Teamsters don’t deserve a Cabinet pick — like Labor nominee Lori Chavez-DeRemer
Teamsters union boss Sean O’Brien is pushing with all the political weight he can muster to make Lori Chavez-DeRemer the next secretary of Labor.
Despite President Trump’s nomination of the former congresswoman, whose Senate confirmation hearing is set for Wednesday, Republicans shouldn’t let O’Brien get his way.
Recall O’Brien’s political machinations in the lead-up to the 2024 election. Blue collar workers in general, and his members in particular, were swinging Republican, but O’Brien was and remains an avowed Democrat.
Though he saw which way the wind was blowing, O’Brien held off on an endorsement. In exchange for his union’s official backing, he demanded Trump’s support for an end to popular right-to-work laws.
Polls consistently show that 80% of Americans, including 79% of active union members, think that union dues should be voluntary.
That’s what right-to-work laws ensure, and in fact it’s their only purpose. They guarantee that no worker can be forced to pay dues to a union if he or she doesn’t want to, and that union bosses can’t take workers’ money without permission.
Trump didn’t budge, and O’Brien declared his union would make no presidential endorsement at all. Its official announcement complained, “Trump would not commit to veto national ‘right to work’ legislation if he returned to the White House.”
O’Brien had a weak hand: The union’s internal polling showed its members backed Trump over Harris by a large margin.
Trump had already won over the Teamsters rank-and-file. He didn’t need O’Brien.
But the Teamsters boss hasn’t given up on his aim to quash worker freedom, and getting Chavez-DeRemer confirmed will help him secure that goal.
A one-term former GOP congresswoman from Oregon, Chavez-DeRemer stands out only because she co-sponsored a slew of union boss-boosted bills in a failed attempt to keep her seat in the House.
Unlike Trump, Chavez-DeRemer eagerly backed the PRO Act, a bill that bans right-to-work laws altogether, hoping to gain union help for her re-election bid.
It didn’t return her to Congress, but her support for forced unionism was enough to get top union officials and numerous Democratic senators excited about the possibility of having her heading the Department of Labor.
The National Education Association praised Chavez-DeRemer’s record, which includes opposition to school choice and support for a federal override of state laws banning teachers’ unions.
She “stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s anti-worker, anti-union record, and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” the NEA proclaimed.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination “significant.”
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told reporters that Chavez-DeRemer is “among the best picks Democrats could hope for.”
It’s understandable why O’Brien would seek a small victory for the Democratic Party he claims as his own — but Trump is under no obligation to deviate from his first-term actions in pursuit of true worker freedom.
During his first stint in the White House, Trump’s appointees at the National Labor Relations Board made it easier for workers to decertify an unwanted union, and his Department of Labor lifted federal burdens on those who choose to work as freelance independent contractors.
Those are two union boss-hated policies that the Biden administration sought immediately to overturn, and which the Chavez-DeRemer-backed PRO Act would have eliminated.
No doubt O’Brien also wants to undermine the work that’s already underway to make the second Trump administration as good for workers as the first.
Trump has already fired the NLRB’s general counsel and one of its Biden-appointed board members, an aggressive move that will immediately stop the flow of anti-worker, pro-union boss decisions coming out of the agency.
Trump’s letter firing Biden’s former NLRB chair specifically cited “serious First Amendment concerns” with her decisions to censor employer speech on the subject of unionization.
Yet the PRO Act would mandate the Biden NLRB’s rulings on the subject, cementing those and other biased decisions into federal law.
Lori Chavez-DeRemer was one of only two House Republicans to support that bill in the last Congress, joining 215 Democrats and every major labor union in the country.
The O’Brien/Chavez-DeRemer labor agenda is simply the polar opposite of President Trump’s.
Republican senators who have so far voted to give Trump a Cabinet that supports his mission should continue to do so now — by opposing Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Committee.
