Project 2025 - Bad for Unions, Bad for Transit, Bad for the ATU
Prisoners often talk about having nothing but free time on their hands. They find hobbies, do odd jobs, and dream of one day being free to do what they want again.
Similarly, since being thrown out of office and unsuccessfully trying to overturn the results of a free and fair U.S. election in 2020, Donald Trump (now facing jailtime himself), and his friends from the previous administration have spent the past three years putting together a scary and dangerous plan for a potential second term. Their work has been uncovered, and you might have heard a little about it. It’s called “Project 2025,” a 920-page document that should have all working families tossing and turning every night.
Project 2025 includes proposals to make it easier for employers to:
- Get rid of workers’ unions in the middle of our contracts;
- Ban all public employee unions and;
- Allow states to ban labor unions, eliminate overtime protections and choose not to follow the federal minimum wage.
Devastating for Public Transit
For transit workers, Project 2025 is even more devastating. The plan would repeal Section 13(c) of the Federal Transit Act, which for 60 years has protected the collective bargaining rights and job rights of bus and rail workers.
And the death blow: The plan calls for ending federal subsidies for public transit, which is now funded at more than $20 billion annually. Without federal assistance, transit systems would immediately crumble, millions of transit-dependent riders would be stranded, and hundreds of thousands of transit workers would lose their jobs.
Coming to Finish the Job
While Trump claims to have nothing to do with Project 2025, and even calls it “extreme,” the authors of the plan are well-known high-level officials from his time in office. Together, they carried out a four-year anti-labor, anti-transit agenda that brought working families to their knees. We will never forget when Trump’s U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) cruelly wrote in the Federal Register that it was “unnecessary” to write regulations protecting transit workers from the risk of assault. Just days later, our Local 1593-Tampa, FL, brother, bus operator Thomas Dunn had his throat slit by a deranged passenger, killing him instantly.
And we of course remember Trump’s bold proposal to keep transit running in the first emergency COVID-relief bill: he called for zero dollars. Thankfully, the Biden/Harris Administration came through with billions to save our jobs.
Now, Trump and his cronies want to come back and finish the job. Our members in the battleground states: The choice is yours.