will make tens of thousands of working Alaskans file paperwork to keep their coverage.
Sullivan voted to confirm Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and her deputy, Keith Sonderling, whose department stopped enforcing minimum wage and overtime protections for home care workers, cut the wage formula for H-2A farmworkers, let workers with disabilities keep being paid below the minimum wage, and removed the 2024 overtime rule from federal regulations after a court struck it down.
Dan Sullivan's Votes and Confirmations on Workers' Pay and Rights
- Sullivan Voted Against Protecting Federal Workers' Union Contracts in April 2025. On April 4, 2025, Dan Sullivan voted no on a budget amendment for protecting the legally binding collective bargaining agreements of federal employees. It was rejected 48 to 51, a week after the President ordered an end to bargaining at most federal agencies. Unions representing roughly 800,000 federal civilian employees sued, and an appeals court let the order take effect in February 2026. The VA, run by a secretary Sullivan voted to confirm, announced the termination of collective bargaining agreements for most VA bargaining-unit employees in August 2025.
- Sullivan Voted Against Letting the Senate Raise the Minimum Wage to $17 in April 2025. On April 5, 2025, Sullivan voted no on an amendment to the budget resolution To make sure the Senate can increase the Federal minimum wage to $17 an hour by a simple majority vote. It was rejected 47 to 52. The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 - July 24, 2009 and has not changed since, and it is still the wage floor in states without a higher one of their own, such as Texas, Kansas, Iowa, North Carolina and Georgia, according to NCSL's state minimum wage table.
- Sullivan Cast a Deciding Vote Against a Budget Pledge to Protect Home Care Workers in April 2025. On April 5, 2025, Sullivan voted no on an amendment for a reserve fund to prevent increased barriers to American caregivers, including home care workers. It was rejected 49 to 50, so a switch by Sullivan alone would have adopted it. That July the Labor Department told investigators to stop enforcement of the 2013 final rule immediately, the rule that extended minimum wage and overtime protections to about 2 million of these workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
- Sullivan Cast One of the 50 Votes for Tax Breaks on Tips and Overtime That Miss Most Low-Wage Workers. On July 1, 2025, Sullivan voted yes on H.R. 1, which passed 50 to 50 with the Vice President's vote. It created deductions for tips and overtime pay for 2025 through 2028. The Yale Budget Lab found that More than a third, 37 percent, of tipped workers had incomes low enough that they faced no federal income tax in 2022, so a deduction does nothing for them. EPI found that more than 90% of U.S. workers, who do not receive overtime pay, do not benefit at all from the overtime deduction, and that the overtime premium deduction expires after 2028.
- Sullivan Voted to Confirm the Labor Secretary Whose Department Cut Protections for Home Care, Farm and Disabled Workers. On March 10, 2025, Sullivan voted to confirm Lori Chavez-DeRemer as secretary of labor; she was confirmed 67 to 32. Her department stopped enforcing minimum wage and overtime protections for home care workers in July 2025, and it withdrew a proposal to phase out the issuance of subminimum wage certificates that let employers pay workers with disabilities less than the minimum wage. Its new H-2A wage formula, This rule is effective October 2, 2025, would transfer an estimated $2.46 billion annually from H-2A farmworkers to employers, Wisconsin's Justice Department argued, and a court held it unlawful but declined to vacate the rule. OSHA reported 629 federal compliance safety and health officers as of Sept. 30, 2025, down from 812 a year earlier, meaning fewer workplace safety inspections.
- Sullivan Voted to Confirm Keith Sonderling, Whose Labor Department Erased the 2024 Overtime Rule. On March 12, 2025, Sullivan voted to confirm Keith Sonderling as deputy secretary of labor, and on September 30, 2026 he voted to confirm him as secretary. Sonderling has already been on the job as acting secretary since April 2026. A federal court had struck the 2024 overtime rule in November 2024, stripping overtime eligibility from an estimated 1 million workers. Under Sonderling, the department let its appeals be dismissed and in May 2026 published a rule removing from the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) the regulatory text of the 2024 rule, which had raised the salary level for overtime from $35,568 to $43,888.
What the Labor Decisions Dan Sullivan Backed Mean for Alaska Workers
- Work requirements. Under the Medicaid work requirement in the law Sullivan voted for, (18,905 individuals) would need to submit paperwork to manually report their work hours or an exemption, the Alaska Department of Health projected in 2026, and between 9,452 and 13,611 of them could lose coverage.
- Federal workers. Alaska lost about 4.5 percent of its federal jobs in 2025, the state labor department found.
Frequently Asked Questions About Dan Sullivan on Labor and wages
What is Dan Sullivan's record on labor and wages under Trump?
Dan Sullivan voted against protecting federal workers' union contracts, against letting the Senate raise the minimum wage to $17 an hour and against a budget pledge to protect home care workers, all in April 2025. He voted for the 2025 law whose tips and overtime deductions miss most low-wage workers. He voted to confirm Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Keith Sonderling, whose Labor Department stopped enforcing home care protections and erased the 2024 overtime rule.
Did Dan Sullivan vote to raise the minimum wage?
No. Dan Sullivan voted no on April 5, 2025 on an amendment that would have let the Senate raise the federal minimum wage to $17 an hour with a simple majority, and it failed 47 to 52. The federal minimum has been $7.25 since 2009.
Does no tax on tips help most tipped workers?
Dan Sullivan voted for the law that created the tips deduction, but the Yale Budget Lab found that 37 percent of tipped workers owed no federal income tax in 2022 and so get nothing from it. The deduction also ends after 2028, the same year as the overtime deduction, EPI notes.
Last updated: 2026-10-25