In a 12-11 vote Thursday, a committee of the U.S. Senate advanced Keith Sonderling one step closer to becoming the next Secretary of the Department of Labor.
The party-line vote from the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee sets Sonderling up for a full vote before the Senate, which is expected to approve his nomination. The vote comes after a committee hearing earlier this month in which Sonderling was pressed on a number of hot-button HR issues, including overtime and independent contractor rules. On both issues, the Trump administration has reversed course on from Biden-era policies.
He was also questioned about his perspective on AI’s influence on the American workforce. Sonderling has been a vocal backer of federal AI curriculum to advance AI upskilling and has been a key figure in the creation of the AI Literacy Framework and text-based AI training for American workers.
Sonderling has been an advocate for the DOL taking a more proactive approach to AI fluency—shifting the department from overseeing compliance to working with organizations to thrive in an AI economy, he told HR Executive at last year’s HR Tech conference.
“What we’re starting to see is less focus on what these products can potentially do wrong versus how do we now compete on the global stage—not only for talent, but how can we start using AI to really help skill our workforce and also the next generation of workers,” Sonderling told HR Tech Editor Jill Barth. “That’s what we’re focused on in the Trump administration and the DOL: how to get these baseline skills-to workers, students, everyone involved so they can actually use the programs and we can see programs continue to be developed and purchased by corporations to really make workers more productive and businesses thrive in this new economy.”
Sonderling has been serving as the acting head of DOL since the spring, following the departure of former Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. His official confirmation caps a career that has seen him serve on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and as Deputy Secretary of Labor.
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