The AFL-CIO has released its fact sheet on Project 2025 and how it would impact unions; unsurprisingly, the answer is "unionization would become virtually impossible, and unions would have their abilities catastrophically curtailed."
Their executive summary is as follows—and under the horizontal rule I'll highlight some of the many noteworthy proposals in Project 2025.
Project 2025 includes proposals to:
- Make it easier for employers to get rid of workers’ unions in the middle of our contracts.
- Ban all public employee unions.
- Allow states to ban labor unions, eliminate overtime protections and choose not to follow the national minimum wage.
- Even eliminate the child labor rules that protect children from working in mines, meatpacking plants and other dangerous workplaces.
We are deeply concerned about pro-corporate policies that would drive up costs, put people out of work, endanger people’s lives and make it harder for working people to get ahead. For unions, this agenda would make it tougher for members to win gains in our next contracts and stack the deck in favor of CEOs.
Ability to Organize
Makes It Illegal for Employers to Voluntarily Recognize Unions
The Trump Project 2025 agenda would make it harder for workers to form a union by forcing workplaces to hold secret ballot elections for a union, even when employers recognize that the majority of their employees plainly want one. ("The Trump Project 2025 agenda states that “Congress should discard ‘card check’ as the basis of union recognition and mandate the secret ballot exclusively”)
Lets Employers Take Away Unions Mid-Contract
When a union reaches a collective bargaining agreement, workers are barred from holding a vote to “decertify” the election for up to three years, except for limited windows of time. The Trump Project 2025 agenda would eliminate this “contract bar rule”—empowering employers to use union-busting tactics to decertify a union in the middle of a contract.
Lets Employers Create Their Own Sham Company Unions
In 2022, Sen. Marco Rubio introduced the Teamwork for Employees and Managers (TEAM) Act, which would allow employers to control their own “councils” to weaken workers’ bargaining power. The Trump Project 2025 agenda urges Congress to reintroduce and pass that bill. This is a clear attempt to weaken the influence of labor unions, dilute collective bargaining rights and labor protections, and splinter worker representation in the name of offering “choices.”
Worker's Rights
Lets States Gut National Overtime and Minimum Wage Laws—and Lets States Ban Labor Unions
The Trump Project 2025 agenda urges Congress to pass legislation that would let states and local governments seek waivers from federal labor laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which establishes national minimum wage and overtime laws, and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which protects the rights of private sector workers to join unions. This will result in a patchwork of labor standards while weakening national worker protections.
Lets Employers Stop Paying Overtime
The Trump Project 2025 agenda wants to change the overtime rules in the FLSA to allow employers to compensate overtime with paid time off instead of overtime pay. Project 2025 also suggests that the current federal overtime rules allow too many low-income workers in the South to qualify for overtime, and also wants to change the way that overtime is calculated to allow employers to combine weeks in order to avoid paying overtime.
Privatizes Unemployment Insurance Programs
The Trump Project 2025 agenda would allow non-public worker organizations to administer state unemployment insurance programs. The privatization of unemployment benefits could cut workers’ jobs and lead to obstacles for a critical social safety net program that workers rely on.
Health And Safety
Eliminates Child Labor Protections
The Trump Project 2025 agenda wants to change DOL’s hazard-order regulations to permit teenage workers access to work in dangerous occupations in order to solve labor shortages, including mines and meatpacking plants. With adult workers already facing many worker safety complications, it makes no sense to weaken regulations so that children can now be put in harm’s way.
Slashes Funding for Medicaid
The Trump Project 2025 agenda would require states to have “more robust eligibility determinations”—making it tougher for people to qualify for Medicaid—while also putting lifetime caps or time limits on receiving Medicaid.
Taxes Worker Benefits
Union workers fight hard at the bargaining table for high-quality health care and other benefits. The Trump Administration would set a cap on the tax deductions that employers can claim for benefits they offer workers (any benefits that are valued over $12,000 a year per employee will be subject to taxes). This goes way beyond a "Cadillac Tax" on high-cost health insurance -- it includes other benefits like building gym facilities. It also denies employers tax deductions for health insurance used to cover children over -- a key win for union and nonunion workers alike from the Affordable Care Act. This will cause a race to the bottom for corporations to offer fewer and worse benefits for workers and their families.
Government workers
Ends Public Sector Unions
The Trump Project 2025 agenda states that union representation of government workers is “incompatible with democracy” and asks Congress to make these public unions illegal. During his presidency, Trump already stacked the U.S. Supreme Court with justices who have shown opposition to public unions, as demonstrated by their Janus v. AFSCME decision, which allows public employees to opt out of paying union dues while still receiving the benefits of collective bargaining.
Civil Rights
Uses a Second Term to Punish Political Enemies
The Trump Project 2025 agenda outlines a plan to reclassify thousands of independent federal employees as political appointees so they can be fired by Trump anytime they don’t follow his wishes and replaced by MAGA loyalists. Trump intends his second term to be a revenge tour, where he will punish individuals and governmental agencies that he believes were out to get him throughout his first term as well. It calls on Trump to refuse to acknowledge term appointees from other offices while installing acting or full new officers immediately, including new Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and National Labor Relations Board general counsels on day one.
Removes Federal Anti-Discrimination Protections for LGBTQIA+
The Trump Project 2025 agenda removes gender identity and sexual orientation from anti-discrimination policies, making it perfectly legal to discriminate against members of the LGBTQIA+ community. A Trump administration would restrict employment discrimination protections to the hiring and firing context only and withdraw any policies or regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics