- Election 2024
When Teamsters Union president Sean O’Brien took the podium the first night of the Republican National Convention this week, he readily acknowledged his participation was unique.
“I don’t care about getting criticized,” O’Brien said, referring to organized labor’s long history, with exceptions in the building trades, of endorsing Democrats. “It’s an honor to be the first Teamster in our 121-year history to address the Republican National Convention.”
The Teamsters historically are not strangers to endorsing Republicans, however, having in the past backed Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush.
O’Brien’s invitation to speak came from Donald Trump. But the gesture is at odds with the former president’s record on labor, which includes three executive orders designed to dilute the power of unions, especially those representing federal workers.
Trump’s policies have made their way into Project 2025, the playbook designed for a second term, which calls for the decimation of worker rights and suggests calling on Congress to “consider whether public-sector unions are appropriate in the first place.”
“The Teamsters and the GOP may not agree on many issues, but a growing group has shown the courage to sit down and consider points of view that aren’t funded by big money think tanks,” O’Brien declared, in an apparent swipe at the Heritage Foundation, the big money think tank behind Project 2025.
Trump has claimed to know nothing about Project 2025, although scores involved in its creation are former staffers. Russ Vought, author of a chapter on executive branch staffing, is also a member of the Republican party’s platform committee.
Project 2025’s priorities would erode, if not eliminate, collective bargaining rights.
“Everyone should be concerned about Project 2025’s extremist agenda. It’s the blueprint for a second Donald Trump presidency, and it would be an absolute disaster,” says Michelle Maese, president of SEIU 1107, which represents public employees in Southern Nevada. “Their goal isn’t to fix our government or our country. It’s to break it even more.”
The manifesto seeks to reclassify civil servants so they may be replaced with political appointees. Experts suggest as many as one million federal jobs could be lost as a result of agency elimination, privatization, budget cuts, and hiring freezes.
John Vellardita, president of the Clark County Education Association, which represents 18,000 teachers, characterized the effort as a “heavy lift.”
“It’s not going to happen,” he says. “The ideological drive behind that doctrine is to restructure power relationships between unions and employers in the public sector and private sector.”
Vellardita points to Wisconsin, where former Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011 attack on public unions is still being challenged. Last week, a judge ruled parts of the legislation passed under Walker’s administration violate the equal protection guarantees of the state Constitution. The law limits collective bargaining for most public employees but exempts public safety workers such as police and firefighters.
“That was an incredible undertaking by right-wing government at the state level, and it met significant resistance – not just by public sector employees, but the populace in general. The state capital was under siege,” Vellardita notes. “I just don’t see it happening. Is the threat there with the ideology behind Project 2025 assuming power at the federal level? Absolutely.”
The collective power of the teachers Vellardita represents is currently limited by a state law prohibiting public employees from striking.
Nevada is already a right-to-work state, meaning employees don’t have to pay union dues to work or benefit from collective bargaining.
In place of unions, “whose politicking and adversarial approach appeals to few,” the playbook calls for Congress to enact reforms such as creating “non-union employee-involvement organizations,” described as “a more cooperative model run jointly with management that focuses solely on workplace issues,” and allow workers to be represented on corporate boards.
“There’s a significant imbalance of power between employees and employers that will not be resolved through token participation of a worker on that level,” says Bliss Requa-Trautz, executive director of Arriba Las Vegas Worker Center.
Worker centers such as Arriba, which assist employees but don’t negotiate agreements with employers, could be required to submit financial reports to the federal government, in the same vein as a union, under Project 2025.
Some of Project 2025’s other provisions would:
- repeal the federal law requiring prevailing wage pay on federal projects and eliminate project labor agreements;
- facilitate discrimination against people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and women by rescinding regulations prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity;
- prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in federal agencies;
- reduce benefits such as unemployment and food stamps by increasing accountability measures and attaching conditions;
- allow teens who have parental approval to be trained on dangerous machinery,
Requa-Trautz finds the provision for relaxing child labor protections especially troubling.
“There are important restrictions on minors using industrial machinery with lockout and tagout procedures, and current adult employees don’t have sufficient training. So why do we think we’re going to have teens who can safely operate that kind of industrial machinery?”
The playbook calls on Congress to pass laws in keeping with Project 2025’s Christian nationalist goals of promoting traditional families consisting of two married heterosexual adults and their children.
Employers who provide benefits for abortion would be required to provide equal or greater benefits for pregnancy, childbirth, and adoption.
“We must replace ‘woke’ nonsense with a healthy vision of the role of labor policy in our society, starting with the American family,” says Project 2025, which seeks to eliminate regulations supporting diversity, equity and inclusion.
“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,” says the playbook.
Party loyalty
Trump’s primary overture to union members in Nevada this election cycle has been a pledge to hospitality workers, many of whom belong to Culinary Local 226, that he’ll eliminate the tax on their tips. Experts contend it’s likely an empty promise.
In 2020, union members favored Pres. Joe Biden over Trump, according to national data. But some construction trades, such as Laborers Union 872 in Las Vegas, have traditionally leaned to the right.
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Public sector unions, once aligned with Democrats, are loosening their ties at the demand of the rank and file. The teachers’ union exhibited its independence in 2022 by refusing to endorse either side in Nevada’s gubernatorial race.
“We are not beholden to anyone or any party,” says Vellardita of CCEA, whose members are diverse. Partisanship, he says, would breed disunity. “We’ll work with anybody that’ll work with us, regardless of their persuasion.”
Maese and SEIU remain committed to the Democratic ticket.
“Donald Trump wants to dismantle the Department of Education, further restrict women’s reproductive freedoms, make climate change worse and eliminate job protections for thousands of government employees so he can replace them with political hacks who will do whatever he says,” Maese asserts.
“As the head of over 120 unions representing 150,000 members, the Nevada State AFL-CIO strongly opposes Trump’s Project 2025 plan to undermine the decades of hard work and representation our membership has tirelessly fought for,” says Susie Martinez, executive secretary-treasurer of the Nevada AFL-CIO. “As a union we stand committed to defending the rights of working-class members and oppose any policy that undermines their ability to achieve fair wages, representation, and improved working conditions.”
The Teamsters, despite O’Brien’s appearance at the Republican convention, has yet to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
“There are some parties that stand in active opposition to labor unions,” O’Brien told Republicans. “This too must change. And I want to be clear at the end of the day, the Teamsters are not interested if you have a ‘D’, ‘R’ or an ‘I’ next to your name. We want to know one thing. What are you doing to help American workers?”
This story is one in an occasional series on Project 2025 and its potential impact on Nevadans.
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