Committee President to Trump: Don’t Put Anti-Right to Work Congresswoman in Charge of Your Labor Department

The following letter was sent to President Trump by National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix on November 20th, 2024.

President Trump,

On behalf of the 80 percent of Americans who support the Right to Work principle that no one should be forced to pay dues to a labor union to get or keep a job, I urge you not to put Lori Chavez-DeRemer in charge of the Department of Labor.

There are only three Republican elected officials who cosponsored legislation that would end every state Right to Work law in the country, and it is appalling that one of them would seek a job as your Secretary of Labor.

Chavez-DeRemer, along with two other Republicans, and no fewer than 215 House Democrats, is a cosponsor of the so-called “PRO Act,” a bill that fulfills Big Labor’s entire legislative “wish list.”  It gives union officials scores of new powers while making life more difficult for workers who do not want to join a union.  

The bill’s most destructive provision is to invalidate the Right to Work laws that 26 states have passed to ensure that workers cannot be forced to pay dues to a union.

As you know, Right to Work laws do exactly one thing: they make union dues a voluntary choice.  In a Right to Work state, a worker can join a union and pay union dues if he wants, but he cannot ever be fired for choosing not to do so.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer refused to cosponsor the National Right to Work Act, which would have given Right to Work protections to everyone in her home state of Oregon, and instead supported legislation that would take away those protections from millions of Americans in other states.

In addition, as DC’s government unions are gearing up to resist your Administration’s attempts to reform the federal bureaucracy, Chavez-DeRemer is a cosponsor of the laughably misnamed “Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act,” which would force every state and local government in the country to bargain with union bosses who claim to “represent” government workers.

The bill gives leverage over public policy to unelected union bosses to the detriment of taxpayers and independent-minded government workers, including public schoolteachers, who want to do their jobs without the wasteful work rules and job featherbedding that a union contract inevitably brings.

She did all that in a transparent attempt to curry favor with union bosses so that they’d take the heat off of her during the election.  It worked exactly as you’d expect:  Chavez-DeRemer earned some scattered praise in a few union press releases . . . and went on to lose the election.

Putting Chavez-DeRemer in charge of the Department of Labor will lead to the same result; a few union bosses will praise her, and Big Labor will still go on to campaign vigorously to elect a Democrat in the 2028 Presidential Election.

Meanwhile, Americans will feel the same way that Chavez-DeRemer’s Oregon constituents did — that she did not do a good job representing their interests, no matter what the union bosses had to say. 

Chavez-DeRemer failed because she didn’t recognize the stark divide between union bosses and ordinary workers.

Exit polls tell us the Trump campaign did exceptionally well among union households, yet PRO Act-supporting union bosses like Shawn Fain of the United Auto Workers wanted to “go to war” to help Biden and Harris. Union bosses represent the extreme ends of the political spectrum, and hold views far removed from those of most union members.

To represent workers does not mean to copy the views of union bosses.

The supposedly “pro-worker” legislation that Chavez-DeRemer signed onto is designed to give union officials more authority over non-consenting workers.  That means giving them the right to take workers’ money without their permission by repealing Right to Work laws.

In addition to wiping out all the state Right to Work laws, Chavez-Deremer’s “PRO Act” would:

• Make it more difficult for workers to say “no” to unionization by manipulating the rules at the National Labor Relations Board so that it’s easier for union bosses to take power without giving workers the option to vote on the matter, and simultaneously make it harder for workers to secure a vote to remove a union they no longer want;
• Wipe out the gig economy by reclassifying most independent contractors as employees, subjecting them to unionization under the National Labor Relations Act;
• Allow unions to conduct secondary boycotts, which have been illegal for decades;
• Codify the so-called “Joint Employer Standard,” creating massive nationwide bargaining units of locally owned and operated franchise companies, in which employees would find it virtually impossible to ever get rid of an unwanted union; and
• Functionally gag employers during an organizing drive, ensuring that employees, when deciding whether to vote for a union, only ever get to hear the union bosses’ side of the story.

The PRO Act advances nothing but union bosses’ own financial and power-seeking interests.  Chavez-DeRemer supported these power grabs, believing this was the path to being perceived as “pro-worker.”  Instead, voters removed her from office.

The next Trump Administration should seek to expand choice for workers so that every American can freely choose whether or not a union deserves their financial support.

Chavez-DeRemer supports policies that go so far in the opposite direction that she would not be out of place in the Biden-Harris Department of Labor, which completely sold out to Big Labor from the start.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer should have no place in the Trump Administration.  I urge you in the strongest possible terms not to nominate her for Secretary of Labor.

Sincerely,

Mark Mix
President
National Right to Work Committee