Project 2025 Chapter on the Department of Labor

Project 2025’s chapter on the Department of Labor aims to make union organizing more difficult, give unions less bargaining leverage and repeal long-standing anti-discrimination laws. Fmr. Acting Secretary of Labor under President Obama, Seth Harris says the policies in Project 2025 are fit for “a society where your only goal is for employers to make more money.”

Inside Project 2025’s plan to weaken unions and lower workers’ wages

MSNBC

Transcript

In today's edition of inside project 2025 we're going to focus on chapter 18 the Department of Labor and its related agencies but the first thing I want to show you is a lesson in rhetoric not in policy. So I want to go to page 605 in which it says the policy uh it's noteworthy because they want to allow States and local governments to block their employees right to organize a union but the interesting thing here is how they word it because they don't just say it outright quote Congress should pass legislation allowing waivers from Federal labor laws like the NL and F LSA under certain conditions end quote. Sounds pretty benign like the L NL and the F LSA why doesn't the book spell out the laws? Because this thing is decidedly not an exercise in brevity. It's 922 Pages; the reason they don't spell it out is because the NLRA or the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 guarantees a worker's right to unionize their workplace. The FLSA is the fair labor standards Act of 1938 which guarantees overtime pay. Project 2025 wants states to be able to ignore these basic and long held guarantees. Forget about undoing Roe or even the Civil Rights Movement before that. The architects of this this document want to take us back even further; they basically want to undo the New Deal but they don't want you to be able to tell that that's what they're doing. So they're hiding the ball in the hope that you won't read it at all but even if you do read it like my team has you won't realize that project 2025 wants to eliminate basic workers rights that lifted America out of child labor and the sweat shop era. And as we covered last week this book also plans to create taxes raise taxes for millions of Americans so when you pair that with the anti-worker policy that uh that plans that are in this particular chapter 18 what you have is an all-out assault on the working class.

Let's start with unions: for many this is the first step to proper representation in the workplace. Project 2025 wants to make it easier to disband the Union by eliminating the contract bar rule which sets a standard of time before a union can be decertified. Union leaders say eliminating the contract bar rule would undermine their ability to collectively bargain at all; it also calls to eliminate project labor agreements which are collective bargaining agreements that are unique to the construction industry - they're negotiated between unions and contractors before a large project starts to smooth out working conditions and make sure that deadlines can be met. Project 2025 wants to repeal the Persuader Rule, now that's a law that requires companies to disclose the resources that they spend on union busting law firms and Consultants unions use those disclosures to show how much companies are spending to avoid granting workers better conditions; and project 2025 would weaken joint employer rules for corporations who franchise out their business locations which would make it more difficult for fast food workers in franchised operations like McDonald's to unionize, and if a worker at one of those franchise locations is seeking damages for unfair treatment the massive corporation that is the franchisee would be off the hook. These are policies intended to weaken Union and worker leverage at every point in the organizing and bargaining process. Without a union workers need to advocate for themselves on their own and they'd be doing that in a hostile labor market created by some of the other suggestions in this book.

Let's turn now to page 604; that's where I am, project 2025 calls for a repeal of the Davis Bacon Act which is a 93y old law that requires publicly funded projects to pay workers a prevailing wage that's paid to other private sector workers in the same Arena, now repealing that would drive down public project wages at a time when Federal infrastructure construction is on the rise; but it doesn't stop there, project 2025 takes a stab at overtime pay as well right, now workers are eligible for overtime pay, that is one and a half times their regular rate when they work more than 40 hours a week .

So I want to go back to page 592 for this one because this is really interesting project 2025 suggests that employers and employees should be able to set a two or 4 week period over which to calculate overtime that means if you work 45 hours this week but 35 hours next week no overtime for you.

Okay let's go to page 595 now project 2025 suggests that the government make it easier for teenagers to seek what they literally call inherently dangerous jobs, let me read this to you some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs content rule current rules forbid many young people even if it is their family running the business from working in such jobs with parental consent and proper training they say teenagers should be allowed to operate heavy machinery because that is what our Republic was missing children operating heavy machinery, chapter 18 of project 2025 also takes a strong stance children operating heavy machinery got to have a little fun with project 2025

It also takes a strong stance on discrimination in the workplace it is in favor of it on page 583 it reads that it calls well it calls for the rescinding of the Executive Order 11246 that was an executive order that was signed by President Lyndon B Johnson it prohibits Federal contractors from discriminating against any employee or applicant for employment because of race color religion sex or national origin, it has since been amended to also include sexual orientation and gender identity. On page  595 project 2025 takes aim specifically at LGBTQ workers it says the President should direct agencies to resend regulations interpreting sex discrimination Provisions as prohibiting discrimination on the orientation gender identity transgender status sex characteristics Etc meaning workplace discrimination against gay transgender or gender non-conforming Americans would no longer be the law of the land.

So in 36 pages in chapter 18 we've got teenagers operating heavy machinery workers wages in a death spiral roadblocks to workplace representation legalized discrimination who is this for who does this benefit who do you think ?

Before the break we told you about project 2025 a plan to reshape the US Department of Labor rolling back a plethora of hard one workers rights for more on this I'm joined by Seth Harris the former acting labor secretary under President Obama

Seth good to thank you for being with us it's been a while since we've had a chat but you're the perfect person to talk about this talk about this, our in this country generally evolved be for a reason because bad things were happening whether it was child labor or sweat shops or the Triangle shirt waste Factory they were developed to protect and enhance the rights of workers in many cases as part of the New Deal coming out of uh you know that Administration this stuff doesn't really make a lot of sense that they're talking about doing other than to uh for corporations to line the their pockets

HARRIS: If the only goal of your Society is helping employers to make more money help people on Wall Street to make more money then this plan makes all the sense in the world the problem is that workers are the fodder for making profits in this vision of the United States no fairness no equity no concern for safety no concern for children even it's all about making sure that wealthy people and Wealthy corporations can make more money that is through out project 2025 if this book had a theme that would be one of the major themes of the book

VELSHI: So here's the interesting thing as former labor secretary you looked at other countries where labor rights are well enshrined they're strong um workers have health care all sorts of things  it's better for the economy when workers are safe protected don't die on the job um and are and are satisfied with their jobs you have less churn you have fewer PE you know people are more productive it's just it's kind of like healthcare it's just better to have labor laws we're not in this the 18th century here

HARRIS: Right you don't in of developed countries particularly in Western and Central Europe you don't get the kind of economic swings that we see in the United States because there are floors and more importantly there are institutions that protect working people from suffering the disadvantage of economies that turn down I I had a long lecture from Ursula Vander liion who's now at the EU and is and uh at the time was the German labor Minister about how their system of works councils and unions and apprenticeship programs provided them with protection from the Great Recession well we had millions and millions and millions of people lose their jobs and millions of dollars billions of dollars coming out of workers pockets they were much more stable it wasn't totally cost free but they were much much more stable because of those institutions

VELSHI: But in fact they have unions involved in the decision-making at the corporate board level in in Germany unheard of in America but what we do find including in the last year and a half is that when unions and management are caused to have discussions within the right context generally things happen that are positive for both sides

HARRIS: We've seen the success of collective arguing that's been one of the wonderful things of the last couple of years you know it's sometimes been ugly there has been some strikes there's been some conflict but we've also seen a huge number of big complicated issues addressed through the collective bargaining process where labor and management saying is saying to one another we want to solve a problem we don't want to beat the hell out of one another so you saw the question of artificial intelligence in the workplace being addressed by the Hollywood unions and the Hollywood Studios you saw issues of climate change being addressed by the teamsters and UPS that's the kind of partnership we want to see at the Labor Management level but until workers have unions so they have power they have voice they have the ability to stand up to their employers we're not going to have that kind of successful problem solving in the workplace

VELSHI: in a moment I'm going to do a a segment about how Donald Trump accused um uh the Biden Harris administration of fudging employment numbers because the revisions came out and showed that there were fewer jobs created by about 800,000 in 2023 than expected I just want you to just give us the short version of this the president has no role in those numbers whatsoever and they are revised 100% of the time as I like to say it's not a baseball score where at the 11 end of the 11th inning you know what what the score is that's not how jobs numbers work

HARRIS: Right this is the lie that Donald Trump has told so many times that it's it's boring and it's stale yes the people who put these numbers out are professionals who are deeply dedicated to their job at the Bureau of Labor Statistics with this revision which was a large revision uh compared with those that we've seen historically it's the largest since 2009 still what it tells us is that they got the numbers monthly correct 99.5% if Donald Trump spoke the truth 99.5% of the time how different would this country be

VELSHI: That would be a different place Seth great to see you thank you so much for being here pleasure to see you Seth Harris is a former acting labor secretary in the Obama Administration

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