IFPTE Joins Labor Letter Opposing Nomination of Project 2025 Author to Serve as Labor Department's Top Lawyer

This week IFPTE joined a letter led by the AFL-CIO to strongly oppose the nomination of Jonathan Berry to serve as the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Solicitor of Labor. The letter was sent to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, Pensions (HELP) Committee’s Leadership and Members ahead of their vote to advance his nomination out of the Committee. Berry’s nomination advanced out of the HELP Committee on a party-line vote on June 26 and awaits a confirmation vote on the Senate floor.

The labor letter notes that Berry is nominated for a role at DOL that decides “how a variety of labor and employment laws are enforced,” and that Berry’s ideologically extreme views at the Office of the Solicitor of Labor will risk “the rights and protections of millions of workers.”

Lawmakers were also reminded in the letter that Berry is the lead author of the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership document, which is a blueprint for dismantling government, anti-corruption measures, regulations, union rights, and worker protections under an anti-worker Presidential administration. The Trump Administration has embraced Project 2025 and appointed several contributors to the effort to his Administration, despite the President’s disavowal of Project 2025 while campaigning for President.

The letter notes that the Berry-authored chapter of Project 2025 “promotes proposals to let states opt out of basic minimum wage and overtime rules, open dangerous jobs to minors, and eliminate basic, longstanding civil rights protections,” as well as “lower[ing] training standards” and union apprenticeships, and repealing Davis-Bacon Act prevailing wages in the construction industry.

Read the labor letter opposing Jonathan Berry for Solicitor of Labor here.