GOP senators see Biden’s Labor pick as too friendly with unions
By Jacob Bogage | Originally posted on WashingtonPost.com
At Julie Su’s confirmation hearing, Republican lawmakers accused her of favoring organized labor groups over employers.
Biden nominated Julie Su, the deputy labor secretary, in February to succeed Marty Walsh, who left the post to lead the National Hockey League’s players union. Republicans during the hearing Thursday said they worried Su could not be a neutral arbiter between unions and employers, citing her long history representing workers and interactions with organized labor groups while serving as deputy secretary.
Su’s calendars show she has standing meetings scheduled with union officials, but none with business associations, said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah).
Su said she could be a neutral party and has a history of resolving labor disputes, including helping lead a marathon bargaining session in September that averted a national rail strike.
She also was an outside participant in talks between workers and employers at crucial West Coast ports, drawing on relationships with union and business leaders there from her time as secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency from 2019 to 2021.
Port officials and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union reached a tentative agreement on “certain key issues,” the sides announced, while Su was in the middle of her testimony.
“I did recently impress upon them the urgency of the issue,” Su said of her conversations with port and union officials. “I am pleased that they have made real progress that has been announced.”
She told a Senate panel on Thursday that she’d draw on lessons from her immigrant parents’ lives as small-business owners and her decades of experience as a labor lawyer to lead the agency.
“When he announced my nomination for U.S. secretary of labor, the president called me the ‘American Dream.’ My parents believed in it. I benefited from it. And I want to do my part to make sure it is a reality for workers across the nation,” Su said.
But her Senate approval is far from assured. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) has voiced concerns about Su to the White House, The Washington Post reported earlier in April. That means Su cannot lose another Democratic vote in the chamber.
Complicating matters further is the absence of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D), who has remained in her home state since February while recovering from shingles. Feinstein, 89, has missed dozens of votes since then, stalling confirmation proceedings for Biden judicial nominees, and now potentially a Cabinet secretary.
Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) have also declined to say if they’ll support Su, and major business interests — including the International Franchise Association, American Trucking Associations and Associated Builders and Contractors — have aligned to defeat her appointment. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will vote on whether to advance her nomination to the full chamber on Wednesday.
“Sometimes it happens that big business lobbyists decide collectively that they are going to flex their muscle and try to defeat a highly qualified candidate,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.). “And often those attacks have very little connection to the actual person and their record. In fact, they are about politics and money. I think this is one of those examples.”
Su’s work in California was the focus of much of Republicans’ criticisms. She was tasked with implementing state laws that cracked down on the misclassification of gig economy workers and independent contractors.
Conservatives argued that those policies harmed small businesses and that unemployment insurance programs she administered were wasteful.
California’s pandemic unemployment assistance program was also victim to an 11 percent fraud rate, lower than many other states’, but still worth tens of billions of dollars in misspent funds.
“I don’t know how in the world it makes sense for the president to nominate you to take over this department,” Romney said. “To work behind Marty Walsh is one thing and to learn from him, but you haven’t had experience negotiating a major deal between unions and management and your leadership of an enterprise resulted in $31 billion in fraudulent payments. What am I missing?”
Su’s nomination is being debated amid concerns about child labor and a possible recession, despite a resilient job market.
The Biden administration also has pointed to surging cases of illegal child labor. The Labor Department reported a 69 percent increase of minors employed in violation of federal law since 2018. Many of those violations have occurred among undocumented immigrant children.
“If we’re genuine and sincere about our dismay about the reported child labor violations, then you need to agree that we need Julie Su confirmed as soon as possible,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said.
