With all the campaign pledges coming from presidential hopefuls — most of which are just headlines without substance — there is one promise sure to be kept. Project 2025 is the right-wing game plan that will suppress workers’ rights in Connecticut and around the nation, and gut the standard of living for our families and our neighbors.
The grand scheme recently came out in book form. It does not endorse any of the presidential contenders. The plan has been disavowed by all sides. It’s up to you, dear reader, to decide which candidate is most likely to implement this extreme agenda.
Project 2025 has now been refined into confidential executive orders and legislative language that a new president can easily implement. Sort of like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. The ending is already written!
In every case the final destination is fascism. Few editors and pundits are ready to use that label, but look up any dictionary definition (or re-read some history) and see if it doesn’t fit.
What’s on this list will rip Connecticut workers’ dignity and autonomy away from them. The blueprint allows states to ban labor unions in the public and private sector; makes it easier for corporations to fire workers who engage in collective action or organizing; allows corporations to get rid of unions even when the workers are protected by a signed union contract; ignores the federal minimum wage and eliminates overtime. And, oh yes, it legalizes child labor.
You get the picture: Project 2025 would force us back to 1925, wiping out a century of hard-fought victories for living wages, decent working conditions and a voice on the job. And these are just the attacks on unions. The 900-page document destroys reproductive freedom, gives free rein to bad behavior by banks, wipes out Head Start, student lunch programs and public student loans. It also ends anti-discrimination protections based on race or gender.
Right-wingers in Connecticut exposed their own priorities in the last session of the General Assembly: denying training to home health care workers; forbidding paid sick days to part-time and low-income employees; slashing retirement benefits; and protecting racist housing regulations to ensure Black and brown workers can’t live in white neighborhoods.
Whether it’s on the national or local level, these proposals are at best mean-spirited and at worst a framework for a totalitarian power grab. But there is a simpler, more honest, and more humane vision for our nation, one that does not require a hidden, reactionary master plan.
It was described many years ago by the trade union leader Samuel Gompers (1850-1924) who wrote: “What does Labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.”
Steve Thornton is a retired Union organizer for District 1199 NE. His latest book is Radical Connecticut: People’s History in the Constitution State (HardBall Press).