Business Groups Wary Of Trump’s Pro-union Labor Secretary Pick

Employers worried about President-elect Donald Trump’s unconventional pick to lead the Labor Department are working behind the scenes to ensure they have business-friendly contacts at other key offices in the agency and elsewhere in the administration.

They’re submitting names to transition staff for other top posts at the department, including regulators like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, that would ease their concerns over Trump's intention to nominate Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), whose support for some prominent union-friendly legislation has alarmed business interests.

“Disappointed is fair, to say the least,” one business group official who handles labor issues said of Chavez-DeRemer's pending nomination and who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Obviously there were better choices out there from our perspective.”

The maneuvering underscores how eager businesses are to turn the corner on what they see as the Biden administration's baldly pro-union, anti-employer tilt on issues ranging from overtime pay to heat exposure protections for workers. While Chavez-DeRemer may turn out to be a strong ally in what is expected to be a very pro-business Trump White House, they want some assurances.

"We need to have a much better understanding of her policy views in a detailed way, beyond just the PRO Act," said Paul DeCamp, who led DOL's Wage and Hour Division under President George W. Bush. "If she ends up being a fairly traditional secretary of Labor, then I think you would expect to see, for lack of a better term, the usual cast of characters."

The choice of a union supporter to lead DOL also reflects the strong inroads Trump made with working-class voters, union and non-union alike. Chavez-DeRemer had the backing of Teamsters President Sean O'Brien, whose union had endorsed Democrats in presidential elections for almost two decades but declined to back a candidate this year.

Some business groups have floated former Trump DOL official Keith Sonderling as the department's No. 2, according to that same official. However, Sonderling — who has a deep interest in AI policy — has mulled a move to the private sector since his term on the EEOC expired this year, a person familiar with his thinking said.

In some instances, Trump has named people who were in the running for Cabinet posts to other powerful jobs in his administration after missing out on their first choice — or to positions that do not require Senate confirmation.

Some who were in the mix for the top job at DOL before Trump picked Chavez-DeRemer, and had views and records that more explicitly favored business, included Patrick Pizzella, who was deputy Labor secretary in Trump's first administration, and Andrew Puzder, Trump's nominee to head the department in 2017 before he withdrew amid allegations of spousal abuse that he denied.

Virginia Labor Secretary Bryan Slater — who held Labor posts under former President George W. Bush and Trump's first administration — has been gauging interest from various people about their interest in serving in a second Trump administration since before the election, according to a September email addressed to "DOL Bush Alumni" obtained by POLITICO.

Slater may also be angling to rejoin the administration himself in some fashion, a former Trump DOL official said, particularly as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin's administration enters its final year. Slater did not respond to multiple emails.

Several Trump administration hands, such as former Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs Director Craig Leen, have expressed a desire to return in some capacity, either at DOL or elsewhere.

DOL's numerous sub-offices give considerable sway to the appointees tasked with overseeing investigations into shortchanging workers' pay and workplace hazards, as well as under-the-radar roles regulating a chunk of the retirement system and the mining industry.

Separate agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, will also shape Trump's approach to the workplace, independent of DOL.

Another lever business could pull: Trump DOL alums who found senior positions on Capitol Hill after his loss in 2020. With Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress, they would be in a strong position to influence legislation on workforce development programs and other labor matters if they opt against returning to his administration.

Still, it's unclear to what extent Trump would heed business' concerns, as Chavez-DeRemer's selection demonstrated.

“Its fair to say that the significance of [Chavez-DeRemer's selection] will be downplayed a bit as we see some of these other roles filled in,” conservative strategist Michael Saltsman at Berman and Company, said. But, “the top position really sets the tone.”

Until Trump’s announcement, Chavez-DeRemer was wrapping up a single House term and had a limited profile in Washington. She was first elected to Congress in 2022 and narrowly lost re-election this year in a competitive Oregon district that spans from part of Portland down to the city of Bend.

Much of the focus on Chavez-DeRemer in the roughly one week since she emerged as a dark horse contender has been on her support of a pair of union-backed bills in Congress.

One, the PRO Act, is a package of labor law reforms that would dramatically shift the ground in worker-management relations in favor of unions. The other would expand union rights for public-sector workers.

Cosponsoring those bills set her apart from the vast majority of Republicans, and even some Democrats, and rankled employers keen on making a clean break from the Biden administration’s approach to workplace policies.

“The business community is right to be disappointed,” Saltsman said. “They were hopeful about restoring some of that balance that the Labor Department has to respect people who are doing the labor, as well as those employing the labor. It’s a question of whether she’ll get that balance right.”

Still, major business groups in and around D.C. have refrained from openly criticizing Chavez-DeRemer. That’s in part to avoid antagonizing the incoming administration — particularly as Trump’s plans on immigration and tariffs could also complicate their operations, according to the business trade group official and others.

Republican lawmakers have been sparing in questioning Trump's decision, and have largely been overshadowed by people who have pushed the GOP to hone a more populist message to workers, like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who praised Chavez-DeRemer.

A deeper look into Chavez-DeRemer’s voting record does offer some reassurances for employers. For one thing, she voted this year to block a National Labor Relations Board rule making it easier to label businesses as joint employers of individuals working for contractors or franchisees — and thus legally liable for certain labor law violations. That rule has since been vacated by a judge in Texas and the NLRB in July dropped its appeal of that decision.

She also voted with Republicans to repeal a Biden Labor Department rule from the Employee Benefit Security Administration that permitted the use of environmental, social and governance — or ESG — considerations in certain retirement investment decisions. The measure passed both chambers of Congress but Biden vetoed it.

Chavez-DeRemer will have to walk a fine line to assuage concerns about her record without appearing to completely disavow her past positions and potentially jeopardize goodwill with Democrats and organized labor before taking office.

“I would imagine she’s going to have to have conversations with a lot of senators who are supportive of right-to-work laws and independent contractors,” Saltsman said. “She’s going to have to let them know she didn’t support every part of" the PRO Act.

But she is generally seen as having a relatively clear path to confirmation, barring any damaging revelations, as the prospect of Democratic support could more than offset any GOP defections.

Despite the concerns expressed by conservatives, unions are also treating Chavez-DeRemer skeptically, primarily out of distrust developed during the first Trump administration, which regularly advanced policies that weakened organized labor.

But the general consensus is that she is about as favorable as they could have hoped for under a Republican president, and that she will at least be willing to hear out their concerns — if she is not boxed out by others in the administration less favorable to unions.

“It’s a nod away from having corporate attorneys and business leaders serve at the top of the Labor Department,” said Jimmy Williams Jr., the head of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. “That’s a huge step towards having an open discussion about the future of labor. … But let’s be real, we’re talking about one Cabinet position [against] a slew of appointees who have a slant toward the business community and corporate America.”