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Trump appointee Lori Chavez-DeRemer found herself facing a tight committee vote Thursday morning to head the Department of Labor. The question: was she too pro-worker for the job?

Apparently not.

On Thursday, the same Senate committee where the bill repeatedly died—Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP)—voted to move forward her nomination to lead the federal Labor Department. Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) joined Republicans in support, offsetting Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) “no” vote. The Democratic support in committee means Chavez-DeRemer will almost undoubtedly pass the full Senate floor vote.

Chavez-DeRemer seemed to allay many of the Republican committee members’ fears during her Senate confirmation hearing last Wednesday—taking pains to demonstrate that she regretted her cosponsorship of the labor-friendly PRO Act, rhetorically turning her back on workers and suggesting that she’d fall in line with Trump’s anti-worker agenda. To Paul, she called state “right-to-work” laws a “fundamental tenet of labor laws, where states have the right to choose,” and disowned the bill’s limitations on such laws. 

In fact, Chavez-DeRemer said, she only backed the PRO Act to better represent her congressional district—and to be part of the conversation in Congress about labor. “I recognize that that bill was imperfect,” she told Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the chair of the HELP Committee. “If confirmed, my job will be to implement President Trump’s policy decisions and my guiding principle will be President Trump’s guiding principle, ensuring a level playing field for businesses, unions, and, most importantly, the American worker.”

When Democrats introduced its first iteration, in 2019, the PRO Act—Protecting the Right to Organize—was the culmination of many labor advocates’ attempts to empower workers through increased union membership. Since unionization rates peaked at around one-third of the workforce in the 1950s—mostly due to legislation passed during the New Deal—those figures have steadily decreased, as waves of legislation have added obstacles to union participation. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a body within the US Department of Labor that collects data on workers and the economy, union membership was down to 9.9 percent in 2024.

That first version of the PRO Act would have strengthened workers’ rights to organize by, in part, banning retaliation for labor-related whistleblowing and strikes, including sympathy strikes (now illegal), preventing many employers from countering organizing drives through strategies like mandatory meetings meant to intimidate employees into voting against unions, and establishing penalties for employers who flout the National Labor Relations Board.

Many Republicans, unsurprisingly, hated it. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) called it “radical, backward-looking legislation” that would “diminish the rights of workers and employers while harming the economy.” The National Restaurant Association said the bill was “essentially setting fire to billions in taxpayer dollars.” The PRO Act even split Democrats, including opposition by both of Arizona’s senators at the time—Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema—among others. “The way I make decisions on behalf of Arizona and for our constituents is by listening to the business leaders,” Sinema said to members of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce. 

After passing the House in February 2020, the bill died in committee. So did a second version the next year. But Lori Chavez-DeRemer, then a first-term GOP representative from Oregon, was one of just three Republicans to support its third version, in 2023-24, making her an altogether surprising—and, to some Democrats, promising—pick for Donald Trump’s Secretary of Labor.

The vote results were largely down to Chavez-DeRemer’s backers pitching her as a rare pro-labor Republican who could reach across the aisle and speak with both workers and employers. Her story was promising for some worker advocates—she is both the daughter of a Mexican-American Teamster, and the owner of a medical business that earns between $1 million and $5 million a year, according to congressional financial disclosures. Although Chavez-DeRemer lost her 2024 House reelection campaign in Oregon’s fifth district, which includes parts of Portland and Eugene, she received support from at least 17 labor unions—more than the eventual Democratic winner, Janelle Bynum.

Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination frightened some Republicans—especially because the PRO Act would have overridden states’ so-called right-to-work laws, designed to limit union membership and defund labor, in part by easing the nonpayment of union dues. Her most prominent conservative naysayer was Paul, who said last month that he would vote against her in committee, and predicted that Chavez-DeRemer would “lose 15 Republicans” in a full Senate vote for being “very pro-labor.” 

But Teamsters Union General President Sean O’Brien, who has tied himself to Trump, was a fan—it was reportedly O’Brien who put Chavez-DeRemer forward as Labor Secretary to the Trump transition team. And when her nomination was announced in late November, O’Brien posted on X, calling it a significant demonstration that Trump was “putting American workers first.” The Teamsters—along with many other unions—backed Chavez-DeRemer, specifically citing her 2024 endorsement of the PRO Act.

As my colleague Serena Lin noted last July, O’Brien, who had previously called himself a “lifelong Democrat,” drew controversy in labor circles for his move toward Trump:

O’Brien’s critics from within the union argue that his appearance at the RNC will set a dangerous precedent at a potential turning point for American labor. Teamsters vice president at-large John Palmer has repeatedly publicly rebuked O’Brien’s involvement with Trump. In a recent op-ed in New Politics, he wrote that O’Brien’s speech at the RNC “only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and President I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.”

Palmer’s concerns came to pass, as a small but vocal faction of the GOP, including the likes of J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley, leveraged the nomination to burnish their images as supporters of certain workers’ rights. As Mother Jones’ Noah Lanard observed, this “small subset of Republicans who want to be seen as class warriors” pits American labor against imaginary enemies.

Immigration is one of them. During Chavez-DeRemer’s confirmation hearing last week, Sen. Hawley (R-Mo.) lobbed the nominee a friendly softball on whether Trump’s border crackdown was “pro-worker.” She agreed—in fact, Chavez-DeRemer had already said earlier in the hearing that “mass immigration…has hurt the American worker, and we want to make sure that we’re supporting President Trump in his endeavor to support the American worker at all costs.” 

Pinning labor issues on immigration is nothing new. As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote, many Republicans pushed that message during the 2024 election campaign.

Samantha Sanders, the Director of Government Affairs and Advocacy at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, says such rhetoric “is based on racism, xenophobia, and misinformation.” What does more to depress working conditions and wages, Sanders told me, is the large number of workers who—whether due to deportation concerns or other fears—are not able to push against exploitative labor conditions.

“If you want to make sure that immigrant workers are not pushing wages down and contributing to a race to the bottom,” Sanders says, “give them legal status to work, to be able to work above board, and, ultimately, have a pathway to citizenship.” She pointed to a report from the Immigration Research Initiative, another nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, and some of her colleagues at EPI, which found that immigration enables the US to experience continued economic growth despite an aging American-born population and a decreasing number of working adults. 

A separate EPI report detailed the damage wrought by a “two-tiered” system of workplace rights, especially among immigrants who only have temporary status through a work visa.

Hawley and Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), who stated during the hearing that he, along with the Teamsters’ Sean O’Brien, presented Chavez-DeRemer to Trump as a potential nominee, framed her as the candidate to make both sides happy: a nominee “uniquely positioned in the center.”

He also referred to his newfound friendship with O’Brien as an example of “bipartisanship.” (Mullin—a former MMA fighter—bizarrely challenged O’Brien to a fight during a HELP Senate committee hearing in November 2023 when the Teamsters president questioned his “self-made” business background.) 

But that’s simply not what the Labor Department is, Sanders explains. Just as the Department of Commerce, and employer-focused federal agencies like the Small Business Administration, engage the demands of employers, the Department of Labor “protects and promotes the interests of the American worker.”

Sanders told me she was “disappointed but not surprised” at Chavez-DeRemer walking back many of her supposed pro-worker positions to align with the Republicans on the committee. The nominee avoided giving a clear answer when Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) asked whether her vision of “putting American workers first” was compatible with the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and many employees having jobs without paid leave. 

She also sidestepped Sens. Murray (D-Wash.) and Murphy’s (D-Conn.) questions about Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reportedly getting access to the Labor Department’s data systems to search for supposed waste and fraud. According to NBC News, the information likely includes investigations into Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla, both of which face labor violation accusations, as well as confidential data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on topics like economic health and employment. 

The Democrats’ questioning seemed like an attempt to determine whether Chavez-DeRemer would be the pro-labor Republican that she was touted as or just another cabinet member who would fall in line with Trump. 

“Two months ago, before we saw how this administration was operating, it might have been more of a question of whether this is a place where an agency has some more leeway to make a case for positive changes,” Samantha Sanders said. “Now I think it’s pretty clear that they’re all supposed to do whatever they’re ordered to do.” 

One telling exchange for Sanders occurred during Murray’s questioning, where the Democratic senator asked Chavez-DeRemer what she would do if facing illegal instructions from Trump, noting that offenses have been “seen across the board since he was put into office.” Throughout the hearing, Democratic senators referred to attacks on workers like mass firings at the Labor Board and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that damaged and slowed both federal agencies. 

“I will commit to following the law, and I do not believe the president is going to ask me to break the law,” the nominee replied. 

“Well, okay,” Murray responded, visibly annoyed.

For Samantha Sanders, this was a significant departure from the promise of a supposed pro-worker Republican—and meant many Republican committee members’ calls for collaboration and bipartisanship from Democrats came off as bad faith. 

So what does Chavez-DeRemer’s ascent mean for labor under Trump’s second term? For unions, there may be immediate uncertainty. O’Brien acknowledged that the Teamsters disagreed with Chavez-DeRemer’s support of right-to-work in a Fox News interview hours after last Wednesday’s hearing. 

“But there is an opportunity to work bipartisan,” O’Brien told co-anchor John Roberts. “I’m working with senators like Josh Hawley to come up with a form of the PRO Act that may not include that.” He then echoed those Republicans’ new favorite words: “That’s the beauty of having conversations with people on the other side where you can collaborate.”

And regarding Trump’s dismantling of the federal government: “Let’s take a look at the hundred-and-first day and where we’re at at that point in time.” 

Trump has moreover nominated Keith Sonderling, who reportedly backs a pro-employer, deregulatory agenda, to serve as Deputy Secretary of Labor. His confirmation hearing took place immediately after the HELP Committee voted on Chavez-DeRemer. 

Sanders says that expectations have changed amid Trump’s all-out attacks on the state: The essential questions are now larger than Chavez-DeRemer’s voting record or even policies within the Department of Labor. The senators appear to also be interested in what nominees will do about the integrity of the federal government, she says. 

“It’s not just, ‘are you going to be allowed to carry a pro-worker agenda forward,’” Sanders said. “It’s also, ‘are you going to be compliant with an anti-worker agenda or even an anti-federal government agenda.’”

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