There was a lot of talk about Project 2025 in 2024. Now it is the year 2025. Project 2025, the book was published by the Heritage Foundation. Many of the authors were major players in the first Trump administration. Many of the book’s authors have been now appointed to the new Trump administration. Now, Mr. Trump has appointed a new Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Andrea Lucas, a member of the Board is the new Chairperson. She has pledged to “root out” unlawful DEI-inspired race and sex discrimination.

Ms. Lucas is talking about discrimination against white males. It is not too uncommon for employees to endure anti-white discrimination, but is far from common. In 20 years, I have received maybe two phone calls alleging discrimination against a white person. That Ms. Lucas wants to focus on issues that are not issues suggests more pressing sorts of discrimination will receive decreased emphasis.

As far as the Project 2025 book itself, it suffers from some major problems. It is a very political sort of book. The 900 page book discusses the EEOC at length. The book can be downloaded from this site here.

EEO-1 Form

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. The form “crudely” categorizes people into racial groups. Those are just silly comments. The EEO-1 has been around since the 1970’s or longer. What problems it might hold ought to have been revealed long before now.

The book calls for the EEOC to “disclaim” its “regulatory pretensions.” That assertion is nonsensical. The EEOC issues regulations to help explain and enforce the various anti-discrimination statutes. There is no “pretension” involved. Statutes never address all situations. It is up to regulations to fill in some of those gaps.

The Project 2025 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 2025, 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.