'Real danger': Labor experts weigh Project 2025’s impact on public sector

Since the start of his second term, President Donald Trump has issued several executive orders that closely align with proposals outlined in Project 2025, raising fears in some quarters about the impact of these policies on workers, particularly those in the public sector.

The establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency — as well as Trump’s appointment of billionaire Elon Musk to head the agency — along with the elimination of federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and the administration’s buyout offers to employees have been viewed by many as an attack on the federal workforce.

Labor and policy experts discussed the threats to labor, as well as the role unions will play to counter these attacks during a panel Wednesday hosted by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies.

Diana Reddy, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley Law, said the policies outlined in Project 2025 present “real danger for labor.” 

“Project 2025 says ‘We don’t want to antagonize labor’s core interests,’ but they want to get rid of ‘wokism’ in unions and challenge what they see as this encroaching of core interests on other social justice issues,” she said during the panel. “They’re very much talking about dividing the working class, and particularly appealing to underlying divisions within the working class on race, gender, LGBTQ+ issues and so forth.”

One proposal would weaken the National Labor Relations Board’s ability to prosecute employers for violating the labor laws. Reddy argued that some policies — including the Schedule F executive order issued during Trump’s first term in 2020 that intended to reclassify some federal employees and eliminating their collective bargaining protections — were directly aimed at hurting public-sector unions. 

“So far, some of the organizations that have filed the most lawsuits are unions – AFGE, AFSCME – they’re there trying to keep track on him, and so I think it’s important to see this as partly a fight against public-sector labor unions,” she noted.

Unions representing federal employees were among those suing over the legality over the buyouts, prompting a federal judge to issue a temporary injunction pausing the plan. Before the pause took effect, employees had until the end of Thursday to decide whether to accept the buyout package, which offers eight months of pay and benefits. So far, more than 40,000 workers have accepted the buyout, representing 2 percent of the workforce, White House officials said.

The AFL-CIO also filed a suit calling a federal judge to block DOGE from obtaining data from the Department of Labor, which could potentially give Musk sensitive information, such as the names of those who have filed complaints against his companies currently under investigation.

Diana Reddy, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley Law, said part of the Trump administration's mission is to fragment the working class. U.C. Berkeley School of Law

U.C. Berkeley School of Law

'Local policy in danger'

Arjun Singh, a reporter at news outlet The Lever, said that federal employees weren’t just afraid of losing their jobs, “they don’t trust that this is an administration that has an ideology — it is putting in people who are going to be similar to Elon Musk or to Donald Trump, and what does that portend for the federal workforce?” he asked. 

“I think it also raises big questions for what will this mean to be a worker in a country where this becomes the dominant form of management, which is to kick down labor protections, but also not just do your job on merit, but do your job based on loyalty, whether that’s to an ideology or to a person,” Singh added.

The panelists cautioned that the attacks on the federal workforce will likely affect other public-sector agencies along with employees at the state and local level.

“Local policy over things like public health are very much in danger now I think with Project 2025,” said James Goodwin, policy director at the Center for Progressive Reform. “You can sort of envision federal agencies using the threat of taking away federal funding to put [pressure] on local public health agencies. Like let’s say they want to push vaccines or certain kinds of treatments, if they’re considered out of line with the president’s ideological disposition, you have to give them up or lose critical funding. We’re already seeing [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] threatening California’s FEMA funding if they don’t give up local climate policies.”

But there were nuggets of hope, Reddy said. She highlighted Trump’s nomination of Lori Chavez-DeRemer as secretary of labor, who is considered a pro-labor conservative by union officials who have worked with her.

Goodwin added that the attacks against workers “could be a chance to unite us.”

Reddy agreed, but questioned whether there would be larger, widespread movements of resistance such as strikes. “Massive collective action has changed history,” she said. “I think the thing I worry about though is whether we are too fissured — whether unions are too fissured, whether working-class folks are too fissured — for that to happen.”

clewis@thechiefleader.com