Here’s a gut punch to worker’s rights.
The White House wants a man named Jonathan Berry to be the next solicitor of the U.S. Department of Labor.
This job calls for someone to fight for workers’ rights, but Berry’s record inspires zero confidence that he will do that.
Berry served as the Labor Department's acting assistant secretary for policy during Trump’s first term. He’s now in private practice.
But his biggest claim to infamy is that he wrote Project 2025’s section on labor.
The Economic Policy Institute says that section calls for “weakening the federal minimum wage, limiting overtime eligibility, and undermining workers’ right to a union by forcing secret ballot elections.” Project 2025 also calls for the use of child labor among teens in hazardous occupations.
Project 2025 is a 900-page blueprint for attacking working families and public services. Read more about this roadmap from hell here.
Berry’s confirmation hearing will take place Wednesday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. If confirmed, Berry will be the Labor Department's chief legal officer. His job will include going to court to enforce more than 180 federal labor laws.
In a letter to the HELP committee, AFSCME blasted Berry and urged senators to reject him.
“Jonathan Berry has clearly demonstrated that he lacks both the values central to workers’ rights and the legal judgement to serve as Solicitor of Labor,” the letter says. “The proposals that he advanced in Project 2025 would cost workers their lives, wages, benefits and basic freedoms.”