Trump Selects Pro-Union Republican to Lead Labor Department

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore.—one of the few Republican lawmakers to support pro-union legislation—to lead the Department of Labor (DOL) in his second administration.

Chavez-DeRemer is a first-term representative who narrowly lost her House re-election bid Nov. 5. During her term in Congress, she served on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and held several workplace-related subcommittee assignments.

In his Nov. 22 nomination announcement, Trump said Chavez-DeRemer would expand training and apprenticeships, improve working conditions, and help “achieve historic cooperation between business and labor.”   

While in Congress, Chavez-DeRemer was one of three House Republicans who co-sponsored the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a comprehensive and controversial bill that would:

• Strengthen workers’ rights to organize.
• Limit employer communication with employees during a union organizing campaign.
• Eliminate right-to-work laws protecting workers from mandatory payment of union dues.
• Expand the definition of “employee” to include many workers who are currently independent contractors.
• Expand joint employment for the purposes of collective bargaining.  

Chavez-DeRemer was also among a handful of House Republicans to support expanding collective bargaining rights for state and local government employees. It remains to be seen whether Trump’s pick signals a change in the Republican Party’s traditional position toward labor unions.

Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination elicited a muted response from business groups but was praised by the Teamsters, one of the nation’s largest unions.

The AFL-CIO was more guarded, acknowledging the nominee’s “pro-labor record” but adding, “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.”

Joshua Nadreau, an attorney in the Boston office of Fisher Phillips and vice chair of the firm’s labor relations group, said he does not expect Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination to move the needle much when it comes to actual labor policy.

“The PRO Act is DOA in a Republican Congress,” he said. He added that the Department of Labor “has little to say when it comes to traditional labor law and union-employer relations.”

Pivot from Biden-Era Rules

If confirmed by the Senate, Chavez-DeRemer would likely move the DOL in a more employer-friendly direction, beginning with a reconsideration of several regulations put forth by the outgoing Biden White House.

Those measures include the expansion of overtime pay eligibility to millions of workers, which was first proposed during the Obama administration. The DOL in 2016 expanded the group of workers eligible for overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week to those earning up to about $47,000 a year.

That rule was blocked in court, and the subsequent Trump administration proposed and enacted a new rule with a lower threshold at about $35,500. The Biden administration then raised the threshold to those earning up to about $43,800. A federal judge in Texas recently blocked that expansion.

“We had expected a Trump DOL to scrap or dramatically scale back the new salary threshold, but Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination changes the equation a bit,” said Kathleen Caminiti, a partner in the New Jersey and New York offices of Fisher Phillips, and a co-chair of the firm’s wage and hour and pay equity practice groups. “We now think it likely that the DOL will introduce a rule to increase the salary threshold to somewhere in the $44,000 range sometime in 2025 or 2026.”

Worker classification is another area that’s likely to get another look under Trump. The Biden administration rescinded a Trump-era rule that made it easier to classify workers as independent contractors under federal wage and hour rules. Biden’s DOL issued a rule making it more likely that gig workers would be classified as employees rather than independent contractors, entitling them to the federal minimum wage, overtime pay, and other benefits.

“One of the key policy decisions employers will be eyeing with interest is Chavez-DeRemer’s action on the federal independent contractor test,” Caminiti said. “Most everyone expected the Trump administration to swing back in favor of a more flexible test that would give some more breathing room for businesses. But Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination puts that in doubt. We’ll wait to see whether her DOL will loosen current federal restrictions.”

Trump’s DOL will also likely re-examine Biden-era workplace safety rules issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), including a proposed heat safety standard and the so-called walkaround rule, which allows third parties, including union officials, to accompany OSHA officers on worksite inspections.

In addition, experts said the second Trump White House—like previous Republican administrations—will focus more on helping employers comply with federal labor law instead of taking a strict enforcement approach.