Stop Project 2025

Project 2025: A Direct Threat to Union Carpenters’ Livelihoods

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 is a 900-page policy blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation, written by over 140 Trump advisers and former leaders from his administration, laying out their plans for a potential second term.

It aims to consolidate executive power and impose radical policies that threaten union carpenters and our way of life. The Heritage Foundation has long pushed for policies that harm unions, including “Right-to-Work” laws, the repeal of prevailing wage laws, and undermining the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). These changes pose a serious threat to the future of union carpenters.

Carpenters have serious concerns. This agenda is full of pro-corporate policies that would drive up costs, put jobs at risk, endanger safety on the job site, and make it even harder for working people to get ahead. For our union, it would make it a lot tougher to negotiate strong contracts and Project 2025 stacks the deck even more in favor of big CEOs.

Key Anti-Union Policies in Project 2025

Threats to workers' rights

Project 2025 takes a hard stance against unions, aiming to reduce the rights, wages, and benefits of workers.

  • Upend Unemployment: Calls for states to replace existing unemployment insurance with undefined privatized alternatives with no clarity on what these alternatives would be or if they would provide adequate or accessible benefits (Pages 604-605).
  • Misclassification of Workers: Makes it easier to label workers as independent contractors, denying them benefits and protections (Page 591).
  • Overtime Rules: Makes claiming overtime pay harder (Page 591).
  • Change the Rules on Overtime: Allows companies stop paying or skimp on overtime, allows states to opt out of federal overtime and minimum wage laws (pages 592, 603 & 605).
  • Protect Employers, Not Workers: Makes it harder to hold joint employers accountable for overtime, wages, or benefits (Page 591).
  • Terminate Multi-Employer Pension Plans: Threatens the retirement security of union members (Page 610).

Threats to organizing

Project 2025 includes several proposals to weaken unions and reduce the ability of carpenters to organize and fight for fair conditions.

Project 2025 threatens to:

  • Decertify Labor Unions: Makes it easier to dissolve unions (Page 167).
  • Discard Cards Checks: Would force workplaces to hold secret ballot elections for a union, even when employers recognize that their employees want one (Pages 602- 603).
  • Apprenticeship Erosion: Proposed Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship Programs (IRAPs) threaten union apprenticeships with inferior, less regulated programs that weaken training, lower worker quality, and erode union power (Page 594).
  • Repeal of Davis-Bacon: Eliminates prevailing wage standards, leading to lower pay for construction workers. (Page 604).
  • End Project Labor Agreements (PLAs): Removes union protections in government contracts (Page 604).
  • National Right-to-Work Law: Pushes for laws that weaken unions by allowing non-union workers to benefit from union contracts without paying dues (Page 605).
  • Replace Unions Role: Proposals let employers create company-run labor groups, undermining unions and bypassing collective bargaining (Page 599).
  • Bans on Unions: Allows states to completely outlaw unions (Page 605).

Threats to health and safety

Project 2025 proposes allowing states to opt out of federal labor laws, threatening workers’ health, safety, and wages.

  • Opt-Out of Federal Labor Laws: Allow local and state governments to waive federal labor laws like NLRB and FLSA, undermining unions by weakening standards, collective bargaining rights, and fair wages (Page 594).
  • Changing National Employment Rules: Proposed rule changes to NLRA allow companies and workers to use CBAs to bypass federal worker protections like the FLSA and OSHA, undermining protections like overtime pay and safety standards (Pages 599 & 603).

What Can You Do To Stop Project 2025?

Fight Back and Protect Your Livelihood
Project 2025 is not just a policy wish list—it’s a plan to dismantle unions and erode workers’ rights. Carpenters must stand united to oppose these dangerous policies. Here’s how you can help:

Together, we can protect our jobs, families, and future.

Read the full text of Project 2025