In April 2025, Kansas Senator Roger Marshall 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 that failed 49 to 50, so his vote was one it could not lose.
Marshall voted to confirm Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and her deputy, Keith Sonderling, whom he later voted to confirm as secretary. Their 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. Kansas still pays the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour; as a House member Marshall voted in 2019 against the Raise the Wage Act, which would have raised it in steps to $15.00 an hour, and in 2020 against the PRO Act on union organizing.
Roger Marshall's Votes and Confirmations on Pay, Overtime and Unions
- Marshall Cast a Deciding Vote Against a Budget Pledge to Protect Home Care Workers in April 2025. On April 5, 2025, Roger Marshall 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 Marshall 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.
- Marshall Voted Against Protecting Federal Workers' Union Contracts in April 2025. On April 4, 2025, Marshall 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 Marshall voted to confirm, announced the termination of collective bargaining agreements for most VA bargaining-unit employees in August 2025. In an August 2026 Gallup poll, 71% of Americans said they approve of labor unions.
- Marshall Voted Against Letting the Senate Raise the Minimum Wage to $17 in April 2025. On April 5, 2025, Marshall 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 Kansas uses that federal rate, according to NCSL.
- Marshall Voted Twice to Confirm Keith Sonderling, Whose Labor Department Erased the 2024 Overtime Rule. On March 12, 2025, Marshall 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. With Sonderling as deputy and then acting secretary, 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. In February 2026 the department also proposed to rescind the analysis for determining employee or independent contractor status, a step toward letting more employers treat workers as contractors who are not owed minimum wage or overtime (proposed, not final).
- Marshall Voted to Confirm the Labor Secretary Whose Department Cut Protections for Home Care, Farm and Disabled Workers. On March 10, 2025, Marshall 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, 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, which means fewer workplace safety inspections.
- Marshall Voted Against a $15 Minimum Wage and Against Union Organizing Rights as a House Member. On July 18, 2019, as a House member from Kansas, Roger Marshall voted no on H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act, which passed the House 231 to 199 and would have raised the federal minimum wage in steps to $15.00 an hour, beginning 6 years after the law took effect. On February 6, 2020 he voted no on H.R. 2474, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which passed 224 to 194. Neither became law. Kansas's minimum wage is still the federal $7.25 an hour in 2026, the rate set on July 24, 2009.
What the Lost Wage Protections Roger Marshall Backed Mean for Workers in Kansas
- Low-wage workers. Kansas's minimum wage is the federal $7.25 an hour, unchanged since 2009, so the $17 minimum Marshall voted against in 2025 would have more than doubled the wage floor for the lowest-paid workers in Kansas.
- Home care aides. Kansas home care aides are among the about 2 million workers whose federal minimum wage and overtime protections the Labor Department stopped enforcing in July 2025, so an aide who works past 40 hours a week can no longer count on federal investigators to recover unpaid overtime.
Frequently Asked Questions About Roger Marshall on Labor and wages
What is Roger Marshall's record on labor and wages under Trump?
Roger Marshall 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 to confirm Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Keith Sonderling, whose Labor Department stopped enforcing home care protections, cut H-2A farmworker wages and erased the 2024 overtime rule.
Did Roger Marshall vote to raise the minimum wage?
No. Roger Marshall 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, and in 2019, as a House member, Marshall also voted against the Raise the Wage Act, which would have raised it in steps to $15.00 an hour.
Who runs the Labor Department now, and did Roger Marshall vote for him?
Keith Sonderling became secretary of labor on September 30, 2026, and Roger Marshall voted to confirm him, as he had for deputy secretary in 2025. Sonderling took over after Chavez-DeRemer resigned her position April 20, amid an investigation into various allegations of professional misconduct, Willamette Week reported.
Last updated: 2026-10-25