Tell the President and your Senators: Keep the Department of Labor Strong with Julie Su
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Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
To President Biden: Labor Secretary Marty Walsh has helped your administration make great strides in honoring the dignity of work and labor unions as you bring millions of great manufacturing and infrastructure jobs back to the US. Since his department has been such a crucial element of your success, the most logical choice to succeed him as Secretary is Deputy Secretary Julie Su. She has the experience both with Secretary Walsh and as the former Secretary of Labor for California, the sixth largest economy in the world, to continue the great work you have started. And the Department of Labor should be headed by someone like Julie Su, who is sympathetic to labor and knowledgeable about worker-related issues.
To your Senators: Labor Secretary Walsh has helped the Biden Administration make great strides in reminding the public about the importance of unions as we bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. It makes sense to reward those efforts by supporting his deputy, former California Labor Secretary Julie Su, to replace him. This choice recognizes the department’s great work so far, the crucial role women play in our labor force, and Asian American Democratic leaders. And the Department of Labor should be headed by someone like Julie Su, who is sympathetic to labor and knowledgeable about worker-related issues.
Background
We were all thrilled with President Biden’s excellent, blue-collar State of the Union address, and we want the Department of Labor to continue its great work when Labor Secretary Marty Walsh steps aside. Deputy Secretary Julie Su is his ideal successor. She has dedicated her career to the promotion of workers' rights and fair labor practices and to advancing equity and opportunities for all workers, as Walsh’s deputy and in the California Department of Labor.
Deputy Labor Secretary Su is endorsed by both the Congressional Black Caucus and the Asian Pacific American Caucus, who noted that there are no Asian American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander cabinet secretaries in the Biden administration.
But former DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney wants the job, and as a prolific fundraiser, he has had some leading Democrats make calls promoting his candidacy. Yet he has been raising money from a lot of giant, union-busting corporations and is a member of the corporate-friendly New Democrat Coalition. That feels like a slap in the face to Democrats who remember our first Secretary of Labor, Francis Perkins. “To think about a guy who’s gone to the mat for big banks—but who’s never stuck his neck out for workers, even voting twice against Obamacare—filling a giant like Perkins’s shoes is absolutely enraging,” as The Nation’s Alexis Grenell notes.
Furthermore, as DCCC leader in 2022, Sean Patrick Maloney failed to hold the Democratic majority and is the first DCCC chair to lose his own re-election race in forty years. Some of his biggest failures were in his home state of deep-blue New York. The guy who was supposed to keep Rep. George Santos [R-N.Y.] from winning spent part of October partying with European millionaires under the auspices of fundraising instead of pumping money into battleground races and campaigning. Maloney’s failure has severely limited any hopes of major new legislation for the remainder of this presidential term. Nevertheless, some senior Democrats think he should be rewarded with a cabinet position for his fundraising in 2022. Surely they can find him some other position.
There is no shortage of cabinet positions headed by corporate-friendly appointees. Shouldn't there be at least one headed by someone who is labor friendly? Especially when a supremely well qualified woman of color is next in line for the job. Deputy Secretary of Labor Julie Su previously served as secretary for California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency.She has been a civil rights lawyer and workers’ rights activist for decades, and she also happens to be a MacArthur ‘genius’ who speaks Mandarin and Spanish.Let’s keep calling for our preside
References
Julie Su as Labor Secretary Is a Three-Fer - The American Prospect, 2/10/2023
Sean Patrick Maloney Has No Business Being in the Dept of Labor, The Nation, 2/13/2023
Statement in Response to Sean Patrick Maloney Being Pushed for Labor Secretary | Common Dreams, 2/09/2023
'Humiliating': DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney Concedes in New York, 11/09/2022
The Inside Story of Sean Patrick Maloney's Face Plant in New York, Slate, Nov. 2022