WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Friday named Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon to lead the Labor Department in his second term, appointing a Republican congresswoman who enjoys forceful support from labor unions in her district, but in November lost re-election.
Chavez-DeRemer must be confirmed by the Senate, which will be under Republican control when Trump takes office on Jan. 20, 2025, and can formally send nominations to Capitol Hill.
Here’s everything you need to know about the Labor Secretary nominee, the agency she would lead if she wins Senate approval, and how she could be critical to Trump’s second presidency.
Chavez-DeRemer has a pro-worker record that unions like
Chavez-DeRemer is a one-term congresswoman who lost re-election in her competitive Oregon district earlier this month. But in her brief stay on Capitol Hill, she has established a clear record on workers’ rights and organized labor issues that belies the Republican Party’s usual alliances with business interests.
She was an avid supporter of the PRO Act, legislation that would make unionization easier at the federal level. The bill, one of Democratic President Joe Biden’s top legislative priorities, was passed by the House during Biden’s first two years in office, when Democrats controlled the chamber. But it never had a chance of winning over enough Republican senators to reach the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster in the Senate.
Chavez-DeRemer also co-sponsored another law that would protect public workers from having their Social Security benefits reduced because of state pension benefits. This proposal also stalled due to a lack of support from the Republican Party.
Some labor leaders remain skeptical of Trump’s agenda
Chávez-DeRemer may have a lot of appeal for unions, but union leaders aren’t necessarily cheering just yet. Many of them still don’t trust Trump.
The president-elect has undoubtedly described himself as a friend of the working class. His ties to American workers without college degrees are a central part of his political identity and have helped him exploit the Democrats’ historic electoral advantage in households with unionized workers.
But he was also the president who chose pro-business candidates for the National Labor Relations Board during his 2017-21 term and generally supported measures that would make it harder for workers to unionize. He criticized union bosses during the election campaign and once suggested that members of the United Auto Workers should not pay their dues. His administration did expand overtime eligibility rules, but not nearly as far as Democrats wanted, and a Trump-appointed judge has since struck down the Biden administration’s more generous overtime rules.
And although Trump distanced himself from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 during the campaign, since his victory he has become a gigantic advocate for some of the people involved in this conservative plan that, by and gigantic, will shift workplace power even further toward employers and corporations would become warm-hearted. The plan would also limit enforcement of workplace safety regulations, among other things.
After Trump’s announcement on Friday, Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, praised Chavez-DeRemer’s record in the House of Representatives but cautioned.
“Educators and working families across the country will watch as she goes through the confirmation process,” Pringle said in a statement, “and hope to hear from her the commitment to continue advocating for workers and students, which is her record.” “It suggests that it is not a matter of blind loyalty to the Project 2025 agenda.”
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler praised Chavez-DeRemer’s “pro-labor record in Congress” but said, “It remains to be seen what she will be allowed to do as labor secretary in an administration with a dramatically anti-worker agenda.”
The Labor Department could be in the spotlight in a multi-billion dollar cabinet
Labor is another leadership division that often operates out of the spotlight. But Trump’s emphasis on the working class could boost the department’s attention, especially in an administration filled with extremely wealthy executives, including the president-elect.
Trump implicitly took aim at the department’s historically uncontroversial role in keeping labor statistics, arguing that Biden’s administration had manipulated unemployment and labor force calculations.
If confirmed, Chavez-DeRemer could find herself standing between the bipartisan bureaucrats at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and a president who has forceful opinions about government statistics and what they say about the state of the economy — and the leadership of the White House. Her handling of overtime rules would also come under scrutiny, and she could be drawn into whatever becomes of Trump’s promise to deploy the largest deportation force in U.S. history, which the Trump administration may pit against economic sectors and companies which are heavily dependent on immigrant workers.
Chávez-DeRemer would add variety to the Cabinet Room
Chavez-DeRemer was the first Republican woman elected to Congress from Oregon. She joins Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio, the Florida senator, as the second Latino nominee for Trump’s second Cabinet. Trump’s first labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, was also Latino.
