Racism is over! (says Project 2025)

The plan to dismantle worker's rights

The Project 2025 Chapter on the Dept of Labor and Related Agencies is a disaster for worker’s rights, the ability to unionize, and overtime pay. So when people like JD Vance and Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts, champion how much their plan will “help the middle class,” all you have to do is read their blueprint.

Let’s look at some highlights lowlights.

First off, the related agencies: the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the National Mediation Board, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Agencies that help configure the giant bureaucracy supporting labor, forming like a jigsaw puzzle to try to maintain control of, for example, corporate overreach and worker exploitation.

The chapter was written by Jonathan Berry, a lawyer and contributor to the Federalist Society who served as acting Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Labor during the Trump administration.

Berry is currently a managing partner at Boyden Gray & Associates, having spent a year as a clerk for Samuel Alito earlier in his career. Boyden Gray has lobbied for a number of corporations (including electric utility companies), in which they said “more research was needed before action be taken on climate change.” The firm was hired by ExxonMobil after it came out that the oil company knew about climate change in the early 1980s. Other clients include Texaco, Philip Morris, Chevron, and Monsanto; they also have a longstanding relationship with Koch Industries.

On to the chapter. Here’s how Berry frames what needs to happen in American labor:

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.

Always comforting when the man who wants to run the Dept of Labor—and is feasibly in a position to do so next year—invokes a right-leaning biblical concept of labor to discuss how workers should be treated.

Berry then launches into an assault on the Biden administration, 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 by an order of magnitude. 

Berry’s then lists two “needed reforms,” which gives us a sense of the “real” problem with the job market. 

• Reverse the DEI Revolution in Labor Policy. Under the Obama and Biden Administrations, labor policy was yet another target of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion revolution. Under this managerialist left-wing race and gender ideology, every aspect of labor policy became a vehicle with which to advance race, sex, and other classifications and discriminate against conservative and religious viewpoints on these subjects and others, including pro-life views. The next Administration should eliminate every one of these wrongful and burdensome ideological projects.

• Eliminate Racial Classifications and Critical Race Theory Trainings. The Biden Administration has pushed “racial equity” in every area of our national life, including in employment, and has condoned the use of racial classifications and racial preferences under the guise of DEI and critical race theory, which categorizes individuals as oppressors and victims based on race. Nondiscrimination and equality are the law; DEI is not. Title VII flatly prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, and national origin.

Berry calls for an executive order banning all CRT trainings, followed by a forceful enforcement of Title VII. Considering other parts of Project 2025 call for the elimination of even considering race in policy matters—as if race didn’t exist, which is part of the dismantling of affirmative action—a “forceful enforcement” of civil rights protections implies, in Berry’s world, ending civil rights protections. We’ll get there.

This manic focus on DEI and CRT conveniently disguises Project 2025’s actual goal, which is the proliferation of unfettered and unregulated capitalism.

Berry doesn’t stop there.