Project 2025's plans for labor and unions, part 7 of MSNBC examines Project 2025, a Labor Day special

Happy Labor Day! Instead of reviewing the history of the holiday for this year's observance, I'm looking ahead at a possible future by resuming MSNBC examines Project 2025, which I promised I would do in July. About time to work the eye again!

I begin with MSNBC's most recent video on the subject, Ali Velshi's Inside Project 2025’s plan to weaken unions and lower workers’ wages.

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.”

Velshi's listing of all the reversions of labor law to before the New Deal would have made this worth sharing on its own, but Seth Harris's mentions of all the victories of organized labor during the past twelve months, including those by the WGA, UAW, and SAG-AFTRA after strikes, and the Teamsters and UPS contract averting a strike were exactly what I wanted to highlight today, the resurgence of organized labor. Two for one!

Joy Reid had examined the subject earlier last month in Project 2025 Exposed: Child labor and decimated unions promised by Trump’s election.

Donald Trump took a private flight with the head of Project 2025, Kevin Roberts, The Washington Post reports. Jody Calemine, director of advocacy for the AFL-CIO, joins Joy Reid to discuss the potential, destructive impact of Project 2025 on labour unions and the American worker.

As I wrote in PBS NewsHour explains 'Why several states are pushing to loosen child labor restrictions' on World Day Against Child Labor and the posts I linked to there, "I think relaxing child labor laws is not a good way to deal with a labor shortage. I prefer raising wages and improving working conditions so more adults will return to the workforce." I also suggested increased legal immigration as a solution to labor shortages, but that goes against the recommendations I included in U.S. birth rates resume falling while life expectancy increases for World Population Day 2024 and repeated in John Oliver debunks 'Migrant Crime' in the middle of covering the RNC on 'Last Week Tonight': "MSNBC examines Project 2025, part 5 lists even more extreme positions beyond restricting immigration: 'Mass deportation of immigrants and incarceration in 'camps' and 'End birth right citizenship.' Yikes, especially the second, which attacks the currently accepted idea of who is an American and will affect citizens and others here legally, not just undocumented immigrants." I think the revisions (reversions) in federal labor law in Project 2025 would be make exactly the wrong choice.

I conclude with Velshi examining Inside Project 2025: ‘Schedule F’s’ direct threat to public servants.

Olivia Troye, a longtime civil servant across various government agencies and administrations, first saw Project 2025’s drafted ‘Schedule F’ plan to purge government of nonpartisan experts in favor of political loyalists back in 2020 while working in the Trump Administration.
Project 2025 isn’t just about the ultra-conservative policies that Donald Trump and his allies are preparing for a possible second term in office. It’s also about how they’re going to implement those policies. A goal is to rid the government of the “Deep State” and a former Trump executive order called “Schedule F” would play a huge role. Troye joins Ali Velshi to clarify the dangers of Project 2025 and Schedule F for the United States government and the ways they could affect American life.

I usually see Schedule F portrayed as a good government issue, but it's also a labor issue, even though it's directed at management, not rank-and-file civil servants. It would remove civil service protection from middle management and the bottom level of top management, which definitely affects their job security and working conditions along with making the rest of Project 2025, including its erosion of worker rights, more easy to implement. Remember, in their own way, the civil servants that would be impacted by Schedule F work for a living; unlike their equivalents in the corporate world, they're not getting rich by higher salaries and investments in their employer to compensate for being at-will employees.

By the way, Kamala Harris is speaking in Detroit for Labor Day as I type this. I might visit that tomorrow. Stay tuned.