President-elect Trump surprised the business community on Friday night when he announced Lori Chavez-DeRemer as his nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Labor. Her selection was met by skepticism by some in the employer community because she was one of only three Republicans to co-sponsor the controversial PRO Act this past July, a bill containing a proverbial wish list of pro-union initiatives. The fact that the Teamsters President publicly supported Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination last week further casts her as an outside-the-lines pick. Still, we expect her to largely carry out many of the employer-friendly initiatives you’d expect from a Republican appointment if she’s approved by the Senate. What are the 10 things employers should know about this surprising selection and how she might impact your workplace?
1. She Understands Small Businesses
After growing up in the San Joaquin Valley and earning a business administration degree from Fresno State, Chavez-DeRemer founded an anesthesia management company with her husband in Oregon. She began her public service career in 2002, winning a seat on the Happy Valley City Council and becoming Council President. In 2010, she was elected Mayor of Happy Valley, a suburb of Portland, OR. After two failed attempts, she won Oregon’s 5th district Congressional seat in 2022. During a single term in Congress, she served on the Committee on Education and the Workforce and held several workplace-related subcommittee assignments. She just narrowly lost her reelection bid – but appears poised to return to D.C. in a much different capacity.
2. Appeal to Unions
The daughter of a Teamster, Chavez-DeRemer has always positioned herself as a supporter of unions and labor rights. Besides co-sponsoring the PRO Act, she also co-sponsored a bill to make it easier for public safety workers to collectively bargain. It might surprise some to learn that she earned the endorsement of several unions, an especially rare feat in deep-blue Oregon. This makes her perhaps the best possible selection that unions, labor, and worker advocates could have hoped for – especially as most everyone was expecting a nominee who with a strong pro-business history that would assuredly even the playing field back out after four years of labor-friendly policy. Despite her labor leanings, the AFL-CIO scored her as a having 10% rating when it comes to her Congressional track record of “voting with working people,” only slightly better than the national 6% Republican average.
3. Business Community Will Treat Her Nomination with Cautious Curiosity
Despite her pro-labor background, our Government Relations team does not expect to see a major move to oppose her nomination by business groups and employer organizations. Despite some inevitable grumblings, we would be surprised to see the business community make a concerted push to reject this confirmation. In fact, we expect at least a few moderate Democrat Senators to vote in favor of her nomination unless an unexpected bump in the road emerges.
4. PRO Act Won’t Come Close to Passing
Given that Trump won a sizable number of votes from union workers this past election, this selection appears to be a way of repaying their support and demonstrating this administration’s focus on the working class. Still, while incoming leadership may not look like a typical GOP administration, we don’t expect Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination to move the needle much when it comes to actual labor policy. In fact, our Labor Relations team leaders still say that the PRO Act is DOA in a Republican Congress, and remind employers that the Department of Labor has little to say when it comes to traditional labor law and union-employer relations.