Senate confirms Keith Sonderling as labor secretary in party-line vote

The Senate voted along party lines Wednesday night to confirm Keith Sonderling as the permanent secretary of labor, closing out a five-month vacancy at the top of the department and capping the chamber's business before senators head home to campaign ahead of the midterm elections. The 47-41 vote fell entirely along party lines, with every Republican present voting to confirm and every Democrat and independent present voting no.

The official Senate roll call recorded the vote, numbered 256 of the second session of the 119th Congress, at 9:29 p.m. on September 30. Twelve senators did not vote. Sonderling, who had been serving as acting secretary since April, was sworn in shortly after, according to CBS News, which reported the confirmation came "coming weeks after Mr. Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, and after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was replaced in March," part of a broader run of Cabinet turnover this year.

The numbers

Sonderling's path to the top job at the Department of Labor ran through several formal steps over five months. He was designated acting secretary on April 20, nominated to the permanent post on June 29, and appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for a confirmation hearing on July 16. The committee advanced his nomination on a party-line vote of 12 to 11, sending it to the floor, where it sat for roughly two months before Wednesday's final vote. His official Department of Labor biography lists a B.S. from the University of Florida and a law degree from Nova Southeastern University, along with stints as a commissioner at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 2020 to 2024 and as deputy administrator of the department's Wage and Hour Division from 2017 to 2020. The Senate confirmed him as deputy secretary, the department's number-two post, by a separate 53-46 vote in March 2025.

How we got here

Sonderling's predecessor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, resigned on April 20 after the Labor Department's inspector general completed a months-long investigation into her conduct. The IG's report, running 44 pages, found what multiple outlets described as a "toxic, intimidating and humiliating" work environment and documented a series of policy violations; Chavez-DeRemer's exit followed reporting on allegations that included an improper relationship with a member of her security detail and misuse of department resources for personal travel. She had been one of the few Biden-to-Trump labor-world crossover picks, having earned some union support during her confirmation the year before, which made her sudden departure notable within labor policy circles.

Her exit was one of several abrupt Cabinet-level departures this year. Noem left the Department of Homeland Security in early March, and Trump fired Bondi as attorney general on April 2, writing on Truth Social that she would be "transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector." Sonderling, who had no connection to the circumstances of Chavez-DeRemer's departure, stepped into the acting role immediately and ran the department for more than five months before his confirmation as its permanent head.

Who is affected

The confirmation fight centered less on Sonderling's biography than on decisions made at the department during his time as acting secretary. In May, the department rescinded a Biden-era rule that had expanded overtime eligibility to an estimated 4 million additional lower-wage salaried workers, reverting to a narrower standard for who qualifies for time-and-a-half pay. The department also moved to pursue new rules on independent-contractor classification that labor advocates say would make it easier for companies to treat workers as contractors rather than employees, and it cut most of the staff from the office that enforces anti-discrimination requirements on federal contractors.

Those changes touch a wide range of workers: lower-wage salaried employees who lost overtime eligibility, gig and contract workers whose employment classification could shift, and job applicants and employees at companies holding federal contracts who relied on the discrimination-enforcement office. Business groups have broadly welcomed the changes as reducing regulatory burden, while labor unions have characterized them as a rollback of worker protections built up over the prior administration.

Reaction

Opposition during Sonderling's confirmation hearing centered on those same policy changes. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the HELP Committee's ranking Democrat, pressed Sonderling on the overtime rollback and the independent-contractor proposal, which she said would let companies "pay lesser wages — depriving workers of billions of dollars annually."

"I fear any vote to confirm you is for more of the same: to strip overtime protections for our workers, to undercut our unions and to let giant corporations get away with robbery, literally," Murray told Sonderling at the July hearing.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler had signaled similar concerns when Sonderling's nomination became public, saying the country needed "a labor secretary who understands working people." Republicans largely framed the confirmation as a matter of continuity and competence. Senator Rick Scott of Florida praised Sonderling's experience and said his confirmation would provide stable leadership at the department after Chavez-DeRemer's departure. Sonderling, for his part, told the committee in July that "few people have had the opportunity to experience the department from so many perspectives," citing his roles across the EEOC, the Wage and Hour Division and the secretary's office.

What happens next

The vote was the Senate's last major action before lawmakers left Washington to campaign ahead of the November 3 midterms, meaning Sonderling now runs the department through the final stretch of the election cycle without another confirmation fight pending. He is expected to continue pursuing the independent-contractor rule and has told senators he wants to expand "verification-first" approaches to unemployment insurance fraud prevention, pointing to lower fraud rates in states that have adopted similar systems.

Democrats, who do not have the votes to reverse any of the department's rule changes on their own, are likely to make the overtime rollback and contractor-classification proposal part of their midterm messaging on the economy, an issue polling has consistently shown near the top of voter concerns. Labor unions, meanwhile, are expected to continue pressing the department through the rulemaking process and the courts rather than through Congress, where Republican majorities in both chambers leave little near-term room to undo the changes made since April.