Project 2025's Labor Agenda: Weakening Overtime, Enforcement, and Worker Protections
Project 2025 proposes to disclaim EEOC consent decree authority, allow private-sector comp time instead of cash overtime, add a daily 10-hour threshold for telework overtime, and create Sabbath overtime rules. These changes would erode enforcement, reduce overtime pay for millions, and shift costs to workers. As of mid-2025, most remain proposals; the Working Families Flexibility Act passed the House but stalled in the Senate.
Project 2025's labor proposals are not about flexibility—they are about weakening the few tools that let workers earn a living and hold employers accountable. The Working Families Flexibility Act (H.R. 1480) lets private-sector workers trade time-and-a-half overtime pay for comp time. That sounds like a choice, but in practice, employers decide when comp time can be used, and workers lose the cash they need to pay rent or cover emergencies. The same bill has been introduced for years; it passed the House in 2023 but stalled in the Senate because unions and worker advocates warned it would become a wage-cut vehicle, not a family-friendly option.
The telework overtime change is even more direct: it would require workers to exceed 10 hours in a single day plus 40 in a week before overtime kicks in. Currently, overtime is triggered at 40 hours regardless of daily distribution. For remote workers—especially those in white-collar roles already vulnerable to off-the-clock work—this could mean dozens of unpaid hours a year. And the EEOC consent decree proposal would forbid the agency from requiring systemic fixes like anti-harassment training or pay equity adjustments in settlements, gutting the most effective enforcement tool the agency has. None of this is law yet, but the blueprint is clear: reduce pay, reduce enforcement, and call it reform.
The humanitarian alternative
Instead of weakening overtime protections, the Department of Labor should strengthen enforcement of existing FLSA rules, increase the salary threshold for overtime eligibility, and ensure that workers can choose paid leave that is truly flexible and accessible. Telework overtime should remain tied to the standard 40-hour week without a daily cap, with clear guidance on how employers must track time. EEOC consent decree authority should be preserved and expanded to cover emerging discrimination issues like algorithmic bias in hiring. Family-supportive policy should focus on paid family and medical leave, affordable childcare, and raising the minimum wage, not on religious mandates or new bureaucratic metrics.
Grounded in
- Working Families Flexibility Act (H.R. 1480)
- Congressional Research Service - FLSA Comp Time
- EEOC Consent Decrees - Legal Overview
- Project 2025 Chapter 19 DOT (original)
- BLS Family Statistics Proposals
- Sabbath Overtime - Religious Accommodation FLSA
- Telework Overtime Clarification Proposal
- Working Families Flexibility Act - S. 149 (118th Congress)
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 19: Department of Transportation (pp 620-622)"— 587 — Department of Labor and Related Agencies l Disclaim power to enter into consent decrees. EEOC should disclaim power to enter into consent decrees that require employer actions that it could not require under the laws it enforces. l Reorient enforcement priorities. EEOC should reorient its enforcement priorities toward claims of failure to accommodate disability, religion, and pregnancy (but not abortion). Refocusing Labor Regulation on the Good of the Family. The DEI revo- lution in labor affected not only the administrative state, but it has also targeted much of the private sector. Owing to the combination of regulatory pressure and eager human resources offices in the private sector, much of American labor and employment policy has become institutionally oriented toward “woke” goals. Retracting regulations that support this revolution is a good first step, but more is needed. We must replace “woke” nonsense with a healthy vision of the role of labor policy in our society, starting with the American family. l Allow workers to accumulate paid time off. Lower- and middle-income workers are more likely be in jobs that are subject to overtime laws that requir…"