Project 2025: A Warning For Organized Labor & All American Workers
Project 2025 will be put into action if Donald Trump is elected President, and will be devastating to American workers. Project 2025 includes an all-out attack on unions and the labor movement. Don’t take our word for it – read it directly from their playbook.
Project 2025 – Intermediate Tax Reform (page 696)
The Treasury should work with Congress to simplify the tax code by enacting a simple two-rate individual tax system of 15 percent and 30 percent that eliminates most deductions, credits and exclusions. The 30 percent bracket should begin at or near the Social Security wage base to ensure the combined income and payroll tax structure acts as a nearly flat tax on wage income beyond the standard deduction. The corporate income tax rate should be reduced to 18 percent. The corporate income tax is the most damaging tax in the U.S. tax system, and its primary economic burden falls on workers because capital is more mobile than labor. Capital gains and qualified dividends should be taxed at 15 percent. Thus, the combined corporate income tax combined with the capital gains or qualified dividends tax rate would be roughly equal to the top individual income tax rate. The system should allow immediate expensing for capital expenditures and index capital gains taxes for inflation.
Project 2025 Proposal
Currently, there are seven tax brackets, 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% and 37%, with each based on income thresholds. For instance, a married couple pays 10% in federal income tax on their first $23,200 of income, and then 12% on earnings from $23,201 to $94,300, and so on. Married couples need to earn over $487,450 this year to hit the top tax rate of 37%.
If enacted, Project 2025 would reduce the above to two tax brackets, 15%, and 30%.
What This Means for Working Americans
Project 2025 argues that the current tax system is too complicated and expensive for taxpayers to navigate. To remedy those problems, it proposes just two tax rates: a 15% flat tax for people earning up to about $168,000, and a 30% income tax for people earning above that. It also proposes eliminating “most deductions, credits and exclusions.”
It is estimated that a middle-class family with two children and an annual income of $100,000 would pay $2,600 in additional federal income tax if they faced a 15% flat tax on their income due to the loss of the 10% and 12% tax brackets. If the Child Tax Credit were also eliminated, they would pay an additional $6,600 compared with today’s tax system.
By comparison, a married couple with two children and earnings of $5 million a year would enjoy a $325,000 tax cut.
Elections matter – Educate yourself before you vote. Your livelihood depends on it.
Project 2025 – Overtime Pay Threshold (page 592)
Overtime pay is one of the most challenging aspects of the Fair Labor Standards Act rules. “Nonexempt workers” (e.g., workers whose job duties fall within the law’s power or whose total pay is low enough) must be paid overtime (150 percent of the “regular rate”) for every hour over 40 in a workweek. Overtime requirements may discourage employers from offering certain fringe benefits such as reimbursement for education, childcare, or even free meals because the benefits’ value may be included in the “regular rate” that must be paid at 150 percent for all overtime hours. And because some of these fringe benefits may be more valuable (and often come with tax preferences that benefit the worker), the goal should be to set a threshold to ensure lower-income workers have the protections of overtime pay without discouraging employers from offering these benefits.
Project 2025 Proposal
Congress should provide flexibility to employers and employees to calculate the overtime period over a longer number of weeks. Specifically, employers and employees should be able to set a two or four week period over which to calculate overtime. This would give workers greater flexibility to work more hours in one week and fewer hours in the next and would not require the employer to pay them more for that same total number of hours of work during the entire period.
What This Means for Working Americans
Overtime would no longer be paid after 40 hours worked. Instead, it would be paid after 80 hours (two weeks), or 160 hours (four weeks). Employers could require you to work more than 40 hours per week at the beginning of the month, and far fewer at the end of the month, all for straight-time pay, as long as the total hours worked equal 160 hrs.
Elections matter – Educate yourself before you vote. Your livelihood depends on it.
In the Fall of 2019, IBEW 2222 was approached by House and Senate staffers requesting our help with forming a Union. The organizing drive was progressing nicely when COVID-19 closed the State House. In January 2023, organizers worked with Representative Patrick Kearney and Senator John Keenan to file S.2014/H.3069 – An Act relative to collective bargaining rights for legislative employees, which would change the law to allow legislative staff the right to organize, if they chose to do so. The legislation has since garnered support from organized labor, including the AFL-CIO.
On March 22, 2024, Kevin Jollimore, an SST out of the Medford Garage passed away suddenly at just 50 years old. Kevin was a 28-year member who always wore a smile, had a kind word, and an ever-present positive attitude. He leaves behind his wife, Kym, and his two boys, Kevin Jr. and Nicholas.