Julie Su has been nominated to be Biden’s Secretary of Labor. She was previously deputy Labor secretary under Marty Walsh, who recently departed his post.
She is a daughter of Chinese immigrants and speaks Mandarin, checking off a diversity box for the administration. The GOP has not said how they’ll vote on her confirmation, but she already has a mark against her amongst those circles. She was the labor commissioner under California Governor Gavin Newsom, a deeply divisive and unpopular figure.
Before that stint, she was an attorney for immigrants and workers receiving the lowest wages, as well as working at a nonforprofit legal aid in Los Angeles.
One novel idea she has is that she wants “wage theft” police on the beat. She’d create a new division for law enforcement, both locally and federally, to go after corporations and business owners not paying a legal wage to their employees. Placating conservatives, this might serve as a huge blow to the illegal immigrant labor market. At the moment, there is very little oversight.
She already implemented the policy during her California gig, and it seems to be working. “We have filed over a dozen felony wage-theft cases with district attorneys across the state and we have had employers arrested and thrown in jail for the wage theft they committed,” Su said of her work when she was based in California.
There is no timeline for confirmation, but Biden is hoping to get her in soon. It may be a good possibility, as she’s one of the less controversial nominees Biden has put forward.
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