As a member of Congress, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R–Ore.) teamed up with Vice President Kamala Harris and academics union bosses to push a proposal that might successfully override state-level reforms to restrict the ability of public sector unions—like these championed by Republicans in Wisconsin and Florida.
Which may look like it might make Chavez-DeRemer an unlikely selection for secretary of labor in a Republican administration. However President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly contemplating giving her precisely that gig.
Politico reported earlier this week that Chavez-DeRemer was “within the combine” to run the Labor Division, and he or she has the backing of some high-profile labor union leaders together with Teamsters President Sean O’Brien. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Academics (AFT), tweeted approvingly of Chavez-DeRemer’s consideration for the job on Thursday.
The outpouring of assist for Chavez-DeRemer from labor unions most likely displays her document as probably the most pro-union Republicans in Congress. She’s one of three Home Republicans to endorse the Defending the Proper to Set up Act (PRO Act), a seize bag of massive labor agenda gadgets that might lengthen a few of California’s terrible unbiased contractor laws nationwide, abolish so-called “proper to work” legal guidelines within the 27 states which have handed them, and develop the powers of the Nationwide Labor Relations Board, amongst different issues.
She’s additionally considered one of a handful of Republicans to cosponsor the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which is finest described as a federal energy seize that enable public sector labor unions (just like the AFT) to drive their will on states which have restricted the ability of these unions. As Dominic Pino notes at Nationwide Evaluate, the invoice would “successfully rewrite labor-relations legislation in roughly half of the states, a lot of them Republican-governed, which at present both prohibit collective bargaining by public staff or do not explicitly authorize it.”
Trump’s rise to political energy has been helped by a shift in voting patterns among union workers, who’re now not the solidly Democratic cohort they as soon as had been. That shift, mixed with Trump’s willingness to make unorthodox staffing choices, probably explains how somebody like Chavez-DeRemer ended up on the transition crew’s quick listing.
Even so, selecting Chavez-DeRemer would sign that Trump believes it’s extra necessary to sign assist for labor unions than to face up for American employees. The precise-to-work legal guidelines that Chavez-DeRemer want to use federal energy to overturn merely make sure that employees can’t be coerced into becoming a member of unions—or funding them, through dues taken instantly from employees’ paychecks.
“To characterize employees doesn’t imply to repeat the views of union bosses,” wrote Mark Combine, president of the Nationwide Proper To Work Committee, a nonprofit, in a letter to Trump on Wednesday, urging the incoming president to nix Chavez-DeRemer as labor secretary. “The subsequent Trump Administration ought to search to develop selection for employees so that each American can freely select whether or not or not a union deserves their monetary assist.”
Chavez-DeRemer will not have an opportunity to vote for these pro-union payments in subsequent 12 months’s Congress, as a result of she misplaced her reelection bid earlier this month. There is not any motive for Trump to throw her a political lifeline now.
