Executive Orders for Days 51 to 60: Project 2029: Labor, Wages, Pensions, and Retirement Security
Day 51. The National Living Wage Design Order
Directive
By this order, Labor, Treasury, Commerce, and OMB shall produce within 21 days a national regional living-wage table for use in federal contracting, federal incentives, and the Project 2029 wage bill.
Purpose
To replace a stagnant federal wage floor with a real economic standard tied to cost of living and dignity, using federal power to set the baseline.
What people get
The federal minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour. That is a floor of legal survival, not a standard of economic dignity. Project 2029 will stop pretending those are the same thing.
Echo Day
Day 54 — High-road contractor standards enforce the wage floor across federal spending.
Day 52. The Overtime Restoration and Expansion Order
Directive
By this order, the Department of Labor shall defend and strengthen overtime protections, restore clear salary thresholds, and prepare legislation indexing overtime eligibility so it does not decay in silence.
Purpose
To stop employers from extracting unpaid labor through outdated thresholds and restore time as a protected economic asset.
What people get
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires time-and-a-half for covered nonexempt workers over 40 hours a week, and the Department already maintains salary-level rules for exempt executive, administrative, and professional workers. That framework should be expanded, not hollowed out.
Echo Day
Day 56 — Scheduling and benefits security ensures time is predictable, not just compensated.
Day 53. The Anti-Misclassification and Real Employment Order
Directive
By this order, Labor, IRS, DOJ, and the NLRB shall treat worker misclassification as a national wage-theft priority.
Purpose
To restore the legal boundary between employee and contractor so workers cannot be stripped of protections through classification games.
What people get
The Department of Labor has already said misclassification can deny workers minimum wage, overtime pay, and other protections. In February 2026, the Department proposed rescinding the 2024 contractor rule and replacing it with a new standard. A power-to-the-people government should move the other way: harder to misclassify, easier to prove employee status, harsher consequences for cheating.
Echo Day
Day 55 — Collective bargaining becomes real only when workers are properly classified.
Day 54. The High-Road Federal Contractor Standards Order
Directive
By this order, all major federal contractors shall be pushed toward a high-road employment standard: living-wage pay, paid sick leave, real benefits, and compliance with federal labor law.
Purpose
To use federal spending power to set the national employment floor instead of subsidizing low-road labor practices.
What people get
The legal footing is already there. Federal contractor wage rules have been justified on “economy and efficiency” grounds, and federal contractors are already subject to paid sick leave requirements in covered cases. Use procurement to raise the floor now.
Echo Day
Day 128 — Democratic employer standards expand this model across the broader economy.
Day 55. The Collective Bargaining and First-Contract Order
Directive
By this order, federal labor policy shall be realigned around fast recognition, real bargaining, and first-contract pressure wherever lawful executive leverage exists.
Purpose
To convert the theoretical right to organize into an enforceable, usable power.
What people get
The NLRA already protects the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively through representatives they choose. The problem is not that workers lack a legal right in the abstract. The problem is that the system makes exercising that right too slow and too easy to crush.
Echo Day
Day 129 — Worker ownership extends power beyond bargaining into equity.
Day 56. The Scheduling and Benefits Security Order
Directive
By this order, Labor, HHS, Treasury, and OMB shall produce a national worker-security framework covering predictable scheduling, paid leave, health benefits, and retirement contributions for employers receiving federal support or preferential treatment.
Purpose
To stabilize work so income, time, and care can be planned instead of constantly disrupted.
What people get
A job that cannot be planned around is a pressure system, not a path to stability.
Echo Day
Day 141 — Time to Care expands predictable work into real life capacity.
Day 57. The Pension Protection and PBGC Integrity Order
Directive
By this order, Treasury, Labor, and PBGC shall review pension underfunding, pension-risk transfers, plan terminations, and private-equity extraction risks across covered plans, with an intervention map due in 45 days.
Purpose
To defend retirement promises from financial extraction and systemic weakening.
What people get
PBGC exists to protect pension benefits and insures more than 23,500 pension plans across its defined-benefit insurance programs. That means pension security is already a federal obligation in practice. Project 2029 should treat it like one.
Echo Day
Day 59 — Enforcement pressure ties pension health to corporate behavior.
Day 58. The Automatic Enrollment and Emergency Savings Order
Directive
By this order, Treasury, IRS, Labor, and OMB shall accelerate automatic enrollment, payroll savings, and pension-linked emergency savings as the default retirement architecture for new workplace plans and for any employer receiving major federal economic support.
Purpose
To make saving automatic so retirement security is not dependent on perfect individual behavior.
What people get
IRS guidance already reflects SECURE 2.0’s automatic-enrollment and related retirement changes, and the IRS already provides public guidance on automatic enrollment. Build on that and make retirement saving the default, not a test of private discipline.
Echo Day
Day 60 — Legislative transmission locks automatic systems into law.
Day 59. The No Buybacks Over Broken Pensions Order
Directive
By this order, any corporation with materially underfunded pension obligations or chronic retirement-benefit weakness shall face heightened scrutiny before receiving federal contracts, guarantees, subsidies, or extraordinary support, especially where stock buybacks, executive bonuses, or extraction at the top continue.
Purpose
To stop companies from rewarding shareholders and executives while abandoning retirement obligations.
What people get
No company should starve retirement security while rewarding the top floor.
Echo Day
Day 132 — Buybacks-to-people policy extends this pressure across the economy.
Day 60. The Retirement Dignity Transmission Order
Directive
By this order, the President shall send Congress a unified labor-and-retirement package the same week, containing:
a living-wage framework,
overtime expansion,
anti-misclassification penalties,
portable benefits,
automatic-enrollment expansion,
pension protection,
and anti-extraction rules for firms that weaken retirement security.
Purpose
To convert executive action into durable law and prevent rollback of labor and retirement gains.
What people get
The sentence at the center of it should be:
Work should build stability, not merely postpone collapse.
Echo Day
Day 130 — Wealth compression and well-being budgeting scale these gains across the entire system.
51–54: raise the wage and benefits floor.
55–56: give workers leverage and predictability.
57–60: protect pensions and make retirement saving automatic.
