WASHINGTON, D.C. — Large influential corporations that aim to violate workers’ rights or defraud consumers hire Eugene Scalia.
Scalia has built a career on being a top gun for anti-worker, anti-union corporations. It’s clearly what Scalia is good at. It’s his decades of experience as a high-powered attorney for corporate interests like Wal-Mart and the American Petroleum Institute that makes him among the most conflicted possible choice that
Donald Trump could make to be the next Labor Secretary.
The U.S. Senate may soon consider: can someone who put themselves in an adversarial role against workers time and again flip a switch and advocate on behalf of all the nation’s working families, even when their interests come up against those of his former clients?
A typical client for Scalia was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whom he represented in 2017 as it was challenging the U.S. Labor Department’s Fiduciary Rule, that required financial advisers and their firms provide retirement investment advice that is in their clients’ best interests. The rule was effectively delayed when the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately ruled in Scalia’s client’s favor, allowing unscrupulous Wall Street brokers to continue grifting their own clients out of their retirement savings without any consequences.
With President Trump now having a consistent track record of pro-corporate anti-worker policies, Scalia fits as a member of the Trump team.
