President Joe Biden recently nominated Rich Trumka Jr. to serve as the next commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, an independent government organization with wide-ranging authority over consumer goods.
Trumka Jr. is the son of Richard Trumka, the longtime president of the nation’s largest labor union, the AFL-CIO. Trumka endorsed Biden in the 2020 election, but he was also quick to criticize Biden’s decision to shut down the Keystone XL pipeline over concerns regarding thousands of canceled union contracts.
“I wish he had paired that more carefully with the thing that he did second, by saying here’s where we’re creating jobs,” he told Axios‘s Jonathan Swan at the time of Biden’s decision. “If you destroy 100 jobs in Greene County, Pennsylvania, where I grew up, and you create 100 jobs in California, it doesn’t do those 100 families much good.”
Though Biden pledged during the campaign to work closely with unions should he win the 2020 election, the president drew fire from House Republicans for waiving ethics requirements for union officials serving in government over concerns those appointments might give rise to conflicts of interest. He also appointed two union figures, former AFL-CIO official Celeste Drake and American Federation of Government Employees official Alethea Predeoux, to administration posts.
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“While some claim President Biden’s ethics pledge is allegedly the most stringent ever, unions are receiving special treatment,” OGR ranking member Jason Comer and Education and Labor Committee ranking member Virginia Foxx wrote in a letter to the administration. “By appointing former union officials to positions that directly interact with their former employers, unions stand to directly benefit from Biden Administration policies.”
Trumka Jr. currently serves as general counsel for the economic subcommittee at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
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“In this position, he works on oversight and investigations related to consumer protection, consumer product safety, and public health,” the White House wrote, noting that Trumka also “previously served as Assistant Attorney General in the Consumer Protection Division of the Maryland Office of the Attorney General.”
