What's at Stake for Workers - Five Areas to Watch

Updated January 23, 2025

Author: Sara Steffens, Worker Power Director (sara@progressivecaucuscenter.org) 

Public policy is critical to worker power. Worker organizing and public support for unions surged to historic highs during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Biden administration advanced pro-worker and pro-union policies. The priorities of the Trump administration, coupled with the new configuration of Congress, stand to significantly affect worker power and protections in the United States in 2025 and beyond. 

To slow recent gains in worker power and protections, the administration won’t need to enact any specific bold or overarching measures. Instead, workers and unions may face a “death by a thousand cuts,” a series of targeted and technical changes that together will strengthen corporate power and erode workers’ rights. These actions may weaken workers’ abilities to organize, bargain collectively, and improve their wages and working conditions. Undermining workers' rights through incremental or hidden measures may be a deliberate strategy to advance unpopular, anti-worker policies without drawing scrutiny. This approach conceals the cumulative harm of executive actions. 

We are monitoring key federal policies and agencies as the most likely places for attacks on worker rights and protections. Here are five areas to watch:

1. Reverse protections of workers’ rights enacted by the National Labor Relations Board.

The Trump administration can be expected to reverse the pro-worker stance of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and weaken the board’s protection for workers’ rights to organize, bargain collectively, and go on strike. Since her appointment by President Biden, NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has been an assertive advocate for the National Labor Relations Act and its central purpose of protecting workers’ rights to act and advocate collectively in a broad variety of ways. President Trump is expected to fire Abruzzo early in his administration. 

Once a new counsel and board members are confirmed in vacant positions, the NLRB is expected to reverse many of the worker-power gains enacted by the previous board, including:

  • Reverting to a “joint employer” standard that shields corporations from liability for actions taken by subsidiaries, contractors, and franchisees;

  • Rescinding the landmark Cemex decision, which provides an expanded framework of employee rights during  union elections; 

  • Restoring employers’ ability to require that workers attend anti-union “captive audience” meetings;

  • Reinstating employers’ rights to impose broad and restrictive “noncompete agreements”;

  • Returning to earlier rules that enable employers to delay and deny union elections through lengthy hearings, procedural delays, and appeals.

2. Attacking public workers, especially federal employees.

The Trump administration has pursued sweeping changes to the federal workforce, threatening the rights and independence of public workers and jeopardizing the essential services they provide. Shortly after being sworn in, President Trump revived his 2020 executive order establishing “Schedule F” (now renamed “Schedule Policy/Career”), a new classification that strips tens of thousands of federal employees of the protections granted to nonpartisan, career civil servants. This change would make it easier to fire career federal workers. This executive order has already sparked a lawsuit from the National Treasury Employees Union. 

The reclassification of thousands of federal workers is just one of many anticipated strategies to weaken public sector workers and unions. In the coming year, the administration may advance strategies and policies to:

  • Undermine federal employee unions by stalling bargaining, attempting to revoke existing collective bargaining agreements, and attempting to limit or eliminate payroll deduction for union dues;

  • Deplete nonpartisan career civil service ranks that the public counts on to deliver essential government services through attrition, buyouts, agency relocations, abrupt return-to-office orders (signed January 20), punitive discipline and terminations; 

  • Reduce the federal workforce through hiring freezes, budget cuts, outsourcing, automation, and privatization, while weakening or removing Biden-era standards for federal contractors (which has already begun);

  • Cut funding and staffing at the U.S. Federal Labor Relations Authority, which oversees labor relations for more than 2 million federal employees; 

  • Slash federal jobs and programs through the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), an effort overseen by Elon Musk, who holds billions in federal contracts and whose companies have been reviewed or investigated at least 20 times by federal agencies. Public employee unions have filed a lawsuit to ensure DOGE efforts comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act. 

3. Attacks on unions’ ability to represent their members effectively.

Under the Trump administration, the Office of Labor and Management Standards (OLMS) at the Department of Labor can be expected to shift its focus away from employer accountability and toward increased regulation and scrutiny of routine union operations. 

The OLMS may impose time-consuming new reporting requirements on unions, such as requiring detailed financial disclosure “LM reports” from public-sector unions. Additionally, the OLMS may resume the dormant International Compliance Audit Program (I-CAP), which sends federal auditors into national and international union headquarters to spend months requesting and reviewing detailed financial documents. 

Imposing new compliance measures costs unions time and money, and diverts resources that unions would otherwise spend representing members or organizing new workplaces. At the same time, OLMS may relax or abandon efforts to hold employers accountable to their reporting obligations under federal labor law, including the requirement that they report spending on anti-union consultants and lawyers. 

4. A return to practices that push corporate power and profits without requiring fair competition.

The Biden administration enforced antitrust laws and curbed business mergers that threatened workers, jobs or consumers. Under Chair Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission blocked corporate mergers and acquisitions it says would have harmed consumers and workers, such as the Kroger-Albertsons merger that threatened to decimate union grocery store jobs. Earlier this month, then-President Biden acted to block the sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon, a Japanese corporation; this action is currently subject to legal challenge.

The Trump administration, however, can be expected to take a friendlier view of corporate consolidation. This could accelerate mergers that hurt unions, damage worker power, and limit opportunities for workers to compete for higher salaries and better wages. The FTC and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may halt efforts to bar noncompete agreements, which restrict workers’ mobility and bargaining power. And agency rulemaking could make it more difficult to hold corporations accountable for labor violations and could increase the misclassification of employees as independent contractors, making it difficult or impossible for those employees to organize unions and undercutting law-abiding businesses.. 

5. Removing measures that protect workers from discrimination and unfair pay.

The Trump administration already is targeting programs that protect workers against discrimination, undermining the safeguards that workers rely on to ensure fair treatment and equal pay.

A sweeping executive order aims to end diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility efforts throughout the federal government (including in the administration of federal contracts) and has put employees assigned to these programs on administrative leave. Another executive order bars federal agencies from recognizing any gender other than “male” or “female” and rescinds EEOC guidance that advises employers of their obligation to protect workers who are non-binary or transgender from harassment. 

The Trump administration is also expected to weaken worker power and protections throughout deregulation, federal rulemaking and other measures. For example, the administration may: 

  • Further weaken or even eliminate the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which ensures that federal funds go to employers that meet strong standards for wages and worker diversity;

  • Abandon the Department of Labor’s efforts to restore and extend overtime protections for salaried employees;

  • Replace or disregard the Davis-Bacon rule, which updated and strengthened the implementing regulations that require federal contractors to pay the local prevailing wage to construction workers on federal construction projects;

  • Relax or disregard labor standards (including prevailing wage protections) built into federal spending programs such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act;

  • Issue an executive order exempting religious employers from anti-discrimination laws.

We will continue to monitor and analyze the impact of executive actions on working people. The CPC Center remains committed to educating and informing the public on policies to protect workers’ rights, create good jobs, and build a more just, equitable economy.