Trump Labor pick surprises unions, rattles business

President-elect Trump’s pick for Labor secretary has organized labor cheering and business groups sounding worried as the atypically labor-friendly choice could signal a new and more receptive stance toward unions from Republicans, who have long resisted labor’s agenda.

Following a recent increase in popularity among unions and the precedent-breaking appearance of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien at the Republican National Convention in July, the choice of Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) reflects the growing political importance of labor after an election in which working-class voters delivered a strong turnout for Trump and the GOP.

Chavez-DeRemer, who lost her own reelection bid in November in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, is one of only three Republicans in Congress who backed the PRO Act, the wide-ranging labor law that would rein in the so-called gig economy and boost workers’ organizing rights.

She was also one of just eight Republicans to co-sponsor a similar bill to strengthen public-sector unions, which conservatives have railed against in various formats including the Heritage Foundation’s programmatic Project 2025.

While those bills in their current forms have little chance of moving forward in a Republican Congress, the decision to place one of their few Republican supporters at the top of the Labor Department is an unusual move from conservatives, labor experts told The Hill, and one that could indicate some shifting power dynamics.

“Trump has been very transactional,” Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations’s Buffalo Co-Lab, said in an interview. “Labor, in some small part, helped him get across the finish line, and he took the advice from Sean O’Brien. … I think that’s who was whispering in his ear.”

O’Brien, who grabbed national headlines in recent years amid the Teamsters's strike against UPS and efforts to unionize Amazon drivers, came out strong for Chavez-DeRemer following her nomination, offering her congratulations and thanking Trump for choosing her.

“North America’s strongest union is ready to work with you every step of the way,” he said in a post on social media.

Other prominent voices in organized labor have followed suit. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination “significant.”

“Her record suggests real support of workers and their right to unionize. I hope it means the Trump [administration] will actually respect collective bargaining and workers’ voices from Teamsters to teachers,” she posted online.

Still others have sounded a more measured tone on Chavez-DeRemer, questioning whether her superiors in the executive branch will allow her to pursue the worker-friendly agenda that her legislative record suggests. The AFL-CIO, a top U.S. labor federation, threw some cold water on the nomination, describing the incoming administration as “dramatically anti-worker.”

“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,” the group said in a statement.

Various policies will present Chavez-DeRemer opportunities to pursue a truly proworker agenda, labor groups say. 

Worker-oriented D.C. think tank the Economic Policy Institute called out wage theft enforcement, safety inspections by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, overtime pay thresholds, and immigration status protections as issues to watch, among others.

“[The payroll auditing program] was instituted during Trump’s first administration and essentially permits employers who have stolen workers’ wages to confess and get out of jail free,” the group said in an analysis. “Chavez-DeRemer should make it harder for employers to steal workers’ wages, not easier.”

While unions responded to Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination with various degrees of enthusiasm and skepticism, the response from business groups has been decidedly more critical.

The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, an umbrella group for trade associations in numerous industries, said last week it was “alarmed” at the prospect of Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination for Labor secretary.

The group’s chair, Kristen Swearingen, specifically called out her support of the PRO Act as a reason for their concern, referring to the legislation as “a signature bill for President Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders and opposed by the vast majority of Republicans.”

Right to work groups, which oppose unions and organized labor, fumed at the possibility of the nomination, with the National Right to Work Committee saying it doesn’t line up with longer-term Republican interests.

“A few union bosses will praise her, and Big Labor will still go on to campaign vigorously to elect a Democrat in the 2028 Presidential Election,” the group said.

Chavez-DeRemer’s support for Democratic labor laws puts her squarely in the middle of some regulatory changes that occurred between the Trump and Biden administrations. Her position is further complicated by the fact that she voted with her party to block a joint employer rule earlier this year as part of a wider effort by Republicans to reverse President Biden’s rulemaking on labor.

Of particular interest to labor lawyers is Chavez-DeRemer’s stance on an employee classification policy that was instituted during Trump’s first term and then made more demanding for companies under Biden.

The Trump-era rule made it easier for companies to keep workers on the books as “independent contractors” as opposed to “employees,” who are typically given greater protections in various states.

“I’m very interested to see whether she would be, as secretary of Labor, supportive instead of the Trump administration’s regulation that came out in 2021,” Camille Olsen, a labor and employment partner at Seyfarth Shaw, told The Hill. “That I think is an important issue.”

Should Chavez-DeRemer end up falling more in line with traditional Republican stances on labor issues, sensitivity to labor may still be in the process of making a newfound mark on the party.

In response to an East Coast dockworker strike in October, Trump showed that he didn’t want to be perceived as anti-union, saying in a statement that “American workers should be able to negotiate for better wages.”