We’re not the first to notice that President-elect Donald Trump’s top administrative picks look like the bar scene from Star Wars, with a wild variety of ideologies, backgrounds and controversies reflected in the selections. For instance, his choice of former World Wresting Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon for Education secretary seems unusual, but at least her relevant views (e.g., she supports school choice) are consistent with long-held Republican ideas.
But then there’s Trump’s pick of U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore., as Labor secretary, which has even usually obsequious Republicans voicing criticism. As the New York Post reported, she voted for “boiler-plate liberal policies at odds with longstanding Republican orthodoxies, including strengthening unions’ efforts to organize the private sector, amnesty for illegal immigrants and championing expanding government employee unions.”
The choice was, however, praised by the National Education Association, which noted Chavez-DeRemer opposed school vouchers.
In the 2024 election, Republicans made impressive inroads in attracting support from union workers. Even though many prominent union leaders endorsed the Democratic ticket, Trump won around 43 percent of voters in union households and 60 percent of non-college-educated voters. So we understand Trump’s desire to thank rank-and-file workers with the top Labor spot, but it’s inexplicable to choose someone who champions the agenda of union bosses.
Chavez-DeRemer, who lost her bid this year for a second term, was one of only a few Republicans to support the PRO (Protecting the Right to Organize) Act. The bill, which has not passed, would make it easier to organize, boosts corporate penalties for alleged workers’ rights violations and also undermines state “right to work” laws that enable workers to avoid joining a union.
Most troubling, the PRO Act “would apply California’s ABC test to the NLRA [National Labor Relations Act] in all 50 states (and without the numerous exemptions that the California Legislature later had to enact to mitigate AB 5’s ill effects),” as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce explained. The legislation would “radically re-write American labor law and undermine freelancers and other independent contractors.”
California’s Assembly Bill 5 codified a California Supreme Court decision, known as the Dynamex decision, and applied that ABC Test to determine whether a worker qualifies as an independent contractor rather than employee. Under the test, companies are forbidden from using freelancers and independent contractors except in narrow circumstances. It continues to wreak havoc in the trucking industry.
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AB 5 was a top priority of California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature. President Joe Biden implemented some of these provisions at the federal level via regulatory edict. AB 5 caused much pain and suffering, as freelancers lost work during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. To no one’s surprise, companies laid off workers instead of offering contractors permanent employment.
The law created so much blowback that even California officials exempted 100 industries from AB 5 – and then voters exempted ride-share and delivery services from its provisions by approving Proposition 22 in 2020. That issue wasn’t resolved by the courts until earlier this year.
One columnist on these pages rightly called AB 5 a “cautionary tale the nation must heed.” We’re not shocked Democratic officials, who are linked at the hip with union leaders, refuse to heed those lessons. But why on Earth would a Republican administration fail to do so?