If there were signs that President Trump’s first labor secretary Lori Chavez DeRemer wasn’t fully focused on the Labor Department’s mission, her successor Keith Sonderling may prove to have a bigger impact, but maybe not in the way many union members would hope. As an Oregon Congresswoman, Chavez DeRemer had cultivated good enough relations with some local unions that she’d been Teamsters President Sean O’Brien’s suggestion for the labor secretary post. Sonderling, on the other hand has gone back and forth in his career between working as an employer side labor lawyer and as a Republican executive branch appointee with a business-leaning approach to enforcement of labor laws.
During the first Trump administration, Sonderling served as a Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and briefly headed the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor. Since Chavez-DeRemer’s resignation in April after revelations of travel fraud, Sonderling has served as acting labor secretary.
By the time of his July 16 Senate confirmation hearing, he had reversed a Biden-era overtime rule that the Labor Department estimated would have expanded overtime eligibility to about 4 million more low-salaried workers, which U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington) strongly criticized him for during the hearing.
His confirmation vote ended up being along strict party lines, with 47 Republicans voting yes and 41 Democrats or Independents voting no, including all four senators from Oregon and Washington.
