No to Lori Chavez-DeRemer for Secretary of Labor

National Review Online

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

 

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal workers’ union, is party to several lawsuits seeking to stop the Trump administration’s agenda. It is suing over the administration’s plans to reorganize the bureaucracy and suing to stop the administration’s deferred resignation offer for workers who do not want to return to the office. It is suing to block the administration’s efforts to shut down USAID. It is also suing to hinder the activities of the Department of Government Efficiency. “Federal employees are not the problem — they are the solution,” AFGE president Everett Kelley said.

 

The AFGE endorsed Lori Chavez-DeRemer for Congress in 2024.

 

The United Food and Commercial Workers’ (UFCW) voter guide from the 2024 presidential election opposes Trump’s tax cuts, the one-in-two-out deregulation rule, and his rescission of a federal rule “designed to help narrow pay inequities based on race and gender.” It notes that Kamala Harris supported the inflationary American Rescue Plan Act, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, and student debt “cancellation.”

 

The UFCW endorsed Lori Chavez-DeRemer for Congress in 2024.

 

International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) president Jimmy Williams Jr. said his union would “do everything we possibly can to elect pro-union champions Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.” A statement after the 2024 election said that “a second Trump administration will be disastrous for members of the IUPAT and the entirety of the working class.” In a postelection interview with Jacobin, Williams criticized Democrats for “moving further right.” During Covid, the IUPAT went further than other unions and imposed a mask mandate on itself, rather than negotiating one with employers.

 

The IUPAT endorsed Lori Chavez-DeRemer for Congress in 2024.

 

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) participated in the media scare campaign about Project 2025. It told its members that the project, which the Trump administration did not endorse, represents “Trump’s plan to kill your union.” It also opposed Governor Ron DeSantis’s union reforms in Florida prohibiting automatic dues deduction and requiring recertification elections.

 

The IBEW endorsed Lori Chavez-DeRemer for Congress in 2024.

 

Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) president Sara Nelson is among Trump’s most vigorous opponents. A political ally of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nelson is a pro-abortion zealot who stridently opposed the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The AFA lobbied for the introduction and extension of mask mandates during Covid, including for children as young as two years old.

 

The AFA endorsed Lori Chavez-DeRemer for Congress in 2024. It has also endorsed her for secretary of labor. Nelson said that Chavez-DeRemer “didn’t just sign on to labor issues: she led on many of them. This was one of the easiest endorsement decisions our policy committee has ever made.”

 

It should be equally easy for Republican senators to vote against her confirmation.

 

Chavez-DeRemer would make more sense as a token Republican in a Kamala Harris cabinet. During her one and only term in the House of Representatives, she supported the PRO Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, both of which would undo decades of Republican wins on labor policy. The PRO Act would repeal every state’s right-to-work law, and the PSFNA would require every state to recognize collective bargaining for all public sector workers.

 

Unlike other controversial cabinet nominees, few Republican senators seem very energized about Chavez-DeRemer, except Senator Markwayne Mullin (Okla.). Mullin has reiterated his support for his state’s right-to-work law and opposition to the PRO Act while saying he nonetheless supports Chavez-DeRemer because she’ll do what Trump wants and her nomination “reflect[s] a growing GOP, and a winning coalition.”

 

Arguing that senators should ignore her entire labor policy record, not to mention her lack of qualifications for the job, simply because she’ll do what Trump wants is an abdication of the Senate’s advice and consent power. Republican senators need to stand up for their own states’ laws against a cabinet nominee who has in the past supported overriding them. Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said he’d vote against Chavez-DeRemer and predicted she’d lose 15 Republican votes. She deserves to lose more.

 

As to the growing coalition, the union membership rate in the U.S. declined again last year and currently sits at an all-time low of 9.9 percent. Half of union members work for the government, and even in blue-collar occupations such as manufacturing and construction, 90 percent of workers are not union members. A majority of union members in the U.S. live in states without right-to-work laws, so the rate would likely be even lower if all workers had a choice.

 

Union members who voted for Donald Trump didn’t do so because he copied Democrats’ pro-union policies. Republicans should not echo the failed policies of the party the working class is leaving. They should not hitch their wagon to an organized labor movement that has been in decline for decades.

 

No matter how much some Republicans might want to wish it were otherwise, unions are still part of the resistance to Trump and fight against conservatives at the state level on issues from school choice to abortion. They don’t deserve a place in a GOP cabinet.