OPINION: Lori Chavez-Deremer has betrayed American workers

Published 3:26 pm Wednesday, September 3, 2025

At an Aug. 26 cabinet meeting,  Trump Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-Deremer showed why she no longer holds elected office in Oregon. In a display of abject servility, C-D thanked ICE, urged the Attorney General to come to Oregon and “crackdown” on Portland and invited Trump to look at his “big beautiful face” on a banner that she has hung on the Department of Labor building. It’s clear that C-D will do nothing to improve the lives of American workers during her term, and for the simplest of reasons: She has other priorities.

The labor secretary now serves in the most anti-labor administration of the past century. No amount of phony adulation can hide the truth: A principled leader would have declined the offer at the outset. But not C-D. So during this Labor Day week, let’s look at Trump’s record so far.

During his campaign Trump assured workers he would fight for them, claiming “I have a great relationship with unions.” Today the White House boasts that workers now enjoy “increased opportunities, better wages, and more bargaining power.” In fact, his policies quickly erased that claim once he took office.

Trump paraded billionaires around him for his inauguration. But from the start he targeted federal workers, trashing them as “crooked and dishonest.” In March he issued a sweeping executive order that stripped away the collective bargaining rights of over a million federal employees. Some 80% of unionized workers across more than 30 agencies lost the ability to negotiate over workplace safety, staffing and fair pay. Earlier he canceled the Transportation Security Administration’s union contract, targeting another 50,000 officers. A federal judge called Trump’s justification “threadbare” and unlawful.

Trump unleashed Elon Musk and his DOGE minions to fire workers and close programs in complete disregard of federal law. He has boasted that over 300,000 will have lost their jobs by year’s end. Instead of a professional civil service,  Trump aims to install a spoils system in which civil servants must pledge loyalty to his agenda. What does it mean to pledge your loyalty to lawbreaking?

Unions remain central to how workers fare in our economy. It’s well known that unionized workers receive higher wages and enjoy better working conditions and benefits. Trump immediately set out to reduce the number of union members in the workforce. Labor historian Joseph McCartin called Trump’s March executive order “by far the largest single action of union-busting in American history.” Trump’s assault harms workers in every state who help veterans, support farmers, protect our food supply, respond to disasters and care for the sick.

Private-sector workers can’t directly sue their employers for violating their organizing rights, so they must rely on the National Labor Relations Board. Trump has sought to paralyze the NLRB by firing member Gwynne Wilcox, along with NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. Since its creation in 1935, no president had ever fired a board member. Trump’s move both violated the National Labor Relations Act and left the current board without a quorum to make decisions.

In April Trump stood for a photo op with coal miners at the White House, declaring again his support for the industry. Yet away from the cameras, the program that screens miners for black lung disease has been gutted — staff laid off, mobile clinics parked and unused, safety rules delayed. When such health care protections vanish, so does real access to care.

Trump has directly attacked workers’ wages and benefits. His Labor Department has abandoned the Biden rule that expanded the right to overtime pay for some 4.3 million workers. The DOL has also announced it will stop enforcing the Biden rule that made it harder for employers to wrongly classify workers as independent contractors; this will cost individual workers thousands of dollars each year.

Trump opposes any increase in the federal minimum wage, still stuck at $7.25 an hour. He rescinded a Biden executive order that raised the minimum wage for federal contractors; this will cut these workers’ pay anywhere from 25% to 60%. Biden took steps to end the sub-minimum wage for workers with disabilities. Trump immediately withdrew that rule, enabling employers to keep paying disabled workers less.

Trump’s July budget bill involves an unprecedented transfer of wealth from working people to the richest 1%. The Congressional Budget Office projects the new law will reduce the income of the bottom 20% of families by 4%. The AFL-CIO estimates that Trump’s Medicaid cuts alone will produce a loss of 880,000 jobs and increase overall healthcare costs for working families when their providers start passing their unreimbursed costs to employers.

Trump’s secret-police style raids have terrorized immigrant workers, detaining and deporting restaurant and hotel staff; farm and food processing and construction workers; and even meal delivery drivers. Trump’s policies make it harder to get and maintain work permits, visas and green cards. His administration has already produced labor shortages and higher inflation, and thereby eroded living standards throughout the workforce.

I could go on. How has C-D responded to this war on workers? No resignation in protest; not a peep. Driven by ambition and cowardice, she has no desire to take risks on behalf of American workers. Oregonians should remember her betrayal and never put her in elected office again in our state.

Jim Mitchell is a retired history teacher and former union president. He lives in Lake Oswego.