What's the real story behind Trump's labor secretary pick?
By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
Much of the media says lame duck Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore., Donald Trump’s choice for labor secretary, is pro-union mainly because she co-sponsored the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, PRO Act for short.
“I’m not labeling her pro-union,” says Kirk Gillenwaters, president of the Kentucky Alliance for Retired Americans. “How do you label somebody pro-union when they rate 10 percent?”
Gillenwaters, a Louisville UAW Local 862 retiree, meant Chavez-DeRemer’s grade on the AFL-CIO’s Legislative Scorecard, which shows where “lawmakers stand on issues important to working families, including strengthening Social Security and Medicare, freedom to join a union, improving workplace safety and more.”
The most current House scorecard listed 10 key votes from 2023. She voted the union position on only one, a stopgap continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown.
Chavez-DeRemer was elected in 2022 but was defeated last month by state Rep. Janelle Bynum, whom the Oregon State AFL-CIO endorsed. "It's vital that we elect leaders who can truly be champions for working people," the federation said of Bynum on Facebook.
Nonetheless, some labor leaders, including AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, have praised Trump’s pick. In a statement, Shuler said "Chavez-DeRemer, has built a pro-labor record in Congress, including as one of only three Republicans to cosponsor the Protecting The Right To Organize (PRO) Act.” Shuler also said the congresswoman “is one of eight Republicans to cosponsor the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act.”
But Shuler warned that “it remains to be seen what she will be permitted to do as Secretary of Labor in an administration with a dramatically anti-worker agenda.”
While the AFL-CIO endorsed President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris after he opted against reelection and backed her, Chavez- DeRemer endorsed Trump, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. "In a social media post, Chavez-DeRemer said Trump had 'clearly outlined how Joe Biden’s policies have been a disaster for our country.' She said the country needed someone to secure the border, strengthen the economy and improve public safety," said OPB in a story posted online.
Gillenwaters remains skeptical of Chavez-DeRemer. He said lawmakers sometimes co-sponsor a bill they know is going nowhere just to curry favor with voters or groups that might support them. “Voting records aren’t based on sponsoring bills," he said. "It’s how you vote on them.”
He said it was hardly a secret the PRO Act had a zero chance to overcome a Republican filibuster in the last Senate session, where the Democrats clung to a razor-thin 51-49 majority. The measure's chances in the upper chamber slipped into negative numbers when the GOP flipped the Senate 53-47 on Nov. 5.
Chavez-DeRemer's support for the PRO Act might not be ironclad. “Unlike most House Republicans, Chavez-DeRemer worked to build relationships with organized labor, but last year she told the [Northwest] Labor Press she had concerns about some elements of the PRO Act,” wrote Mark Gruenberg in People's World. He explained, "she particularly was concerned with legalizing joint employers—a corporation and its local franchise holder—as being jointly responsible for obeying, or breaking, labor law."
Gillenwaters said union members “are only fooling themselves if they think the hammer isn’t going to come down on us. Trump has fooled the American public so many times by so many things. She’s another example."
Gillenwaters said Trump was the most anti-union president in his lifetime. “We know what’s going to happen to us again this time,” he said. “Give them a chance? They’ve put the book out there that says exactly what they’re going to do to us.”
He meant Project 2025, the 900-page, far-right-wing Heritage Foundation-directed blueprint for a second term which includes an all-out assault on organized labor.
(During the campaign, Trump repeatedly vowed he had nothing to do with the document, but CNN found that at least 140 people who had been in Trump's old administration helped with Project 2025. Trump is now hiring Project 2025 alums to major posts in his new administration," according to the Associated Press.)
In a recent post on his Payday Report webpage, Pittsburgh-based labor journalist Mike Elk cited former OSHA Deputy Director Jordan Barab's worries over whether Chavez-DeRemer would stick up for workers in Trump's Department of Labor. He quoted an email Barab sent to Payday Report: “The true test is not what her past record was, but rather how subservient she will be to Donald Trump."
Gillwenwaters wishes he could be optimistic about Chavez-DeRemer. “But all Trump wants from the people around him is loyalty, and loyalty means not to cross him. If you do, you're gone."