President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for labor secretary, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), would easily be the least conservative labor secretary in a Republican administration in a generation. She has what can only be described as dangerous positions on a number of key issues, most importantly the end of the secret ballot in union organizing elections and the imposition of collective bargaining privileges for government workers in all 50 states.
These very real dangers should not be minimized. While Chavez-DeRemer will not have the power to set the legislative agenda on Capitol Hill, there is still plenty of regulatory power she can wield as labor secretary. That said, Chavez-DeRemer also offers a unique opportunity to draw more union voters away from the Democratic Party and maybe even divorce union leadership from the Democratic Party’s other political priorities.
No Republican presidential candidate did more to reach out to union voters than Trump did this year. He invited Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to speak at the Republican National Convention, and while the Teamsters did not endorse the former president, not only did the organization choose not to endorse a presidential candidate for the first time since 1996, but 60% of Teamsters members ended up voting for him. Overall, according to CNN exit polls, 45% of voters from union households voted for Trump. That is 5 percentage points better than he did four years before.
Trump should continue to try to win more union votes, but the Chavez-DeRemer agenda is not the way to do it. As a Republican member of the House, Chavez-DeRemer supported the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which, as we detailed before, would not only end the secret ballot in union organizing elections but would also supersede right-to-work laws that protect workers from being forced to join a union in 26 states. Additionally, the PRO Act would codify the Biden administration’s joint-employer standard, which would functionally end the fast-food franchise business model as we know it.
Chavez-DeRemer’s support for the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act is an even more worrisome hazard. As we recently noted, one of the biggest reasons the Democratic Party underperformed in 2024, especially in deep blue areas such as San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, is because the Democratic Party that controls those cities can no longer deliver high-quality services in exchange for high taxes. Democratic voters are simply fed up with giving almost half their paycheck to the government only to still have bad public schools, trash uncollected on the street, and substandard transportation infrastructure.
Perhaps the biggest reason these Democratic jurisdictions are failing to deliver efficient government services is that their workers are all unionized. When staffing decisions, salaries, and even policy, are all set at the collective bargaining table, not by elected officials selected at the ballot box, voters have lost an essential mechanism to hold their government accountable. Chavez-DeRemer’s Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act would take the same horrid collective bargaining laws that have turned California, Illinois, and New York into ungovernable basket cases and force them on well-run, vibrant states such as Florida, Texas, and Utah.
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Those very real dangers aside, perhaps Chavez-DeRemer can use her power as secretary to expose just how far from their mission of raising wages and securing better working conditions today’s big unions have drifted. How does the war in Gaza, gender equality, or amnesty for illegal immigrants help union members? They don’t. And polling shows that union members are sick and tired of seeing their hard-earned union dues going to pay for every little whim of the wealthy Democratic Party consultant class.
A union movement more committed to actually improving the pay and job security of its members and not beholden to the Democratic Party would serve both the labor movement and the nation well.