White House Will Renominate Julie Su As Labor Secretary Whether Republicans Like It Or Not

Before packing it in for the year on Wednesday, the United States Senate sent over 50 of President Joe Biden’s nominees back to the White House to restart the process all over again. Among them, unsurprisingly, was Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su.

Su, the former Deputy Secretary of Labor, has been serving in the position since her predecessor Marty Walsh stepped down in March. She should have been confirmed as Secretary right away, but Republicans, along with Joe Manchin, Jon Tester and Kyrsten Sinema, fiercely opposed it. Why? Well, you can probably guess.

But have no fear! The White House has decided that they don’t give a shit and Su is going to remain Acting Secretary of Labor (and pretty much be the Secretary of labor) whether they like it or not. Because if Republicans never have to play by the rules, then why should we?

“Julie Su will be renominated Secretary of Labor in the new year,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “That is something that we are committed to.”

GOOD.

Mostly for the same reason that conservatives and conservative publications like National Review have clutched their pearls so hard over her for the past year — Su has been a longtime champion for workers, unions and tends to take their side over big business.

Su frequently attributes her lifelong advocacy for workers to the fact that her mother, an immigrant, came to the US on a cargo ship, but was able to get a union job that helped her family ascend to the middle class, get healthcare and eventually start their own businesses.

In 1995, Su was the lead attorney in a lawsuit against a garment factory in El Monte, California, that had trafficked 72 Thai immigrants to the US and put them to work in a sweatshop sewing clothing up to 22 hours a day. The case has been referred to as the first post-abolition modern-day slavery case in the US, as the workers were not paid but rather indentured, supposedly to pay those who brought them over to the states in the first place. Su helped the workers recover $4 million in backpay for the workers and was awarded a MacArthur genius award for her work on the case.

On Twitter, the AFL-CIO wrote “In just one year, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su has rapidly expanded apprenticeship opportunities, created new workforce hubs, fought for rulemaking to protect our right to organize & SO much more.”

As a civil rights attorney and as a labor official, Su has been unwaveringly on the side of workers — which is exactly where she (and all of us) should be.

It’s the usual, really. They cry that she is “an activist,” that she’s “a radical,” an “anti-capitalist firebrand” or “too progressive” — and allow me, as someone who is very proudly and openly all of those things to assure you that Su is pretty much a regular Democrat who does some really good stuff.

Where the Right has (or, rather claims to have) taken specific issue with Su is her enforcement of AB 5 — a California law that prevents businesses from misclassifying employees as independent contractors. The law stipulates that workers are employees, and therefore entitled to everything employees are entitled to in the state, including health insurance, overtime pay, minimum wage laws, sick leave, unemployment and worker’s compensation unless the employer can prove that they meet all three of the following conditions.

• The worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact;

• The worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and

• The worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.

So, basically, businesses are not allowed to claim that their regular employees were “independent contractors” and avoid giving them those benefits, even if they really, really, really want to. Republicans (and, we can assume, Manchin and Sinema) believe they should be able to do that, for reasons.

The law made it so that thousands of rideshare drivers, janitors, construction workers, hotel workers, security guards, etc. were entitled to the same things any employee would be entitled to.

Now, the law isn’t perfect. I won’t say that. There are problems with the law insofar as it makes it extremely hard to earn a living as a gig-taking musician or a freelance writer or photographer and there needs to be much more of a balance as far as that goes (it’s one thing if a publication is using 200 freelancers instead of hiring writers full-time, as Vox was, but that is not the situation at most publications). But Julie Su did not write the law — elected officials in California did, based on a decision by the California Supreme Court.

SORT OF. So, their smoking gun, big bad reason for why they claim to have an issue with Su is their claim that she “oversaw” $20 billion in fraudulent COVID unemployment claims (though they often claim 30 percent). Factually, this is true. Except it’s also true that, percentage-wise, California had a lower rate of COVID unemployment fraud (11 percent) in comparison to other states.

“Here is what my colleagues conveniently ignore. During that same period, the unemployment insurance fraud rate was 15.4 percent in Tennessee, 15.3 percent in Arizona, 14.3 percent in South Carolina, and over 14 percent in Massachusetts,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, who chairs the SENATE Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee, explained during Su’s initial hearing. “All of those states had Republican governors and Republican Labor secretaries, and all of those states experienced higher unemployment insurance fraud rates than California.”

They are also upset that she isn’t “impartial.”

“We need a qualified Secretary of Labor who can impartially enforce the law, properly manage a department, and refrain from partisan activism. Ms. Su failed to show her ability to do any of those three things,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), the top-ranking Republican on the HELP committee. “It is clear Ms. Su lacks the necessary votes for confirmation. I urge President Biden to put forward a nominee who is committed to fair enforcement of our nation’s labor laws and is capable of being confirmed in the Senate.” 

Please to recall that Donald Trump exclusively nominated people who opposed the departments they led, and that while Julie Su fought against the human trafficking the conspiratorial right pretends to care about so deeply, his Labor Secretary was giving passes to Jeffrey Epstein. And you know who voted to confirm him?

Bill Cassidy. So I’m just gonna say that he should perhaps keep his mouth shut about Labor Secretary nominations forever, no?

Because they hate workers, want employers to be able to screw their workers with impunity, and thus do not like that she supports unions and is on the side of workers.

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We’re sure that this is all very difficult and painful for them, because they are used to people backing down and saying “Okay, we’ll do what you want, we don’t want to upet you or the job creators,” but they’re going to have to get over it — because Julie Su is here to stay, whether they vote to confirm her or not.

OPEN THREAD!