Trump’s Labor secretary pick is surprisingly pro-union. It doesn’t mean his administration will be

New York (CNN) — This week ended with President-elect Donald Trump nominating one of the most pro-union Republican members of Congress to be his secretary of Labor. But it began with a company owned by one of his more ardent supporters, Elon Musk, arguing in court that a key federal labor agency, the National Labor Relations Board, was unconstitutional and shouldn’t be able to enforce findings against employers.

So that’s one of the reasons that despite some labor leaders welcoming the nomination of Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer to lead the Labor Department, there is still trepidation as to what lies ahead for the rules, regulations and enforcement strategy for American workers.

“Lori Chavez-DeRemer has built a pro-labor record in Congress,” the AFL-CIO, the nation’s major federation of unions, said in a statement Friday. “But Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United States — not Rep. Chavez-DeRemer — and it remains to be seen what she will be permitted to do as Secretary of Labor in an administration with a dramatically anti-worker agenda.”

Specifically, the AFL-CIO and others in the labor movement are concerned that moves by the Biden administration to help unions and working Americans will be rolled back. Those rules include limitations on what employers can say at mandatory meetings with workers when there is an impending election to unionize, as well as a rule that will allow about 4 million salaried workers to qualify for overtime pay. Another rule in the works would protect the health and safety of workers exposed to high heat.

Trump support growing among unions

Trump received more support from rank-and-file union members in this election than he had in past elections.

Despite labor leaders’ strong support for Vice-President Kamala Harris, 45% of voters from households with a union member voted for Trump, according to CNN exit polls. That’s up from the 40% who voted for Trump in 2020, when he ran against Joe Biden, who had stronger ties to the union movement than Harris. It’s also a jump from the 42% who voted for Trump in 2016. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee in 2012, received 40% of the vote from union households.

And while many powerful unions, such as the United Auto Workers, actively campaigned for Harris, one powerful union, the Teamsters, stayed neutral. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who spoke at the Republican National Convention but stopped short of endorsing Trump, said one of the reasons for staying neutral was that nearly 60% of his membership supported the former president.

O’Brien was one of those pushing for Chavez-DeRemer to be picked as Labor secretary, and in a tweet,thanked Trump “for putting American workers first” by nominating the Oregon congresswoman.

Her nomination was also praised by Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, a teachers union that is the nation’s largest union in terms of membership. But Pringle, who was a strong supporter of Harris, expressed concern about Trump’s past labor record and the policies he may enact.

Pringle said in a statement that Chavez-DeRemer’s record “stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s anti-worker, anti-union record, and his extreme Project 2025 agenda that would gut workplace protections, make it harder for workers to unionize, and diminish the voice of working people.”

“During his first term, Trump appointed anti-worker, anti-union National Labor Relations Board members,” Pringle said. “Now he is threatening to take the unprecedented action of removing current pro-worker NLRB members in the middle of their term, replacing them with his corporate friends. And he is promising to appoint judges and justices who are hostile to workers and unions.”

Union worries about Trump policies

Pringle is not the only union leader to express concern about what the next four years will mean for organized labor.

“They have a whole slew of proposals in Project 2025 that will pull the floor out from under workers,” Jody Calemine, director of advocacy for the AFL-CIO, told CNN ahead of Trump’s announcement.

Calemine said a particular concern is how Trump could strip both job protections from federal civil service employees and public-sector unions of their collective bargaining rights. Nearly half of the nation’s union members work for different units of government, not companies.

While Chavez-DeRemer was one of only a handful of Republicans in Congress to support legislation that would protect those public-sector bargaining rights, she won’t necessarily have any say in the decision about civil service and collective bargaining rights. Many of the public-sector bargaining rights are not set at the national level, but at the state level, where most public-sector employees and union members work.

The Labor Department has more say over organizing and safety rules for private-sector workers. But many of those rules are set by the NLRB, which investigates worker complaints of unfair labor practices during organizing and labor negotiations and can issue action against employers.

Trump can immediately replace Jennifer Abruzzo, the powerful NLRB general counsel who has taken a very pro-union, activist role during her tenure under Biden. Trump can also quickly give the NLRB a Republican majority.

Musk’s anti-union rules

Musk’s SpaceX has argued in federal court that the president should have the power to directly fire any administrative law judge of the NLRB and SpaceX has sought to block the agency’s cases that accuse the company of illegal labor practices.

And there are also concerns that with Musk in charge of cutting “government waste,” there will be efforts to greatly defund government agencies that protect workers, such as the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, which has also clashed with Musk-owned businesses.

The Telsa CEO has taken a strong anti-union stance, with the United Auto Workers unable to even hold a vote on unionizing Tesla workers. Musk has been accused of illegally firing union supporters at Tesla, a charge he continues to fight, and insists he’s not concerned about unionizing efforts at the company.

In August, Musk and Trump laughed at the idea of the tech billionaire firing union supporters when they chatted on X, the Musk-owned social media platform. The exchange prompted the UAW to file another unfair labor practice complaint against Musk.

Organizing could be more difficult

Union organizing soared during Biden’s tenure, with high-profile wins at companies like Starbucks and Amazon, as well as low-profile wins at other workplaces, particularly in higher education.

But there are concerns among organized labor supporters that it will be tougher for unions to continue those gains under the NLRB members who Trump would likely appoint.

“Project 2025 has a blueprint for an anti-union agenda. It’s to roll back as much as they have won in better rules the last four years,” said Todd Vachon, director of the Labor Education Action Research Network and a professor of labor studies at Rutgers, referring to the conservative blueprint for the federal government that Trump has tried to distance himself from.

“This selection certainly gives the appearance of caring about the interests of workers and unions. But in the end, the secretary serves at the pleasure of the president, who has promised to cut regulations and free up business interests — an agenda that is often at odds with the interests of workers and unions,” Vachon said of Trump selecting Chavez-DeRemer. “I’m not certain she’ll be able to act on her pro-worker impulses if they run counter to the administration’s pro-business plans.”

“Her nomination should not be used to project an image of a labor-friendly administration while pursuing policies that jeopardize the rights of workers,” said a statement from National Employment Law Project, a labor rights advocacy group.

But Chavez-DeRemer’s selection brought harsh criticism from some business groups that were looking forward to the same rollback of pro-union rules that supporters of organized labor fear.

“While it is hard to predict what (Chavez-DeRemer) would do as a cabinet member, what we do know is not encouraging,” the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group that praised Trump’s labor policy in his first term, said in a blog post. “Trump should keep on looking.”

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