The Trump administration has been making headlines for its attacks on federal workers, but it just opened a new front in its war on workers by scrapping minimum wage protections for hundreds of thousands of employees at private sector companies with government contracts. This latest attack could not have come at a worse time for workers, who are already concerned about rising costs but now face a threat to their livelihood.

On March 14, President Donald Trump issued an executive order undoing a Biden-era regulation that raised the minimum wage for private sector workers on federal contracts to $17.75 per hour. That Biden administration rule raised the wages of hundreds of thousands of workers and helped ensure government contractors paid workers a decent wage. But now, there’s nothing stopping employers from slashing wages. Because of Trump’s new order, corporations working on government contracts are free to cut wages for hundreds of thousands of workers, as the U.S. Department of Labor will no longer enforce the Biden-era rule. An Obama-era rule remains in place, meaning some workers on federal contracts can now be paid a minimum of only $13.30 per hour—a pay cut of up to 25 percent.

Hundreds of thousands of private sector workers got raises under the now-scrapped Biden rule

The federal government contracts out work to private sector companies to provide goods and services for the public, the military, and the government—from building and maintaining federal offices to providing uniforms for military service members. For a century, the government has been using its contracting system to set a standard to offer market wages and working conditions for private sector workers on federal contracts, while also boosting standards through minimum wages on several occasions.