(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - President-elect Donald Trump has announced his nomination of U.S. Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer to serve as U.S. Secretary of Labor - one of only three House Republicans to co-sponsor the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and one of only eight Republicans to co-sponsor the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act.

Both Bills would help reform the nation’s badly broken system of labor law.

While Congresswoman Chavez-DeRemer’s support for these needed reforms is encouraging, if confirmed, she will be Secretary of Labor for a President who steadfastly pursued an ambitious Anti-Worker agenda during his first term in office.

Chavez-DeRemer has stated that “Working Class Americans finally have a life-line” with President-elect Trump in the White House.

If Workers truly have an ally in Chavez-DeRemer, she will advance policies that improve Workers’ lives.

Here are a few policies that will reveal whether the second Trump administration will actually aid Working Class Americans or be a continuation of his first administration’s agenda attacking Workers’ rights:

Win Funding For The U.S. Department Of Labor (USDOL) That Enables The Agency To Serve The U.S. Workforce: DOL and other Worker protection agencies have been chronically underfunded.  As the Workforce has grown, the budgets of these agencies have shrunk, leaving Workers without effective enforcement of basic minimum wage and overtime and health and safety protections.  Chavez-DeRemer should fight for and secure at least a $14 billion budget to ensure U.S. Workers have Health and Safety Inspectors and Wage and Hour Investigators on the job to enforce their rights.

Protect Workers’ Overtime: Overtime pay ensures that most Workers who put in more than 40 hours a week get paid 1.5 times their regular pay for the extra hours they work.  Most Hourly Workers are guaranteed the right to overtime pay, while Salaried Workers’ eligibility is based on their pay and the nature of their duties.  The USDOL recently issued a rule to raise the pay threshold for Salaried Workers to be eligible for overtime, which stands to benefit 4.3 million Workers.  Despite this benefit to U.S. Workers, corporate interest groups and conservative states challenged the rule in court. Chavez-DeRemer should fight for Workers’ right to overtime and continue to defend this rule in litigation.  She should not allow the Trump Administration to, once again, institute a low salary threshold for overtime eligibility that leaves millions of Workers without these protections and forced to work long hours for no additional pay.

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