Topic: Labor Unions
“With the proper limitation of labor union actions, the FLRA should have limited reason for appeals. The EEOC’s federal employee section should be transferred to the MSPB, and many of the OCS’s investigatory functions should be returned to the OPM. The MSPB could then become the main reviewer of adverse actions, greatly simplifying the burdensome appeal process.”
Here, they’re arguing for limiting the ability for labor unions to protect workers’ rights, particularly in the areas of discrimination and fair labor practices.
Full contextual analysis of Section 1.3: Central Personnel Agencies: The Bureaucracy here.
Share this quote from Project 2025:
“Congress should also consider whether public-sector unions are appropriate in the first place. The bipartisan consensus up until the middle of the 20th century held that these unions were not compatible with constitutional government. After more than half a century of experience with public-sector union frustrations of good government management, it is hard to avoid reaching the same conclusion.”
Public-sector unions are a well-established and legally supported part of the labor landscape in the United States, and have been since 1962 when Kennedy signed EO #10988, granting federal employees the right to unionize. The authors are arguing for reversing this order.
Full contextual analysis of Section 1.3: Central Personnel Agencies: The Bureaucracy here.
Share this quote from Project 2025:
“Congress should rescind the National Education Association’s congressional charter and remove the false impression that federal taxpayers support the political activities of this special interest group.”
No more teachers’ unions! The NEA is the largest teachers’ union in the country. She has the audacity to suggest that the NEA is “a demonstrably radical special interest group that overwhelmingly supports left-of-center policies and policymakers.” No, teachers support science. I’ll note also that she says “demonstrably”, but fails to demonstrate it.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.2: Department of Education here.
“And under the Biden Administration, that administrative state has imposed the most assertive left-wing social-engineering agenda in the agencies’ history and ratcheted up regulatory costs on small businesses and other productive industry. The agencies’ authorities have been abused by the Left to favor human resources bureaucracies, climate-change activists, and union bosses—all against the interest of American workers.”
He’s actually arguing here that unionizing hurts American workers, when the exact opposite is true. By “ideological social engineering”, he means DEI initiatives, climate action, or labor-friendly regulations, seeing them as politically driven rather than neutral or beneficial to all.
Berry clearly believes that climate and safety regulations, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and the existence of unions impose too much on businesses, but he’s claiming that these things are bad for workers. This is a spectacular bit of gaslighting.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.9: Department of Labor and Related Agencies here.
“The Davis–Bacon Act redistributes wealth from hardworking Americans to those that benefit from government-funded construction projects. Repealing the Davis–Bacon Act would increase worker freedom and end a longstanding effective tax on American families.”
He’s mischaracterizing what the Davis-Bacon Act does. The Act, signed in 1931, requires that workers on federally funded or assisted construction jobs be paid at least the prevailing local wages and benefits for similar jobs in the area. Repealing it would result in reduced wages for construction workers on federal projects. This would lower the cost of public construction projects, as contractors could hire cheaper labor, but that likely would result in the hiring of less skilled and less experienced workers, potentially causing the quality of the projects to take a hit. This could result in higher long-term costs for repairs or safety issues.
This would also disadvantage unions. Unionized contractors, who typically pay higher wages and offer more benefits, could struggle to compete with non-union contractors willing to pay lower wages. This might reduce union membership and weaken organized labor in the construction industry.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.9: Department of Labor and Related Agencies here.