Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via AP Images
Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR) speaking at the U.S. Capitol earlier this year
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for labor secretary, Oregon Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, has been portrayed as the rare pro-union Republican, but a quick review of her history as an elected representative reveals a more mixed record.
There are also indications that she will carry out the role, if confirmed, as a Trump loyalist, much as we’ve seen with the incoming administration’s other named nominees.
Chavez-DeRemer is the daughter of a Teamster union member, and the former mayor of Happy Valley, Oregon. She’s also a businesswoman, and founded a network of medical clinics along with her husband that brings in between $1 million and $5 million a year, according to her federal financial disclosures. Chavez-DeRemer lost her re-election race last month after serving one term in Congress.
She has generally been described as a pro-worker Republican who diverges from the GOP’s usual exclusionary preference for employers and business interests in all labor matters. Most notably, reports have pointed out that Chavez-DeRemer is one of just three Republicans who co-sponsored the PRO Act, a proposed bill to expand and protect workers’ rights that has been roundly rejected by conservatives, big businesses, and virtually every other Republican member of Congress.
Her nomination has been endorsed by Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, and has received praise from other union leaders for some of her legislative votes supporting workers’ union rights and in favor of preserving the Department of Education and public schools. Chavez-DeRemer was the only Republican on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce who opposed a proposal to reduce the National Labor Relations Board’s authority over disputes between employers and unions; and she co-sponsored a bill to allow workers to receive tax deductions when paying membership dues to their unions, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported in August.
Yet when Republicans on the House labor subcommittee “scheduled six meetings that devolved into union-bashing, Chavez-DeRemer did not attend and publicly support labor,” the Chronicle noted. Indeed, throughout her term, the Republican rep walked “a fine line between appealing to labor unions and business interests,” according to the Chronicle.
Indeed, according to the AFL-CIO’s congressional ratings, Chavez-DeRemer voted for policies that favor workers just 10 percent of the time, only slightly higher than the 6 percent score for the average House Republican. She voted in favor of a bill that would undermine the unemployment insurance program, for example, including by penalizing recipients for inadvertent errors; and for legislation that would loosen regulation of health benefits and allow employers to offer plans that aren’t backed by adequate reserves, the AFL-CIO said. Chavez-DeRemer has also voted against one of the biggest labor priorities of the past decade—a “joint employer” rule to restrict companies’ ability to effectively outsource certain legal, pay, and benefits obligations to third parties, like contractors and franchisees.
Chavez-DeRemer voted for policies that favor workers just 10 percent of the time, only slightly higher than the 6 percent score for the average House Republican.
Oregon’s largest unions endorsed her Democratic opponent in November’s elections, and apparently remain wary about her nomination for labor secretary.
“SEIU in Oregon has had very little experience working with Ms. Chavez-DeRemer since she has declined to engage directly with our 85,000 members,” Alan Dubinsky, communications director for SEIU Local 49, told me after Chavez-DeRemer was announced as Trump’s pick. “If she is successful in her appointment to secretary of labor, we look forward to her keeping her campaign promises of supporting Oregon’s unions and working families.”
Chavez-DeRemer’s co-sponsorship of the PRO Act, to take the most notable of her pro-union actions, didn’t happen until July, about four months after the other two Republican co-sponsors signed on, and when it was already clear that the bill—which has been a legislative priority for labor since 2019—wouldn’t become law. Michael Ingrao, a political consultant who has advised Chavez-DeRemer on labor policy, said that the “bill will never be enacted” just days after her endorsement, according to a report by the Northwest Labor Press in August.
Trevor Griffey, a labor historian at the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, said on X shortly after her nomination that Chavez-DeRemer’s late endorsement of the PRO Act should be more accurately viewed as “posturing in a swing district.” Griffey told me that Congress’s recent history with regard to employment policy and legislation—on both sides of the aisle—shows that “political support for the PRO Act or any other labor rights should be measured by votes and not declarations of intent.”
The Labor Press also reported that Chavez-DeRemer had declined to support the proposal less than a year earlier; and she has also voted in the past against a Biden administration effort to revive the bill, Axios reported last week.
Before July, Chavez-DeRemer’s concerns about the bill parroted other business owners’ objections, as well as those of the business lobbying groups that have successfully blocked the legislation. The previous October, Chavez-DeRemer had explained that she hadn’t yet backed the bill because she had reservations about its being “anti-small business or [anti]-franchise agreements.” That was an apparent reference to provisions that would make big corporations like McDonald’s “joint employers” alongside their franchise owners (based on the control that McDonald’s corporate exercises over the workers in the franchise owners’ restaurants) and therefore just as legally liable for labor law violations as the franchisees. Those concerns are the basis for a number of pro-business deregulatory goals laid out in the labor policy section of Project 2025—reportedly, the policy bible for the incoming administration.
More broadly, Chavez-DeRemer has also staked out a slate of now-standard Republican positions that suggest that she would be a Trump loyalist if confirmed as labor secretary.
Chavez-DeRemer “skirted the question” when The Oregonian asked her in April 2022 whether President Joe Biden had actually won the 2020 election, for example. She ran for Congress on a number of “culture war” issues that have been promoted by Trump and his allies, including so-called parental rights bills, concerning what children are taught in public schools about gender and other subjects, opposition to allowing transgender girls and women to participate in women’s sports, and climate change denial.
Moreover, Chavez-DeRemer has been criticized by opponents and the editorial board of The Oregonian for appearing to flip her positions when politically convenient, including on abortion, an issue on which she has taken conflicting stances. Markley Drake, a councilmember in Happy Valley, Oregon, told The Oregonian last year that Chavez-DeRemer has taken more hardline conservative stances since she began running in federal elections.
Altogether, Chavez-DeRemer’s record shows that she has distinguished herself within the GOP only by virtue of a mostly symbolic endorsement of the PRO Act, and in making some outreach to labor, rather than constantly attacking unions. It also shows just as clearly that she is most likely to be a Trump loyalist—a pro-business, anti-union labor secretary, in other words—rather than an ally to labor and workers, if confirmed.
