AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the labor government would likely oppose President Trump’s pick to be labor secretary, lawyer Eugene Scalia, arguing that the nominee has “only gotten worse” since his days as an agency official in the Bush administration. Trumka said Scalia, the son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, “has made a career out of trying to bust unions” ever since.
“When Eugene Scalia was nominated for solicitor of labor in 2002 we actively opposed him because he had a record of being so anti-union,” Trumka told reporters Thursday, referring to Scalia’s appointment in 2002 during the George W. Bush administration. “Since 2002 his record has only gotten worse.”
Trumka pointed to Scalia’s private sector litigation against broader ergonomics standards as an example. “His views are dangerously out of the mainstream,” he said.
As a private sector attorney, Scalia was involved in several high-profile cases that frustrated the Obama administration’s labor agenda. He was one of the attorneys retained by the Chamber of Commerce when it challenged the Labor Department’s 2017 “fiduciary rule,” which would have required all advisers managing tax-privileged retirement accounts to act in their clients’ best interests. Obama administration sought the change to crack down on conflicts of interest. Business groups argued it broadened the definition of fiduciary too far, clashed with existing regulations, and involved a regulatory change that only Congress could approve. A federal court agreed and vacated the rule last year.
Trumka did not definitively say that the AFL-CIO would oppose Scalia’s nomination, saying instead it would “most likely” happen. The White House formally submitted Scalia’s nomination to the Senate Tuesday. The nominee has not had a Senate hearing.
Scalia’s nomination was first announced last month. Scalia would replace Alexander Acosta, who stepped last month down following questions about how aggressively, as a Justice Department states attorney, he prosecuted a 2008 case against sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
[Also read: Labor secretary nominee Eugene Scalia faces conflict of interest problem in labor lawyer brother]
