2023 and 2024 were banner years for unions. “Hot Labor Summer” dominated the news. For the first time, we saw the sitting president of the United States walk a picket line in support of higher wages for auto workers. And polling shows that support for labor unions is at a near 60-year high.
But where you and I see positivity and hope in the stories of autoworkers and teachers and baristas coming together to build better workplaces, the authors of Project 2025 see support for workers as antithetical to their goal of maximizing corporate profit at the expense of worker well-being.
Project 2025 proposes several ways to undermine people’s ability to thrive at work, including making it harder to form and maintain unions, reducing overtime pay, and making it easier for bosses to misclassify their workers.
First up: making it harder to unionize. Unfortunately, despite what Newsies said, you can’t form a union “just by sayin’ so.” Project 2025 wants to make it harder for workers to unionize, easier for businesses to fire workers who try to engage in collective action, allow states to prohibit private sector labor unions, and reduce the National Labor Relations Board’s investigations into unfair labor practices.
Next on their list: reducing overtime pay. Under the Biden administration, the Department of Labor raised the overtime salary threshold, meaning more workers will be guaranteed time-and-half pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week. Project 2025 wants to return the overtime threshold to what it was under the Trump administration—which could throw millions of families back into economic insecurity.
And finally: making it easier to misclassify workers. Most of our basic rights at work, like earning minimum wage and overtime pay, only apply to workers who are classified as employees. Project 2025 would reinstate a Trump-era rule that made it easier for employers to avoid complying with labor and employment laws by misclassifying their workers as “independent contractors.”
When taken together, these proposals would shift power away from working people and worsen working conditions for millions of workers. While these proposals will harm people across industries and workplaces, they will inflict the most damage on women and people of color.
- Women, who make up almost half of union members, have much to gain from being in a union, including greater and more equal pay and greater access to paid sick time, affordable health insurance, and retirement benefits. Making it harder to unionize means workers are more susceptible to workplace violations and unfair working conditions without recourse.
- Women disproportionately hold lower-paying jobs impacted by the overtime rule. By reverting the threshold to the Trump administration levels, nearly 3.6 million workers, over half of whom are women, are at risk of losing overtime protections.
- Women and people of color are overrepresented in low-paid industries where misclassification is common. Allowing more companies to misclassify workers means that more workers will be deprived of basic employment protections like minimum wage and overtime pay, denied benefits like paid sick days, and prevented from holding their employers accountable for abuse.
Workers in this country need more, not less, support. Unionization, overtime protections, and good working conditions will help women workers—Project 2025 will not. We need legislation like the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act) and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act to make it easier for workers to unionize, and we need strong rulemaking on overtime and independent contractors to help create better workplaces for all. And if reading about this brought out your inner Norma Rae, check out NWLC’s resource on why unions are good for women.
