Trump's Labor Secretary Departs, Leaving Scandal And Vast Disappointment In Her Wake

It has agelong go clear that those of america who saw a glimmer of hope successful President Trump’s assignment of Lori Chavez-DeRemer arsenic caput of Labor sewage snowed.

It wasn’t just, aliases moreover chiefly, nan miasma of sleaze and corruption that seemed to situation her wherever she went. Or her slavish sucking up to Trump successful public, notably astatine a Cabinet gathering successful which she pleaded pinch Trump to nonstop his migration goons into Portland, Ore., to “crack down.” (“Thank you for what you’re doing pinch your agents connected ICE,” she said astatine nan August 2025 session.) Fun fact: She had represented a Portland suburb arsenic a Republican for a azygous House term.

No. It was nan gulf betwixt nan expectations, moreover among Democrats, that she mightiness beryllium a decent prime for nan job, and nan reality.

After all, she had been 1 of only 3 Republicans successful nan House to ballot successful favour of nan alleged PRO Act, which would importantly fortify corporate bargaining rights. (The measurement passed nan House successful 2019 and 2021 but hasn’t gotten retired of committee successful nan existent Congress.)

As I reported aft her nomination, labour activists and pro-labor politicians made encouraging noises astir her. Among them was Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.): “It’s a large woody that 1 of nan fewer Republican lawmakers who person endorsed nan PRO Act could lead nan Department of Labor,” Warren said. “If Chavez-DeRemer commits arsenic Labor caput to fortify labour unions and beforehand worker power, she’s a beardown campaigner for nan job.”

She received an definitive endorsement from Randi Weingarten, president of nan American Federation of Teachers. “Her grounds suggests existent support of workers & their correct to unionize,” Weingarten tweeted. “I dream it intends nan Trump admin will really respect corporate bargaining and workers’ voices from Teamsters to teachers.”

The betting was that Chavez-DeRemer would be, astatine nan very least, an upgrade from Trump’s erstwhile appointee arsenic Labor caput during his first term. That was Eugene Scalia, boy of nan precocious Supreme Court justice, who had been a lawyer for large corporations fighting unions and resisting workplace regulations.

The astir commonly expressed uncertainty astir Chavez-DeRemer was whether she would person nan fortitude to support a pro-labor stance successful nan look of nan unfastened hostility to workers displayed by Trump and nan remainder of his administration.

Within months, nan reply was clear, and it was no. In May, she ceased enforcing a Biden management rule that had discouraged businesses from designating their workers arsenic independent contractors, depriving those workers of nan ineligible protections and costs and hr benefits they would person received arsenic employees.

The fund she submitted to Congress past twelvemonth would slash her agency’s discretionary backing by much than 35%, to $8.6 cardinal from $13.2 billion, and trim its workforce by astir 4,000 full-time workers, aliases much than 26%. In July she announced a scheme to rescind 63 regulations that had been designed to thief workers.

With connection that sounded cribbed from nan MAGA playbook, she said her extremity is to “eliminate unnecessary regulations that stifle maturation and limit opportunity.” Most of nan regulations facing nan guillotine related to worker wellness and information protections.

Brief arsenic it was, Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure wasn’t nan first clip that nan Department of Labor was ill-served by its management. Republican presidents person displayed a decades-long inclination to capable nan apical spot pinch governmental cronies aliases pro-business activists masquerading arsenic worker advocates, aliases worse.

Frances Perkins, Franklin Roosevelt’s Labor secretary, recalled having to cleanable up nan agency — not conscionable morally and ethically, but pinch broom and bucket, erstwhile she took complete from William Nuckles Doak, Herbert Hoover’s appointee.

The Labor Department was located successful a converted flat building, its interior acheronian and foreboding, its shadowy corners occupied by silent, hulking men whom Perkins mentally branded “cigar successful nan area of nan rima types. Stale ashtrays and spittoons were everywhere, on pinch wastebaskets surrounded by mounds of misaimed and crumpled papers. (Its existent Washington quarters are successful nan Frances Perkins Building.)

Doak didn’t look inclined to time off nan premises. Perkins sewage free of him by sending him to luncheon and packing up his individual effects while he was out.

Perkins’ first measurement arsenic caput was to disband an anti-immigrant squad that shook down foreign-born laborers for rate and helped employers harass labour organizers. She group a precocious modular for nan agency, pushing guardant authorities establishing nan 40-hour workweek and nan National Labor Relations Board — and besides creating Social Security.

Many of Perkins’ Democratic successors person watched sadly arsenic their efforts person been undone pinch a alteration successful administrations. Robert Reich, who served nether Bill Clinton (and is now an emeritus professor of nationalist argumentation astatine UC Berkeley and an assiduous blogger), wrote Tuesday of having loved nan agency’s mission: “to protect and raise nan modular of surviving of moving Americans.”

With Reich astatine Labor, nan Clinton management raised nan national minimum costs successful 1997 from $3.35 an hour, wherever it had been stuck since 1980, to $5.15 (albeit still a cheeseparing $10.69 successful today’s buying power). “We fought against sweatshops,” Reich recalled. “We took connected large corporations that were cheating their employees. We kept workers safe.”

That nan agency has been “treated for illustration crap is an reproach to generations of hardworking DOL employees, to American workers, to America,” Reich wrote.

Under Trump, nan Department of Labor has go conscionable different pro-business beforehand pretending to advocator for workers. Genuine labour advocates are infuriated by its decline, which has proceeded nether Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

The fund for its all-important costs and hr division, which enforces laws governing nan minimum wage, overtime and prohibitions connected kid labor, has shrunk by 26% complete a decade, according to David Weil, who headed nan section nether Obama and whose assignment by Biden to caput nan section was derailed by guidance from Big Business.

“There were 1,050 investigators moving for nan agency erstwhile I had nan grant to lead it successful nan Obama administration,” Weil, who is simply a professor of societal argumentation and guidance astatine Brandeis University, wrote past year. “It has hardly complete one-half that number now. The agency had 63 times much investigators per workplace successful 1939 than successful 2024.”

Trump poses arsenic a pro-worker force, but his policies are atrocious for nan laboring class. His Labor Department “walked distant from a norm that expanded overtime protections to millions of workers,” Weil observed.

“While Congress’s ‘big beautiful bill’ boasts its worker-friendly removal of taxes connected overtime, that proviso benefits only a mini portion of workers and revoking nan overtime regularisation further reduces nan number of workers eligible for overtime protections erstwhile moving agelong hours,” he wrote. “Or return nan administration’s onslaught connected low-paid workers whose employers clasp national contracts, by rescinding a $15 minimum costs for contractors covered by a Biden-era executive order, which benefited building workers, purportedly a cardinal Trump constituency.”

The Labor Department plays a domiciled not only successful regulating existent workplace conditions but looking up astatine nan “long-term prospects of our labour markets,” Weil told maine Tuesday. “For example, nan chat of ‘affordability’ is rooted not only successful quickly rising value levels but besides nan debased level of semipermanent net growth. Equally, our beliefs astir nan early prospects of employment and opportunity for college-educated workers are being upended by nan imaginable impacts of AI.”

He added, “Questions for illustration these require that nan Labor Department beryllium led by superior and knowledgeable individuals who spot nan interests of workers arsenic their focus. So far, this management has shown contempt for this mission,” arsenic is shown by nan diminution and autumn of Chavez-DeRemer.

Sometimes, nan departure of an underperforming executive aliases charismatic presages improvements ahead. That hasn’t been nan shape nether Trump, and sadly, it’s not apt to hap astatine Labor.