Trump adds insult to injuries with Scalia nomination

Bill Knight column for 9-2, 3 or 4, 2019

Days before Labor Day, President Trump on Tuesday (Aug. 27) confirmed that July rumors about his nomination for Labor Secretary were accurate, as he officially nominated Eugene Scalia to be the next Secretary of Labor.

Unions and pro-worker groups and politicians will forcefully oppose the move, but Scalia’s confirmation by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the GOP-majority Senate is likely – continuing the most anti-worker administration in U.S. history.

Scalia, a Washington corporate attorney and member of the Right-wing Federalist Society, is the 56-year-old son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The nomination hasn’t shocked labor leaders.

“It’s no surprise that Eugene Scalia has a long record of representing Big Business at the expense of working people,” said Chris Shelton, president of the Communications Workers of America. “He’s spent his whole career helping Big Business clients shirk their responsibility to treat their workers with respect and dignity.”

As a private-practice partner with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Scalia has represented Chevron, Kraft, Dole, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Viacom, Walmart, and Saudi Arabian oil interests. The nomination fits a pattern of Trump choosing employer minions, unionists say. The billionaire President’s first selection, in 2016, was Andy Puzder, a fast-food executive and critic of raising the minimum wage. After Puzder withdrew following his domestic-violence record, Trump pegged former bank chairman Alex Acosta, who had the position for two years until resigning due to his role as prosecutor in a plea deal for billionaire sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The Labor Department is supposed to safeguard workers and enforce laws enacted for workers’ benefits.

“The ability of everyday people to organize and collectively bargain with employers and others who have power over their economic sustainability is fundamental to a healthy democracy,” said Erica Smiley, Executive Director of the labor coalition Jobs with Justice (JwJ). “The Department of Labor is tasked with upholding this critical practice in a way that allows working people and executives to come to the table and negotiate on equal footing. This includes policies such as insisting employers provide ‘just cause’ when terminating someone to prevent retaliation, taking responsibility for the conditions of employees at all levels of contracting, and supporting workers’ ability to form unions. Any effort to disproportionately favor corporations at the Department of Labor inevitably undermines and erodes our democracy,”

The Senate didn’t confirm Eugene Scalia when George W. Bush nominated him to a Labor Department post in 2001, when the AFL-CIO blasted his “extreme views on key worker protections.” But Bush installed him anyway n a recess appointment. Now, the labor federation says, “He has threatened to destroy workers’ retirement savings [and] challenged the expansion of health care. The Secretary of Labor needs to be a true advocate for working people. Scalia’s views are dangerously outside the mainstream.”

Other labor-rights advocates agree.

David Madland from the Center for American Progress said, “His appointment is part of a larger pattern where Trump clearly goes after workers.”

For example, in 2000 Scalia fought the Occupational Safety and Health Administration when it tried to impose a rule on employers to identify and take responsibility for hazards contributing to repetitive stress injuries, arguing that the science behind prevention was “quackery.” Congress overturned the rule the next year.

In 2006, on behalf of Walmart, Scalia helped the corporate giant beat back a Maryland law requiring the company to spend 8 percent of their payroll costs on health care or pay into Medicaid.

And in 2010, he won a case for the Business Roundtable, a corporate lobby, against the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, which sought financial oversight after 2008’s economic meltdown.

Continuing to seek ways to eliminate regulations and worker protections, the Trump administration already has stacked the National Labor Relations Board with corporate voices, rolled back overtime rules for some workers, and continues to oppose raising the minimum wage. And the anti-worker agenda has Republican support.

“I’m confident he’ll be a champion for working Americans against red tape and burdensome regulation,” said U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).

Still, some remember what the cabinet position is supposed to do.

“The Secretary of Labor has the crucial responsibility of ensuring that employers provide working Americans in the United States with a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, safe and equitable working conditions, and other workplace rights,” added Jessica Felix Romero, JwJ’s Director of Communications. “Working people deserve no less than a champion and an advocate at the Department of Labor.”