Project 2025's plan for workers is clear: crush unions, eliminate minority protections, curtail reproductive health care benefits, and make the workplace biblical again.
Derek and Julian unpack the details of another insane chapter from Project 2025's 920-page manifesto that describes their vision for the reduced rights of the working class. According to their own statements, a Trump presidency would set these and other disastrous plans in motion from day one.
Show Notes
Conspirituality 187: Project 2025: An Authoritarian Conspiracy
Project 2025's Disdain for Public Education
The GOP Thinks Food Stamps Are the Real Problem
The GOP Takeover of Media
The Plan to Dismantle Health Care
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All right, Julian, another week, another chapter of Project 2025.
It is a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.
Each of these chapters is so consequential.
It really is.
And this is our sixth chapter breakdown this year, outside of one main feed episode and one brief.
On the Heritage Foundation's 920 page master plan for instituting authoritarian rule in America.
Like last week, we won't go into a breakdown of the entire project.
I'll refer listeners to the show notes if they want background in our previous work on this.
But this week, we are looking at the chapter on the Department of Labor and Related Agencies.
Now, unlike other chapters, this one might not seem like something we'd particularly cover on this podcast, but I want to look at it for a few reasons, including what it says about workers' rights, the ability to unionize, and overtime pay.
First off, the related agencies, besides the Department of Labor, are the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the National Mediation Board, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation.
I won't be getting too much into specifics, but I just wanted to give the overview.
And this chapter was written by Jonathan Berry.
Barry is a lawyer and contributor to the Federalist Society, who actually kind of co-wrote Project 2025 with Heritage Foundation.
He served as Acting Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Labor during the Trump administration.
He is currently a managing partner at Boyden Gray & Associates, having spent a year as a clerk for Samuel Alito.
Boyden Gray has lobbied for a number of corporations, including electric utility companies, in which they said more research was needed before action is to be taken on climate change, so to give you an idea of this law firm.
Boyden Gray was also hired by ExxonMobil after it came out that the oil company knew about climate change in the early 80s and has done nothing about it ever since.
And the firm also has connections with the Kochs, Other clients include Texaco, Phillip Morris, Chevron, and Monsanto.
And this chapter starts off with a bang.
Julian, I would love it if you could read the mission statement because it's worth considering in whole since it frames this entire chapter.
At the heart of the conservative promise is the resolve to reclaim the role of each American worker as the protagonist in his or her own life, and to restore the family as the centerpiece of American life.
The role that labor policy plays in that promise is twofold.
Give workers the support they need for rewarding, well-paying, and self-driven careers.
And restore the family-supporting job as the centerpiece of the American economy.
The Judeo-Christian tradition, stretching back to Genesis, has always recognized fruitful work as integral to human dignity, as service to God, neighbor, and family, And Americans have long been known for their work ethic.
While it is primarily the culture's responsibility to affirm the dignity of work, our federal labor and employment agencies have an important role to play by protecting workers, setting boundaries for the healthy functioning of labor markets, and ultimately encouraging wages and conditions for jobs that can support a family.
Well, that starts off well.
I mean, any chapter in any sort of bureaucratic document that starts off with, let's revive the Judeo-Christian tradition is just going to, well, we'll see where it goes.
Barry then launches into an assault on the Biden administration, of course, who he claims has implemented a left-wing social engineering agenda that has harmed workers Conveniently ignoring how disastrous Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy were for the lower and middle classes, as well as the fact that Biden has created more manufacturing jobs and jobs overall than Trump did during his four years by an order of magnitude.
I just have to say, reading this reminds me of the completely straight-faced racist politicians in South Africa's ruling party when I lived there, who for like four decades called apartheid separate development.
And they would earnestly talk about how keeping black South Africans purposely uneducated, poor, and without the vote, while living in abject poverty, like out of the view of the white people, was both a way of protecting them from losing their cultural roots, And, you know, just part of the natural order of what their less intelligent brains could handle.
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