Trump has nominated Lori Chavez-DeRemer to be Secretary of Labor. She is a pro-labor Republican Congresswoman from Oregon. First she will not affect the Republican majority in the next Congress because she lost her bid for reelection and has only two months left.

Now I’m conflicted by this nomination. On the one hand Trump won the election in part because of union voters. Not the union bosses who were against him but the rank and file who voted their best interests. The UAW workers were concerned for their livelihoods if EV mandates were implemented. Union workers voted for the Keystone XL pipeline and drill baby drill because it was in their best interests. And thus I can understand Trump nominating a pro union individual.

On the other hand I don’t understand nominating a woman who is a co-sponsor of the PRO Act, a massive overhaul of the NLRA Act. Most importantly it would eliminate the right to work laws in all states. At present there are 27 states that have such laws. With the elimination of right to work laws anyone who wants to work in a union business would be required to pay dues. There are several other odious provisions and some would be clearly unconstitutional following recent cases repealing the Chevron Doctrine that I have previously covered.

Now I don’t know but I suspect that the union workers that voted for Trump did not vote for him because they thought he would eliminate non-union workers. They voted for their pocket books. So I’m very concerned that he nominated someone who favors union workers over all other workers. He never ran on that.

And just in case you don’t know, and I’m sure that at least two of you do, when there is an election to determine whether or not to unionize, the majority of those who vote win just like with our presidential election. So if you have a potential bargaining unit of 10,000 workers and 200 vote for and 100 vote against, the union wins. In my agency, the bargaining unit was about 2000 and approximately 170 voted for the union and 80 voted against. Fortunately in federal employment law, the people who didn’t vote didn’t have to join the union or pay dues. In fact I won an Unfair Labor Practice suit against the union because they had a policy that if you joined the union and paid dues you would get a union attorney to represent you in grievances or adverse actions and if not you would get a union steward, and under the law they were required to represent all members of the bargaining unit. When the case got to the DC Circuit, the judges ruled against the union without even hearing from our side. The sad reality was that would have been better with the stewards because the union attorneys were not good.

(As an aside and I think I have mentioned this before m in the oral argument before, when one of the attorneys arguing finished he backed up and missed his chair and fell flat on his ass and even the judges laughed.)

Now a big difference in voting in a union election and voting in a presidential election is that in union election you have to pay money if they win.

Now I also want to point out that I don’t believe eliminating right to work is constitutional. It involves freedom of association and speech. And there was a Supreme Court decision a while back involving California that said that. I don’t recall if it was just teachers or all state employees but they held that you can’t require someone to join a group or contribute money to people advocating for things you disagree with. I don’t recall if there was anything in the decision that somehow limited to government employees and am as always too lazy to look it up, but I don’t think this Supreme Court would draw a distinction.

in conclusion I wish he hadn’t nominated her but he can still veto the PRO Act should it ever make it to his desk and can cancel any efforts to destroy the right of our citizens to work.