The Trump administration is expected to be far less sympathetic to organized labor than the Biden White House proved to be. Why, then, did the president-elect pick former congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer to head his Department of Labor?
“I did not see this coming,” veteran lobbyist Franklin Coley remarks in this week’s episode of Working Lunch, the podcast that looks at the government developments’ impact on the restaurant business. “She’s probably the most union-sympathetic, union-friendly member of Congress who’s also part of the Republican caucus, and that’s a serious cause for concern.”
As he and co-host Joe Kefauver explain, Chavez-DeRemer was one of only four Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives to vote in favor of the PRO Act, a piece of legislation that could serve as organized labor’s Christmas list for Santa. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act aims to make the election of unions much easier and faster, with plenty of protections mandated for organizing drives like the one that’s turned more than 500 Starbucks units into union shops.
Coley and Kefauver, principals of the Orlando government-affairs firm Align Public Strategies, attribute the astonishing nomination to a heightened effort by the Republican Party to win the support of organized labor, traditionally a committed bedfellow of Democrats.
What might that mean for a labor-intensive business like the restaurant industry? Give a listen to the podcast for a sense of why employers should be worried.
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