A surprisingly pro-labor pick, by GOP standards, is met by some with skepticism.
“While President-elect Donald Trump has tapped pro-union Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer to serve as secretary of his Labor Department, supporters of unions are taking a wait-and-see approach toward his selection of the Republican congresswoman from Oregon.
‘I welcome her appointment, but I really don’t know whether it translates into anything that matters substantively,’ said William Gould, who chaired the National Labor Relations Board during the Clinton administration and is now an emeritus professor at Stanford Law School.
It’s possible that Chavez-DeRemer will be forceful as labor secretary and push Trump to take different stances on union-related issues than he did during his first term, according to Gould.
‘We don’t know,’ he told MarketWatch. ‘I would be skeptical, given the anti-labor record of Trump — on the gig economy, on labor-law reform and on appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.’
During his first term Trump made moves that frustrated union organizers, including issuing a regulation for determining whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor that was widely viewed as favorable to gig-economy companies like Uber.
There could be similarities between Chavez-DeRemer and Martin Durkin, the head of a union for plumbers and steamfitters who briefly served as labor secretary during the Eisenhower administration, according to Gould, whose books include “For Labor to Build Upon,” which looks at unions’ impact on the U.S. The Eisenhower cabinet became known as “nine millionaires and a plumber,” and ultimately Durkin found that he couldn’t implement his views about reforming labor law.”
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