Will Trump’s Return Be a Devil’s Bargain for Workers Seeking to Organize?

As Donald Trump returns to the White House this week, the people that Capital & Main has covered for the last 18 months in its national series on worker organizing could face a difficult transition. 

Pro-labor observers expect that members of the federal agency overseeing unions, the National Labor Relations Board, will be replaced with appointees hostile to unions. The conservative document known as Project 2025, widely considered a blueprint for the new administration, promotes policy changes that would undercut workers’ ability to organize. They include making national labor laws “negotiable,” ending card check (the practice of granting a union to workers who’ve gathered signatures from a majority of those in their workplace), banning public sector unions and giving companies freer reign to misclassify workers as independent contractors, thereby excluding them from labor rights. And while Trump named Lori Chavez DeRemer, a pro-union Republican, as his choice for secretary of labor, it is far from clear how much authority she will have to pursue a worker-friendly agenda.

This week, we will publish updates on four worker organizing campaigns we’ve covered in our series that could be directly affected by Trump’s return to office:

• Uber and Lyft Drivers Ramp Up Fight Against ‘Firing by App’
• Higher Ed Workers, Union Rights Uncertain, Speed Up Bargaining
• Call Center Workers Continue Union Push After Biden Administration Drops Fight
• 35,000 Michigan Home Care Workers Double Down on Union Effort

The fate of these efforts will reveal much about American workers’ prospects for organizing to improve their jobs over the next four years.