There has been much talk about Project 2025, a book published by the Heritage Foundation. Many of the authors were major players in the last Trump administration. So, we can expect the contents of the almost 900 page book to fuel many policy proposals in a new Trump administration, if there is one. The book can be downloaded from this site here.

EEO-1 Form

How would Project 2025 affect American workers? The book has a lengthy section on suggested changes to the Department of Labor. The book starts by calling on the EEOC to stop collecting the EEO-1 form. This form is required of large employers. It requires employers to set forth the racial make-up of their workforce and address attempts to increase minority hiring. It is a harmless form, which has become very routine. The Project 2025 book says the EEO-1 form “could” lead to racial quotas. It “crudely” categorizes people into racial groups. Those are just silly comments. The EEO-1 has been around since the 1970’s or longer. What power it might hold ought to have been revealed long before now.

The book calls for the EEOC to “disclaim” its “regulatory pretensions.” I can hardly make sense of that prescription. The EEOC issues regulations to help explain and enforce the various anti-discrimination statutes. There is no pretension involved. Statutes never address every situation. It is up to regulations to fill in some of those gaps.

The book makes an odd comment that “woke” goals have entered the private sector and American labor. At this point, the book clearly wanders around into politics. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was once a “woke” goal. But, today, in 2024, how do we define “woke”? The book makes no attempt to define the word. Neither does it offer specific proposals based on perceived “woke” goals which have slipped unseen into our work force.

PTO

The book does make an interesting proposal, that Department of Labor and other agencies allow Paid Time Off (PTO), also known as “compensatory time.” PTO is used often in state and city agencies. PTO means a person who works more than 40 hours in one week would be credited with an hour of time which s/he can use as unpaid leave. PTO is offered in lieu if overtime pay. The book wants private sector employees to have the option of choosing PTO or overtime. PTO violates the FLSA requirement for overtime pay. But, if the FLSA could be amended, many workers would appreciate access to PTO. Some labor unions have negotiated PTO policies.

Independent Contractor

Perhaps, the biggest change would be a return to the definition of independent contractor (IC) implemented by the Trump administration. All the current definitions of IC look at several factors. I wrote about the different tests for IC here. Most of those tests look at factors such as:

  • Who supervises the work
  • Who trains the workers
  • Who sets the hours for the work
  • Who provides the tools
  • Who hires the work
  • How integral to the overall business is the work being performed
  • And so on

There are anywhere from 7 to 20 factors, depending on which test we use. But, the Trump Department of Labor boiled the test down to two factors: 1) the nature and degree of control of the work, and 2) the worker’s opportunity for profit and loss. The Trump definition made it much easier to classify gig workers as Independent Contractors. It is simply unrealistic to expect a definition for IC to rely on only two factors. Our labor force is much to complicated for such a simplistic test.