WASHINGTON—Two top House Democrats who deal with workers’ issues asked the Labor Department’s Inspector General to investigate yet another alleged scandal surrounding Trump Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
If IG Anthony D’Eespito agrees to probe this scandal, involving the Labor Department’s advisory committee on pensions—or lack of an advisory committee, thanks to Chavez-DeRemer—it would be his second investigation into the secretary’s performance in office.
Reps. Bobby Scott, D-Va., top Democrat on the highly partisan GOP-run House Education and the Workforce Committee, and Mark DeSaulnier, D-Calif., told the department IG, former GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, that DeRemer put DOL’s advisory council on the Employee Retirement and Income Security Act (ERISA) “on ice.”
Meanwhile, an outside ethics group, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, says DeRemer’s prior scandal, using DOL staffers for personal errands and DOL grants to promote her political career, shows the need for effective congressional oversight over DOL.
“As leadership is consumed by misconduct investigations, the department appears to have oriented away from its mission of protecting workers,” CREW said. “Oversight from Congress—rather than just from the agency’s scandal-plagued inspector general—is urgently needed.”
The advisory panel is supposed to give DOL valuable, bipartisan advice on the key pension protection law, ERISA—a law unions pushed through Congress in 1974. The Secretary is supposed to call quarterly council meetings, but there were none last year and none scheduled so far for this year.
One-third of the seats on the advisory panel are vacant, and it has no executive director to run daily operations, the two lawmakers added. And Trump’s DOL pulled all 2024 Biden-era advisory council documents from the DOL website. After a complaint, it restored them with no explanation.
With ERISA and its protections becoming ever more important as the nation’s working population ages and its population of retirees grows, including retirees whose pensions are dumped on the federal government when firms go belly-up, having such advice is important, the two lawmakers said. ERISA also legally created Individual Retirement Accounts. And the scandal is that Chavez-DeRemer, daughter of a Teamster, has effectively shut the ERISA advisory panel down.
“The ERISA Advisory Council was established by Congress more than five decades ago with the statutory mission of providing technical expertise to the department regarding complex issues relating to health care, disability, and retirement plans that cover more than 155 million workers, retirees, and their family members,” the two lawmakers wrote.
“Its functions are clearly specified under ERISA, which, among other things, establishes the council as a permanent” advisory committee on pension issues.
Chavez-DeRemer did not discuss the council in two House hearings last year and ignored a direct letter from committee members seeking a written response about what’s going on. The silence prompted Scott and DeSaulnier to push D’Esposito to open an investigation. If D’Esposito follows through, it would be his second investigation of the secretary.
The first, which is ongoing, probes a culture of sexual harassment at DOL, including by Chavez-DeRemer’s husband. Two of the four named complainers also went to a federal police agency, the Executive Protective Service, which investigated but decided not to bring charges. But Chavez-DeRemer’s husband has been barred from the DOL headquarters.
They also took their complaints to the federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, which enforces the Civil Rights Act’s ban on sexual discrimination on the job. Those women described DOL as “a toxic workplace” under Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure.
The EEOC complaints “portray Chavez-DeRemer as an agency leader who fostered a hostile workplace where staff feared punishment for speaking out or resisting directives they considered inappropriate,” MSNOW, formerly MSNBC, reported. “One says the Labor Secretary also directed staff to perform personal chores for her, including cleaning out one of her clothing closets.”
On her behalf, Chavez-DeRemer’s attorney denied all the toxic workplace and sexual harassment charges. Her husband’s attorney declined to comment.
Reps. Scott and DeSaulnier didn’t mention those workplace complaints, nor that Trump White House personnel staffers had Chavez-DeRemer fire three top aides, including her own chief of staff, for questionable ethics. But Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington cited all the complaints as an example of how DOL desperately needs congressional oversight.
Under Trump, 2,000 DOL workers were fired, and labor enforcement agencies saw spending and staff cuts averaging 14%. One, which ensures federal contractors comply with civil rights laws, would be abolished in his proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins October 1.
“Against this backdrop of weakened capacity, scandals within the Labor Department’s leadership only deepened the crisis, and raised questions about how the agency could effectively advocate for workers,” CREW said.
“An internal complaint filed with” D’Esposito in January “alleged Chavez-DeRemer and her closest aides used department resources for personal trips and attempted to use department grants to benefit the secretary’s political career.” Chavez-DeRemer is a former Oregon congresswoman.
“A complaint also alleged Chavez-DeRemer was having an affair with a member of her security team. In interviews, more than two dozen current and former Labor Department employees described a toxic workplace—characterized by an absentee secretary, hostile aides, and a deeply demoralized staff,” CREW said.
“As Trump continues to chill the ability of watchdogs to do their jobs,” including firing 17% of the Labor IG’s staff, “and replaces effective nonpartisan public servants with unreliable politicians like D’Esposito, stronger oversight from Congress is the best avenue to address the growing chaos within the Labor Department,” CREW concluded.
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