U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer denied Saturday that President Donald Trump engaged in union-busting in an executive order last week.
“Oh, absolutely not,” DeRemer said during a news conference with reporters that followed a roundtable with union and elected leaders in Nanticoke. “The President cares about the American workforce. I believe in the American workforce, we're in line with that, and we're going to create more jobs than we've ever seen before in this country.”
The roundtable took place in Nanticoke in the IBEW Local 163 Joint Apprenticeship Training Center, which trains union electricians. No one during the roundtable asked about Trump's executive order, but a WVIA reporter asked during the news conference.
In an executive order March 27, Trump ordered numerous federal agencies to end collective bargaining with employee unions whose missions center on national security. The Trump administration claims a federal civil service law “enables hostile federal unions to obstruct agency management.”
The administration also asked a federal court in Texas to allow federal agencies to cancel union contracts.
The agencies included the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and immigration agencies, but also agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Food and Drug Administration.
A group of federal unions challenged the executive order in court Thursday.
U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Luzerne), who hosted the roundtable, also disputed the idea that Trump is a union-buster. He pointed to the presence of union leaders, who spent much of the roundtable urging the secretary to bolster apprenticeship training programs.
“Everyone in there is part of the union. I mean, that's exactly what it's about: apprenticeship programs,” Bresnahan said.
Bresnahan later released a letter that he and other congressmen signed asking the administration to reconsider ending bargaining rights.
Reached after the meeting, Drew Simpson, president of Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters, said Trump is clearly trying to deny federal workers of their rights to belong to a union.
“So it appears she (Chavez-DeRemer) is playing word games as the administration always does,” said Simpson, whose union supported Democratic candidates last year.
Bresnahan spokeswoman Hannah Pope pointed out Simpson was invited to attend the roundtable and could have expressed his concerns if he did. Another carpenters union official, Daniel Clarkson, attended in Simpson's place.
Simpson said he had to attend the council's quarterly meeting so Clarkson went instead.
As the roundtable began, DeRemer, an Oregon mayor and congresswoman before Trump nominated her as labor secretary, touted her union background. Her father was a Teamsters union member, and she favored a bill that would have made it easier to organize a union.
Union members welcomed her visit, which she said was the first of a 50-state tour.
Warren Faust, preisdent of the Northeast Pennsylvania Building Trades Council and business manager of SMART Sheet Metal Workers Local 44 in Wilkes-Barre, asked Chavez-DeRemer for help funding apprenticeship program.
“Any help that we can get ... would be of help and a great investment into the future of apprenticeship,” Faust said.
Chavez-DeRemer said “that is not a partisan issue.”
“Expanding apprenticeship programs, advancing apprenticeship programs, understanding what that means is a focus for the Department of Labor and for myself,” she said.
Chris Darrow, an IBEW union leader, said data centers are sprouting across Pennsylvania and that will require “reliable, high-speed internet.”
“We're going to need an electrical grid that's very fluid and can turn on and off when needed. And I think that that has kind of like really expanded the needs for infrastructure investment,” Darrow said. “We want to see those (training) funds come to areas like Northeastern PA because we have training centers all throughout this country, and they're all going to need top notch, high-speed information ... that we can get our hands on.”
Bresnahan agreed, saying that will require skilled workers.
“You're talking about broadband. Well, you need splicers. You need people to be able to terminate, you need people to be able to string those data systems,” he said.
Clarkson, a representative of the Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters, urged the secretary to regulate labor brokers who pay undocumented workers in cash or non-taxable checks to work on local projects.
“Laws have to be adjusted to where labor brokers need to be more accountable for the people that they hire that are on our local job sites,” Clarkson said.
During the construction of a data center near Berwick, he said, many workers “disappeared” after Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
“I was told by some of the workers that we had union carpenters there ... it seemed like most of the jobs force on the construction side, the carpenter side, disappeared,” Clarkson said. “There's got to be a lot more accountability, documentation, something has to be written to stop this right now.”
DeRemer said she appreciates the suggestion.
“From the president's perspective, protecting the American worker is where our focus is,” she said.
