Local opinion: Project 2025 jeopardizes jobs, worker rights

I joined the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) 24 years ago. I joined because I know that we’re stronger together than we are apart. Collective bargaining helps take some of the power away from billionaires and put it back in the hands of workers like me, which is exactly what Donald Trump and Project 2025 want to prevent.

Project 2025 will take freedoms and opportunities away from the American people. Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 because its policies are so extreme, but it was written by nearly two dozen officials from his administration. Project 2025 would eliminate tax credits for green energy projects created by the Biden-Harris administration’s clean energy plan.

Vice President Kamala Harris cast the deciding vote for this plan, which is projected to triple the production of clean energy right here in America, including across Pima County and Tucson. In just two years, the Biden-Harris administration’s clean energy plan has already unleashed American manufacturing, helped create over 330,000 jobs, and saved American families $38 billion on their electric bills. For instance, the SunZia Transmission Project, will transport up to 4,500 megawatts of primarily renewable energy from New Mexico to markets in Arizona and California when completed.

As of August 2024, the IRA had awarded $8.4 billion in rebates to 3.4 million American families. This is make-or-break money for many families who want to take advantage of clean energy tax rebates as we continue to struggle with record-breaking heat and other extreme weather events. Trump has threatened to end them. These rebates to help upgrade Americans’ home energy also mean that electrical workers like me will have lots of good work helping people have cleaner, cheaper energy — it’s a win-win-win.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has vowed to end fossil fuel subsidies and cosponsored legislation to repeal them. Instead of subsidizing corporate polluters, the Biden-Harris administration delivered $7 billion in funding for residential solar, saving low-income Americans $350 million annually.

As much as Trump tries to distance himself from Project 2025, he can’t distance himself from his actions and words over the past eight years. He has pledged to end investments in climate and clean energy “on day one” of his administration, jeopardizing American jobs and hurting communities across the country.

Wages for manufacturing workers declined overall while Trump was president. He also reduced the number of federal workplace health and safety inspectors and weakened penalties for companies that failed to report safety violations.

Trump also provided over $115 billion in federal contracts to companies that offshored jobs when he was president and promised to veto the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, legislation that would shift power away from corporations and CEOs to workers.

This is exactly who Trump has always been. He has a long history of opposing unionization efforts at his businesses and has said he would prefer to work without unions. Vice President Harris has also been consistent over her long career: consistently on the side of workers.

As vice president, Kamala Harris led the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, which raised the number of federal employees in unions by 20%, and helped to advance dozens of pro-worker policies. In the Senate, Harris cosponsored pro-worker legislation to ensure public infrastructure investments protected workers’ rights and union jobs, as well as legislation that codified the “card check” system for union elections.

In 2024, Harris said she was proud to “lead the most pro-union administration in our nation’s history” and called the right to organize “sacred.” As president, Kamala Harris would continue to prioritize the best interests of workers like me above the bottom lines of billionaires and major corporations.