Project 2025 is a blueprint for “the next conservative administration’” to gut worker protections, paving the way to cut overtime pay and exploit employees

  1. Cheating employees out of overtime pay

    • Project 2025 calls for giving employers “flexibility” to calculate overtime over a longer number of weeks. (page 587)

    • Providing employers with less clarity about their wage obligations introduces more opportunities for fraud, abuse, and even honest mistakes. Currently, overtime is calculated weekly, which allows workers to keep track of their time accurately over a shorter time frame and to have more consistent expectations for their schedule.

    • Overtime eligibility and access are already among the most common forms of wage theft and other violations of the law by employers. From 2013 to 2023, overtime violations accounted for 82 percent of back wages for Fair Labor Standards Act violations—which cover minimum wage, overtime, retaliation, and tip theft by employers. Most violators of these laws face minimal consequences. A system rife with abuse needs clearer guidance and more enforcement, not additional “flexibility” for employers to decide who gets overtime pay and when.

    • Project 2025 also pushes Congress to “allow employees in the private sector the ability to choose between receiving time-and-a-half pay or accumulating time-and-a-half paid time off.” For employees with very limited time off, pegging overtime pay to time off allows for employers to effectively eliminate overtime pay for those workers. (page 587)

  2. Retaliating against organizing for better wages: Project 2025 plans to weaken the National Labor Review Board and to allow employers to retaliate against employees who try to organize. (page 601)

  3. Discriminating against women: When healthcare costs are rising and Big Pharma companies are making record profits, Project 2025 allows employers to refuse to cover birth control to women employees. (page 483)

  4. Putting children in dangerous jobs without their parents’ consent: Undermining parental rights, Project 2025 calls for allowing teenagers to work in “dangerous jobs.” (page 595)