Project 2025’s plan to gut checks and balances harms American workers

  Project 2025 is a plan to gut America’s system of checks and balances in order to enact an extreme, far-right agenda that would hurt all Americans. The plan proposes taking power away from everyday people to give politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives. Here are specific ways that Project 2025 harms American workers.

‘Economic development’ is another way to say ‘cheap labor’

  There’s a lot that can get an Alabama politician mad.

  Black history lessons. Voting assistance. Acknowledging the danger of firearms.

  But nothing, and I mean nothing, sets officials off like a worker who lacks an attitude of gratitude.

Martin Luther King Jr., union man

  If Martin Luther King Jr. still lived, he’d probably tell people to join unions.

  King understood racial equality was inextricably linked to economics. He asked, “What good does it do to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can’t buy a hamburger?”

Have we forgotten the true meaning of Labor Day?

  Labor Day is a U.S. national holiday held the first Monday every September. Unlike most U.S. holidays, it is a strange celebration without rituals, except for shopping and barbecuing. For most people, it simply marks the last weekend of summer and the start of the school year.

  The holiday’s founders in the late 1800s envisioned something very different from what the day has become. The founders were looking for two things: a means of unifying union workers and a reduction in work time.

The Supreme Court could make unions a lot more radical

  Fed up with the harsh conditions under which they were forced to labor, workers from West Virginia decided to call it quits. Together, they left their jobs, donned red bandanas, and amassed 10,000 strong near Blair Mountain, where a local sheriff had assembled a 3,000-man force of police, hired security, and militia to put them down.

  No, this isn’t the recent West Virginia teachers strike — it’s a 1921 coal miners strike, which escalated into what would come to be known as the Battle of Blair Mountain. The two sides battled for five days until more than 2,000 additional U.S. Army troops entered the fray to crush the workers' rebellion. Up to 100 laborers were killed, hundreds more were injured, and more than 1,000 were arrested. While the uprising seems like an episode relegated to the largely forgotten labor wars of past, the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) may make such conflicts part of the future for unions once again.

Trump’s anti-worker judges will outlast his administration

  President Donald Trump is transforming the federal judiciary through dozens of nominees to lifetime positions as federal judges, and many of his nominees have a record of siding with corporations over workers. By appointing Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump has ensured that the U.S. Supreme Court will become the same pro-corporate, anti-worker tribunal that it was when former Justice Antonin Scalia was on the court. With a reliable fifth conservative vote, the court has brought back cases that could hobble public employee unions and make it harder for employees to have their day in court if their employer does something wrong.

Supreme Court Preview: A Momentous Term

  As rumors of major changes circulate around the Supreme Court, the stakes have never been higher. The court has only set approximately half of its cases for the term, and the schedule already includes five blockbusters. These cases span issues from political representation and discrimination to the right to trial and the ability to form strong unions; several stand to affect the fundamental rights of millions of Americans.

Sharon Lauer: Why celebrate Labor Day?

  Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor, summed up this holiday's importance with these words: "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day... is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation."

Sally Steenland: Love and work

  Here’s a puzzle: Many conservatives who praise marriage and its values of fidelity, protection, and commitment seem to forget those values when it comes to another institution that gives our life meaning—work.

  When it comes to marriage, for instance, many conservatives support state covenant laws that make it harder for couples to divorce by limiting the grounds on which they can do so. While opponents of covenant laws argue that they can be used to endanger domestic violence victims, many conservatives dismiss such claims as being more theoretical than real, arguing that laws that make it harder to dissolve the bonds of marriage are good for society.