Pro-Union Labor Chief Pick to Navigate Unusual Confirmation Path

US Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) has a fine line to walk as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Labor Department as scrutiny over her voting record will likely be front and center during her confirmation proceedings.

Her voting history on major labor policy issues in Congress is about as good as it gets for a Republican, unions say, with her backing of Democrats’ sweeping labor rights overhaul—the Protecting the Right to Organize Act—and her voting against or sitting out of GOP resolutions to cancel labor-friendly Biden administration-era rules.

Despite her affinity with organized labor on the Hill, some large unions are distrustful that it will translate into the US Labor Department’s agenda. Meanwhile, business organizations historically aligned with the GOP are subtly warning that they will ensure the pro-labor policies supported by Chavez-DeRemer don’t have a place in the incoming Trump administration.

“The appointees to govern in the Trump administration are a collection of strange bedfellows, which is going to lead to a lot of policy cross currents, and that’s something that everybody has to get more comfortable with,” said Matt Haller, president of the International Franchise Association.

That dissonance is stirring questions since Trump made his announcement Nov. 22 about where she stands on key labor and employment issues, and whether she’ll have leverage if confirmed as Labor Secretary. She could also be in a difficult situation if the Trump White House were to ask her to cancel rules as DOL’s chief that she previously voted in support of as a lawmaker.

“Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United States—not Rep. Chavez-DeRemer—and 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,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement.

“The AFL-CIO will work with anyone who wants to do right by workers, but we will reject and defeat any attempt to roll back the rights and protections that working people have won with decades of blood, sweat, and tears.”

PRO Act

During her tenure in the House, Chavez-DeRemer built a voting record that one wouldn’t expect to be attached to a Republican labor nominee, supporting several pieces of legislation that would expand rights for workers and increase legal liabilities for employers.

“We need to realign our discussions when it comes to unions,” she told her Republican colleagues during a Committee on Education and the Workforce markup last year. “Unions aren’t the enemy of small businesses—they’re a partner.”

“I understand I’m in the minority of our Republican conference,” she said.

For example, Chavez-DeRemer cosponsored the Democrats’ PRO Act, which would create new penalties for labor violations and codify an employment classification test that would make it much harder for employers to use independent contractors under the National Labor Relations Act. The bill would also enact California’s “ABC” worker status test at the federal level, which presumes a worker is an employee under federal labor laws.

Even though the bill would largely enact changes at the NLRB, and not the DOL, the legislation is toxic among most Republicans in Congress, particularly in the Senate where Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) is the sole Republican in the upper chamber to have at least tacitly endorsed the bill.

IFA’s Haller said he would need to “see a strong defense of a franchising way of doing business,” from Chavez-DeRemer to win over support, including “a repudiation of how certain policies supported by the Biden administration would disrupt or destroy franchising.”

A PRO Act provision that would override state right-to-work laws, which allow employees to choose whether or not to pay union dues, is deeply unpopular with Republicans. Forty-three out of the fifty-three GOP senators who will vote on Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination next year represent right-to-work states.

“I will need to get a better understanding of her support for Democrat legislation in Congress that would strip Louisiana’s ability to be a right to work state, and if that will be her position going forward,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the expected chairman of the committee that will hold Chavez-DeRemer’s confirmation hearing, said in a poston X.

At least two business-aligned interest groups, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Right to Work Committee, have already issued statements opposing her nomination.

Voting Record

Chavez-DeRemer’s support for the PRO Act has drawn praise from many Democrats and unions, in particular Teamsters’ president Sean O’Brien who pushed Trump to nominate her. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the bill’s original sponsors, praised Chavez-DeRemer for signing on to the bill in statements following her nomination.

That may end up helping her getting confirmed even if she doesn’t have the full support of her party. For every GOP vote that she loses, there will be a Democratic one given she may be the best case scenario for Secretary of Labor under Trump, a Senate Democratic aide said.

Beyond the PRO Act, Chavez-DeRemer also co-sponsored the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which guarantees the right of public sector employees to unionize even in states where they currently can’t.

She was also the sole Republican on the Education and the Workforce panel to vote against an effort to overturn a Biden administration rule that would expand protections for workers rolling their retirement savings out of their 401(k)s, a measure largely opposed by Wall Street. She also skipped a vote on a measure to block the DOL rule that would make it easier for independent contractors to be considered employees.

Both of those regulations are being challenged in court by business groups, and could potentially land on Chavez-DeRemer’s desk if she’s confirmed, especially if Trump’s second term follows the same playbook as its first.