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equal employment opportunity commission
Trump Is Following the Project 2025 Playbook to Destroy Workers’ Rights
The massive curbs on workers’ rights that have occurred during the first month of the Trump administration signal it’s likely that plenty more will follow during his tenure in office.
Feb 23, 2025
Only a month into his second term as president, Donald Trump is well underway toward destroying crucial rights of American workers.
Currently, the best known of these threatened rights is probably job security, for the sudden onset of Trump’s mass, indiscriminate firing of more than 200,000 federal government workers has sparked a furor. Employed by the Departments of Education and Veterans Affairs, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Forest Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other vital U.S. agencies, these workers appear to have been simply tossed out of their jobs without honoring the legal requirement of due process, including performance-based evaluations.
Trump claimed that the mass firings were necessary to save money and make the government more efficient. But the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, Everett Kelley, retorted that the firings were really “about power,” with Trump “gutting the federal government, silencing workers, and forcing agencies into submission to a radical agenda that prioritizes cronyism over competence.”
Thus, if Project 2025 does serve as a guide to Trump administration policies toward workers’ rights, we should expect Trump’s future implementation of Project 2025’s recommendations for remarkably severe federal government measures against workers and their unions.
In addition, on January 31, Trump announced plans to nullify contracts recently negotiated and signed with the labor unions representing federal workers. Justifying this action, the president said that the contracts had been negotiated by former President Joe Biden “to harm my administration.”
Trump selected an appropriate figure to undermine workers’ rights when he appointed Elon Musk as the head of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man and Trump’s largest campaign contributor, was well known as rabidly anti-labor, and had repeatedly clashed with workers at the giant companies he owned, among them Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter). Indeed, by January 2025, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had 24 open investigations into labor law violations by these three firms, including alleged surveillance of employees at Twitter and interference with union organizing at Tesla. In turn, a day after the NLRB accused Musk’s SpaceX company of retaliating against workers who had dared to criticize his employment practices, SpaceX filed a lawsuit to have the NLRB, established by Congress in 1935, declared unconstitutional and terminated.
Not surprisingly, Trump moved quickly to paralyze the activities of the NLRB, a federal agency created to guarantee American workers’ right to union representation. By firing the acting NLRB chair, Gwynne Wilcox, long before her term of office ended in 2026, Trump not only acted illegally, but left the NLRB without the quorum necessary to operate, thus shutting it down.
“We’re fighting that tooth and nail,” declared AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler. The firing of Wilcox “did exactly what Trump wanted to do, which was to stymie the one agency that workers rely on when they’re in an organizing drive and taking risks and getting fired. They no longer have the board they need to protect them.”
As part of the same attack upon the NLRB, Trump fired Jennifer Abruzzo, the agency’s general counsel, and replaced her with a Republican loyalist. During her tenure, Abruzzo had issued a series of memos that prohibited common anti-labor practices by corporations. These memos banned abusive electronic monitoring and surveillance of workers on the job, captive audience meetings (in which workers were forced to listen to anti-union pep talks), and severance agreements with overly broad non-disparagement and confidentiality sections (which prevented former workers from discussing workplace issues). These pro-worker directives and more were quickly reversed by her Republican successor at the NLRB.
The Trump administration also launched a devastating assault on another federal agency established to safeguard workers’ rights, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to bar workplace discrimination, the EEOC, too, lost the ability to continue operations when Trump quickly fired two of its commissioners. An administration official maintained that the two dismissed EEOC commissioners were “far-left appointees with radical records.”
These challenges to the independence and functioning of both agencies are quite extraordinary. The presidential removal of an NLRB board member and of two EEOC commissioners is unprecedented, for none have ever been fired before in the long histories of both agencies. Moreover, by congressional statute, these are independent federal entities, ostensibly shielded from presidential interference. And now, thanks to this interference, they are unable to operate.
As these and other curbs on workers’ rights have all occurred during the first month of the Trump administration, it’s likely that plenty more will follow during his tenure in office. And there are numerous indications that that they will.
After all, the playbook for much of what the Trump administration has done so far―such as its mass firing of federal workers―is Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-developed blueprint for Trump’s second term, and one of its key architects is Russell Vought, appointed by Trump as the new White House budget director. As an Associated Press dispatch notes, this office is “one of the most influential positions in the federal government,” acting “as a nerve center for the White House, developing its budget, policy priorities, and agency rule-making.”
Thus, if Project 2025 does serve as a guide to Trump administration policies toward workers’ rights, we should expect Trump’s future implementation of Project 2025’s recommendations for remarkably severe federal government measures against workers and their unions. These include banning public employee unions, as well as empowering the states to ban private sector unions and ignore federal minimum wage, overtime pay, and child labor laws.
All told, these developments are forcing American workers to address the old union question: “Which Side Are You On?”.
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New Lawsuit Reveals Trump Quietly Fired Head of Office That Protects Whistleblowers
"This illegal firing undermines the office that investigates whistleblower disclosures of wrongdoing and enforces the law meant to keep partisan politics out of the federal workforce," wrote one watchdog group.
Feb 10, 2025
Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, the head of an independent federal agency that protects whistleblowers, filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday alleging that U.S. President Donald Trump's "purported" dismissal of him via email on Friday is unlawful and ignores for cause removal protections that Dellinger is entitled to.
Dellinger is one of a number of officials at independent federal agencies that Trump has moved to fire in recent weeks.
According to the complaint, Dellinger received an email from Sergio Gor, director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, on February 7, which read: "On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as special counsel of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service[.]"
The complaint lists six defendants, including Gor, Trump, acting Special Counsel of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) Karen Gorman ("upon the purported removal" of Dellinger, according to the complaint), Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Chief Operating Officer of the OSC Karl Kanmann, and Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought.
Dellinger is requesting that the court declare his firing unlawful and affirm that he is the head of the OSC.
The filing also asks the court to order that "Bessent, Gor, Kammann, and Vought may not place an acting special counsel in plaintiff Hampton Dellinger's position, or otherwise recognize any other person as special counsel or as the agency head of the Office of Special Counsel."
The watchdog group Project on Government Oversight called the move against Dellinger "illegal" and wrote on X on Monday that it "undermines the office that investigates whistleblower disclosures of wrongdoing and enforces the law meant to keep partisan politics out of the federal workforce."
The OSC is both an investigative and prosecutorial agency whose main mission is to protect federal employees from "prohibited personnel practices"—in particular reprisals for whistleblowing. The office is different from the "special counsels" that the U.S. Department of Justice may appoint to prosecute cases in instances where they deem there may be a conflict of interest.
Dellinger was nominated to be the special counsel of the OSC by then-President Joe Biden in 2023 and was confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term that was set to expire in 2029.
The complaint cites federal statute, which mandates that "the special counsel may be removed by the president only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." Dellinger's legal counsel argues that the email from Gor does not accuse Dellinger of "any inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance... nor could it."
In late January, Trump fired National Labor Relations Board Member Gwynne Wilcox, who has since sued over her dismissal, as well as two Democratic members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Federal Election Commission Commissioner and Chair Ellen Weintraub also said that Trump tried to remove her improperly.
The Trump administration also purged over a dozen inspectors generals who perform oversight duties at various federal agencies.
The filing also argues that the removal of these sorts of civil servants makes the work of the OSC all the more important.
"Congress authorized the OSC with a crucial investigative and oversight role to protect the integrity of the civil service in circumstances such as these," wrote Dellinger's lawyers.
"The recent spate of terminations of protected civil service employees under the new presidential administration has created controversies, both about the lawfulness of these actions and about potential retaliation against whistleblowers," they added.
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Biden Admin Unveils New Rules Protecting Workers Who Get Abortion Care
"With these final rules, we have achieved a huge step forward for women's economic security, maternal health, and the economy as a whole," said one advocate.
Apr 16, 2024
Reproductive justice advocates on Monday applauded the Biden administration's "groundbreaking" new workplace protections for pregnant people, including requirements that most employers provide workers with time off for a range of pregnancy-related reasons—including, over the objections of right-wing lawmakers, abortion care.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a final rule and guidance for employers, clarifying that under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), companies with 15 or more employees must accommodate a worker's needs if they request time off for "pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions" including prenatal doctor's appointments, childbirth recovery, postpartum depression, miscarriage, and abortion.
The guidance also details the wide array of accommodations pregnant workers can request under the law, including exemptions from heavy lifting and scheduling changes for people who suffer from pregnancy symptoms like nausea or morning sickness.
The PWFA was passed in December 2022 and went into effect several months later, but the EEOC's newly finalized regulations detail how the law must be enforced, including in states with abortion bans and restrictions.
The commission has spent the last four months sorting through tens of thousands of public comments on the proposed regulations, including those from reproductive rights groups which urged the EEOC to explicitly include protections for people who seek abortion care—and forced pregnancy proponents to objected to the provisions.
Under the final rules, employers are required to provide time off for workers who ask for it to obtain an abortion locally or who need to travel out of state for care. The regulations include strong restrictions against retaliating against workers for taking time off for any pregnancy-related reason.
"This rulemaking does not require abortions or affect the availability of abortion; it simply ensures that employees who choose to have (or not to have) an abortion are able to continue participating in the workforce, by seeking reasonable accommodations from covered employers, as needed and absent undue hardship," the regulation states.
In its comment submitted to the EEOC about its draft rule before the final regulations were announced, the ACLU thanked the agency for "recognizing that abortion has for decades been approved under the law as a 'related medical condition' to pregnancy that entitles workers to reasonable accommodations, including time off to obtain abortion care."
Employers will not be required to pay for workers' medical care or travel, and the time off can be paid or unpaid.
But advocates said the protections will make a particular impact on low-wage workers, many of whom are not eligible for the Family and Medical Leave Act, which only requires 12 weeks of unpaid time off for workplaces with 50 or more employees.
Before the PWFA was passed in 2022, 1 in 4 new mothers returned to work within two weeks of giving birth.
The national group Reproductive Freedom for All said the new rules will help ensure "that reproductive freedom is a reality for all pregnant workers."
The EEOC's effort to finalize the regulations has sparked anger among Republicans including Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who called the inclusion of abortion in the rules "shocking and illegal."
But Dr. Verda Hicks, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), said the regulations are an "acknowledgment of people's complex needs during and after pregnancy."
"Families should have peace of mind that they won't face financial hardship due to pregnancy-related job loss, and workers who are pregnant should not have to fear compromising their own health and well-being to maintain their employment," said Hicks. "Pregnancy is physiologically demanding and many of the medical conditions related to pregnancy necessitate reasonable accommodations for people after their pregnancy has ended."
Dina Bakst, co-president of A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center, said the new regulations "appropriately recognize the broad scope of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and ensure millions of workers, especially women in low-wage and physically demanding jobs, can access the vital accommodations they need during pregnancy and after childbirth."
"Today with these final rules, we have achieved a huge step forward for women's economic security, maternal health, and the economy as a whole," said Bakst, who has lobbied for years for pregnancy workplace protections. "The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is a life-changing protection for pregnant and postpartum workers nationwide, ensuring they aren't forced off the job or denied the accommodations they need for their health."
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