Given the never-ending political tumult within the Washington, D.C., Beltway, it was easy to overlook the Senate confirmation on September 26, 2019, of Eugene Scalia as Secretary of Labor.\u00a0 The party-line confirmation vote irritated workers and their representatives, who pointed out that Scalia\u2019s claims to be a neutral advocate of his clients\u2019 interests helped obscure his long-standing anti-labor politics.<\/p>\n
The Department of Labor was established as a Cabinet-level agency on March 4, 1913, the last day of the Taft presidency.\u00a0 The Department\u2019s purpose was to foster the well-being of wage earners by improving their working conditions and protecting their work-related rights.\u00a0 Throughout the remainder of the twentieth century, nobody doubted the Department of Labor\u2019s job was protecting working people.<\/p>\n
Eugene Scalia\u2019s career, by contrast, has been devoted to fighting workers and their unions on behalf of big business and the rich.\u00a0 The son of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Eugene Scalia was employed for twenty years in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.\u00a0 He represented, among others, Boeing, Chevron, SeaWorld, UPS, and Walmart, not to mention assorted Wall Street banks.<\/p>\n
Scalia also rose to prominence in the conservative Federalist Society and wrote anti-labor diatribes for the right-wing Cato Institute.\u00a0 In one particularly notorious episode, he argued that typing and other work at a computer could not cause carpel tunnel syndrome.\u00a0 Ergonomic regulation by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, he thought, would require businesses to give workers more rest periods, slow the pace of work, and force the hiring of more staff.\u00a0 For some, he became \u201cthe godfather of the anti-ergonomics movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, union spokesmen and progressive politicians were upset by Scalia\u2019s nomination and confirmation.\u00a0 Richard Trumpka, president of the AFL-CIO, called the confirmation of a man he considered a \u201cunion-buster\u201d to be nothing short of \u201cinsulting.\u201d\u00a0 Elizabeth Warren called the confirmation a \u201cdisgrace,\u201d and, according to Bernie Sanders, the confirmation was \u201cobscene.\u201d<\/p>\n
Interesting enough, Scalia defended his nomination by invoking the conventional lawyers\u2019 claim that advocacy is merely neutral representation.\u00a0 A good lawyer can and should represent anyone regardless of the lawyer\u2019s own politics and moral code.\u00a0 A life-long opponent of labor could turn on a dime and be labor\u2019s advocate.<\/p>\n
This claim might be appealing in an aspirational sense, but in a case like Scalia\u2019s it disregards his well-established alignment.\u00a0 The latter is not necessarily a matter of shaped partisanship or party affiliation.\u00a0 The designation of somebody\u2019s alignment is simply a recognition that people in specific situations will have predictable views of what should or should not be.\u00a0 Of course, recognition of this sort is crucial when countering a claim that a lawyer will be \u201cneutral\u201d when he joins the Cabinet.\u00a0 Can anybody honestly deny that Eugene Scalia has an anti-labor alignment?<\/p>\n
In the end, a foe of labor has arrogantly plunked himself in the Secretary\u2019s seat at the Department of Labor.\u00a0 A fox is guarding the hen house, and he is disguised as a neutral lawyer.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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