In his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump said he is for people “who work hard but no longer have a voice.”
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance claims his commitment is to the working man. These claims are belied by the labor provisions of Project 2025, dubbed on its website as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, published by the Heritage Foundation and written by Trump’s closest advisors. Project 2025 will weaken child labor protections, undercut unions, eliminate project labor agreements, repeal the prevailing wage for workers on federal public works construction projects and create a partisan federal civil service.
The plan’s labor provisions make it easier for 16- and 17-year-olds to work dangerous jobs that are currently off limits for workers under age 18. The provisions call for the U.S. Department of Labor to amend its regulations to let teenagers work in more hazardous occupations, such as metal-stamping plants with heavy machinery.
Project 2025 calls for repealing the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires contractors on federal public works construction projects to pay the prevailing wage.
Its labor proposals would drastically weaken unions. It would allow states to opt out of the National Labor Relations Act. The proposals would eliminate card check, which permits an employer to voluntarily recognize a union if more than 50% of workers sign authorization cards. The provisions also allow workers to decertify unions any time a union contract is in force. Under current law, the contract bar rule prohibits workers from decertifying a union except during the short period before a union contract expires or when there is no contract in force.
Project 2025 would prohibit project labor agreements, which are pre-hire agreements with one or more labor unions that establish wages, hours and working conditions on a construction project. These agreements regularly include commitments to ensure the construction project benefits the local economy and sets targets for hiring women and workers of color, supports small businesses and targets hiring efforts to economically disadvantaged communities.
The conservative plan also calls for rescinding the persuader rule, which requires employers to disclose union avoidance law firms or consultants they use and how much they pay for them.
The plan proposes increasing the number of political employees in the U.S. Department of Labor and launching investigations into labor unions even when there is no complaint against a union.
Project 2025 also urges the government to investigate the more than 200 worker centers in the country and require them to file detailed annual reports like labor unions. Worker centers are nonprofit community-based organizations that provide support to low-wage workers and fight vigorously for their rights.
It calls for amending federal law to allow corporations to form non-union employee involvement organizations to facilitate voluntary cooperation on working conditions. Union leaders warn that corporations would dominate the employee involvement organizations, choose worker representatives and be free to ignore the recommendations.
Project 2025 wants to revamp the federal civil service by replacing non-partisan, professional federal employees with partisan employees who serve at the pleasure of the president.
Project 2025 would ban the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from collecting data on race and ethnicity and calls for agencies to focus their enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary meaning of sex.
It would eliminate the public service loan forgiveness program, privatize unemployment insurance and let small businesses violate the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s worker safety laws without punishment.
These alarming proposals will eliminate hard won workers’ rights, jeopardize workers’ safety, gut unions and weaken enforcement agencies.
San José Spotlight columnist Ruth Silver Taube is supervising attorney of the Workers’ Rights Clinic at the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center, supervising attorney of the Santa Clara County’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement Legal Advice Line and a member of Santa Clara County’s Fair Workplace Collaborative. Her columns appear every second Thursday of the month. Contact her at [email protected].
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