Hiltzik: Trump's Labor secretary departs, leaving scandal and vast disappointment in her wake - BERITAJA

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, the 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 the August 2025 session.) Fun fact: She had represented a Portland suburb arsenic a Republican for a azygous House term.

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

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

As I reported aft her nomination, labour activists and pro-labor politicians made encouraging noises about her. Among them was Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.): “It’s a large woody that 1 of the fewer Republican lawmakers who person endorsed the PRO Act could lead the 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 the job.”

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

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

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

Within months, the 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 the 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 about 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 the MAGA playbook, she said her extremity is to “eliminate unnecessary regulations that stifle maturation and limit opportunity.” Most of the regulations facing the guillotine related to worker wellness and information protections.

Brief arsenic it was, Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure wasn’t the first clip that the Department of Labor was ill-served by its management. Republican presidents person displayed a decades-long inclination to capable the 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 the 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 the area of the 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 the Frances Perkins Building.)

Doak didn’t look inclined to time off the 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 the agency, pushing guardant authorities establishing the 40-hour workweek and the 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 the agency’s mission: “to protect and raise the modular of surviving of moving Americans.”

With Reich astatine Labor, the Clinton management raised the 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 the 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, the 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 the minimum wage, overtime and prohibitions connected kid labor, has shrunk by 26% complete a decade, according to David Weil, who headed the section nether Obama and whose assignment by Biden to caput the section was derailed by guidance from Big Business.

“There were 1,050 investigators moving for the agency erstwhile I had the grant to lead it successful the 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 the 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 the overtime regularisation further reduces the number of workers eligible for overtime protections erstwhile moving agelong hours,” he wrote. “Or return the 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 the “long-term prospects of our labour markets,” Weil told maine Tuesday. “For example, the chat of ‘affordability’ is rooted not only successful quickly rising value levels but besides the debased level of semipermanent net growth. Equally, our beliefs about the early prospects of employment and opportunity for college-educated workers are being upended by the imaginable impacts of AI.”

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

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