One-term Oregon congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer walked back her support for pro-union legislation as she tried to convince Republican senators to back her as the nation’s next labor secretary.
Chavez-DeRemer, who lost her 2024 reelection bid to Democratic U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum, is President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Labor Department. She faced scrutiny from Republicans over her late endorsement of the labor-union-backed PRO Act and from Democrats over Trump administration policies during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on Wednesday.
“I believe that the president nominated me to bring my experience not only as a mayor, not as a business owner, but because I did garner labor support,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “The president and I align in this issue, that if we focus on the American worker, despite the politics that is going to come up sometimes, we’re not going to agree on everything, but we can agree that we are at a pivotal moment in this history to capitalize and support the American worker and that everyone can achieve the American dream.”
If confirmed, she’d be the first Oregon politician in a presidential cabinet since Neil Goldschmidt served as transportation secretary under President Jimmy Carter. Her nomination also surprised some analysts because she promoted herself as bipartisan and pro-labor during her congressional term.
It would be a major step up for Chavez-DeRemer. She was a mayor and city councilor in Happy Valley, a city of less than 30,000 on the outskirts of Portland, then lost two state legislative races to Bynum before her single term in Congress. She cofounded an anesthesia management company with her husband and served two years on the U.S. House labor committee.
Unusually for Republican members of Congress, Chavez-DeRemer sought and received endorsements from labor unions for her reelection bid. More than 20 unions, most of them small local organizations, endorsed her, while the state’s largest private sector union, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555, supported both her and Bynum. Some of Oregon’s largest and most powerful unions, including the 72,000-member Service Employees International Union, backed Bynum and have been skeptical of Chavez-DeRemer’s claims of supporting labor.
National Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who spoke at the Republican National Convention last summer, lobbied for Trump to pick Chavez-DeRemer and sat in the front row during the hearing. The last time he and Sen. Markwayne Mullin, the Republican from Oklahoma who introduced Chavez-DeRemer, were at a Senate hearing together, Mullin called him a “thug” and challenged him to a fight. But Chavez-DeRemer is “uniquely positioned” to bring people like O’Brien and him together, Mullin said at Wednesday’s hearing.
“I don’t think we have to look any farther than understanding Lori as the independent, nonpartisan perspective who will always keep the workforce at the top of mind,” Mullin said.
Her hearing gave her an opportunity to assuage Republican senators who worried that she was too pro-union, and she repeatedly assured them that she supported state laws that limit unions. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky and a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, previously said he’ll vote against her and predicted more than a dozen other Republicans will join him. She could secure votes from Democrats because of her willingness to work with unions, but both Democratic senators from Oregon told the Capital Chronicle they’ll vote against her.
Sen. Jeff Merkley said he would have voted for her, but he’ll vote against any cabinet nominees until Trump and special government employee Elon Musk stop interfering with agencies and violating federal laws.
“We cannot have business as usual as Trump allows his unelected sidekick Elon Musk to undertake an authoritarian administrative coup by dismantling agencies, disregarding our laws and dishonoring our Constitution,” Merkley said.
And Sen. Ron Wyden called out discrepancies in Chavez-DeRemer’s statements as a congresswoman and as a cabinet nominee.
“As a proud supporter of the PRO Act that would empower Oregonians and all Americans to unionize and advocate for fair wages benefits and working conditions, I took special note of Lori Chavez DeRemer’s bizarre disavowal today of her previous support for this vital legislation,” Wyden said. “Her reversal is blatantly anti-worker and calls into question whether she’d be anything more than another tool of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. But her troubling flip-flops didn’t stop there. Just months after telling Oregon voters she was pro-choice, she also told senators today she’s anti-abortion. I will vote against her confirmation.”
Republicans target PRO Act support
Many of the questions Chavez-DeRemer received — and most of the scrutiny she’s been under since Trump nominated her — related to her decision last summer to sign on as a cosponsor of the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act. Chavez-DeRemer’s July endorsement of the bill, which she highlighted in her reelection campaign, came after it was already dead in the water. Republican leaders hadn’t granted it a hearing, and Congress had just weeks of work left between its August recess and scheduled breaks for the election and holidays.
That bill, a priority for labor unions, would have weakened state “right-to-work” laws to allow unions to collect money from all employees, increased penalties for employers who violate labor law and strengthened employees’ legal rights to join a union. She said she signed onto the bill because she was a congresswoman from Oregon and assured Republican senators that she didn’t support curtailing laws passed in their states to ban mandatory union membership. Just over half of states have “right-to-work” laws that prohibit unions from charging fees to non-members who benefit from collective bargaining in their workplace, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“I signed on to the PRO Act because I was representing Oregon’s 5th District, but I also signed on to the PRO Act because I wanted to be at that table and have those conversations,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “But I fully support states that want to protect their right to work.”
During the hearing, Chavez-DeRemer didn’t fully disavow the bill, which she described as “imperfect.” But Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, said he gathered that she no longer supported the PRO Act.
Sanders said working Americans need a “linebacker” labor secretary to advise Trump on policies that benefit working people.
“When it comes to labor policy, you will have to make a choice,” he said. “Will you be a rubber stamp for the anti-worker agenda of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other multi-billionaires who are blatantly anti-union or will you stand with working families all over the country?”
Chavez-DeRemer defends Trump
Democratic senators and Sanders pressed Chavez-DeRemer on recent Trump actions, including his decision to remove Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board. Wilcox’s term ran through 2028, and no president has ever attempted to remove a member from the independent agency. She’s suing Trump over the action, which left the board that protects employees’ rights, conducts union elections and investigates unfair labor practices without the quorum it needs to function.
Chavez-DeRemer defended Trump’s authority to fire Wilcox. She also defended his authority to freeze federal funding, something multiple judges have blocked.
“The president of the United States has the power to determine what he’s going to do through his executive power,” she said.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, pushed Chavez-DeRemer to promise that she won’t break national law — specifically the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 that blocks the president from withholding money appropriated by Congress — and that she’ll block Elon Musk from obtaining Americans’ private records. Chavez-DeRemer referred to both questions as hypotheticals.
“I will commit to following the law, and I do not believe the president would ever ask me to break the law,” she said.
She avoided answering questions from Democratic senators about raising the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour or guaranteeing paid leave for all workers, saying those were congressional decisions and that local communities know what works for them.
“What happens in Portland doesn’t happen in Grants Pass,” she said. “It certainly doesn’t.”
Chavez-DeRemer said she wanted to travel the country and tell workers’ stories to Trump and Congress — the same promise she frequently made to her voters in Oregon.
“I do want to help the American worker,” she said. “I want them to make enough money. I want to give them the opportunities, and I want to work with Congress.”
This article originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.