The GigReporter

The Competitive Enterprise Institute reported1 that Congressional Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR) is lobbying to be nominated by President-Elect Trump for Secretary of Labor. She has no relevant experience with labor law or issues, and has supported federal legislation to adopt overly difficult independent contractor tests.

Rep. Chavez-DeRemer was elected to Congress in 2022 and was defeated in this year’s election, without having any distinguishing labor-related achievements or activity. Before that she had been the mayor of her hometown Happy Valley, a small city in Oregon with a population under 25,000. She therefore does not possess any expertise with national or large-scale labor issues.

Furthermore, Rep, Chavez-DeRemer was one of only a few Republicans in Congress to cosponsor the PRO Act. That legislation would institute the extremely harsh ABC independent contractor test for the purposes of federal labor law and broaden the scope of joint employment. Logistics brokers already have more than enough misclassification issues coming from state regulators and litigation; the last thing they need is tougher federal rules on top of those problems.

The courier and logistics industry rejects Lori Chavez-DeRemer as the nominee for Secretary of Labor. Please support the vast majority of Americans that want to work as independent contractors and not employees.

[1] “Congresswoman Chavez-DeRemer is not qualified to be Labor Secretary”, https://cei.org/blog/congresswoman-chavez-deremer-is-not-qualified-to-be-labor-secretary/ .  November 21, 2024.