With a definitive popular and electoral victory and majorities in both chambers of Congress, it is beyond question Donald Trump is a figure of historic proportions. With such a prominent mandate, the American people sent an unequivocal message they wish to return to Trump policies that led to a prosperous, vibrant economy, and reverse the crippling damage the Biden-Harris agenda inflicted.
In firmly rejecting the Democrats’ labor policies on the hustings and at the ballot box, the electorate has urged a return to Donald Trump’s advocacy of evenhandedness between labor and management. President Trump’s wise vision and implementation of impartiality in the American workplace and the labor market-displaying neither antagonism nor favoritism toward either labor unions or employers-unleashed American ingenuity. Workers, in turn, were allowed to affiliate or not affiliate with a labor union based on their needs, not those of union bosses or employers.
The results spoke to President Trump’s foresightedness, as real wages rose and working conditions improved. Under President Trump, there was no risk of rail or port strikes, a natural result of President Biden’s supplication to unions. The selection of Lori Chavez-Deremer as Secretary of Labor, however, would threaten to hinder the necessary reforms of President Trump’s first term and risk the implementation of labor policy directly contrary to President Trump’s vision.
As a Congresswoman, Lori Chavez-Deremer was one of the three Republican cosponsors of the Orwellian named Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. The right to unionize, however, was already protected by federal law. Instead, the PRO Act compromised federalism by overriding 26 right to work state laws protecting a worker’s right of free association. It proposed to undermine workplace democracy by eliminating the secret ballot and implementing card check, a practice by which union agents seek employee signatures on authorization cards -often through fraud and intimidation-and require an employer to recognize a union as a bargaining agent without a democratic election. The PRO Act proposed to codify a broad joint employer standard that would ensnare many non-unionized employers and franchisees into bargaining orders regardless of the sentiment of their workers. Such a standard would end independent contracting and franchising-the bedrock of the 21st century economy-in all but name.
The PRO Act, as a vehicle for union bosses to straitjacket employees into unions whether they wanted to be or not, ran directly contrary to the wise policies President Trump espoused in his first term. That Congresswoman Chavez-Deremer was one of only three Republican cosponsors-out of a conference of over 200-speaks to a lack of judgment.
Congresswoman Chavez-Deremer chose to compound that error by cosponsoring the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act (PSFNA), a bill that would require every state and local government to bargain collectively with unions. The PSFNA also nullifies federalism by empowering the federal government to evaluate whether state laws meet standards of “federal sufficiency.” The federal government would then have license to eliminate a wide array of state laws ensuring union transparency and accountability.
The PSFNA would be a windfall for public sector unions such as the National Treasury Employees Union and the American Federation of Government Employees-all of whom campaigned vigorously against President Trump as a threat to democracy. By donating exclusively to Democrat political action committees, public sector unions granted Kamala Harris an unprecedented money advantage. Congresswoman Chavez-Deremer was one of only five Republicans to originally cosponsor the legislation before it was even introduced-another testament to her lack of judgment.
Mandated collective bargaining has raised the costs of government as much as $750 per citizen a year. It is responsible in large part for the present ill of a partisan, lethargic bureaucracy that sought to undermine President Trump at every turn during his first tenure in office. President Trump and Elon Musk admirably endeavor to reform through the Department of Government Efficiency. Appointing to a key Cabinet post an original cosponsor of a bill that shields federal workers from accountability would undermine that worthy agenda from the start.
