As President-elect Donald Trump finalizes his choice of Cabinet members, one key position that remains unfulfilled is that of secretary of labor.
Trump has hesitated to choose a nominee, sources in Trump world told Newsmax, because his allies in the union hierarchy favor Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore. Defeated after one term as U.S. representative from Oregon's 5th District, Chavez-DeRemer was backed by more than a dozen unions in her losing quest for reelection this year.
Chief among them is the 1.3 million-member Teamsters union, whose president, Sean O'Brien, on Thursday wrote a ringing endorsement of the Oregonian for the Department of Labor portfolio.
"She is only one of three Republicans to co-sponsor the PRO [Protecting The Right to Organize] Act — one of our union's top priorities, aimed at reversing the decades-long drift of American labor law," wrote O'Brien, who electrified the Republican National Convention last summer with a fighting, pro-Trump address.
But it is Chavez-DeRemer's support for the PRO Act that has made conservatives inside and outside of Trump's inner circle nervous about her prospective nomination. Strongly backed by President Joe Biden and already passed by the House, the PRO Act would upend all right-to-work laws in all 27 states that have enacted them. That would mean that employees could be required to pay union dues and join a union.
Under PRO's provisions, freelancers and gig workers would be classified as employes rather than independent contractors and, thus, forced to join a union.
Perhaps most egregious of all to nonunion workers, unions would be permitted to end secret ballot elections in favor of "card check" — a system that would simply require workers to sign a card authorizing the unions to represent them. An earlier move to end the secret ballot more than a decade ago was opposed by several prominent Democrats, most notably the late 1972 Democratic presidential nominee and former South Dakota Sen. George McGovern.
The PRO Act would also require employers to share contact information of workers with union organizers.
Conservatives in Trump's inner circled grew alarmed and angry in the past few days about the possibility of Chavez-DeRemers securing the position in the Labor Department.
In contrast, there are two prospects for labor secretary who held high positions in Trump's first administration who would maintain the labor-management balance of that period: Pat Pizzella, deputy secretary of labor and before that assistant secretary for administration in the George W. Bush administration, and Kate O'Scannlain, solicitor of the Labor Department under Trump.
Both Pizzella and O'Scannlain are considered serious contenders for the Labor Department portfolio, but so is Chavez-DeRemer.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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