Marty Walsh: Nominee Currently: Eugene Scalia
Under Trump, the Department of Labor has taken a largely employer- and industry-friendly approach that has frustrated worker advocates, labor unions and Democrats, and drawn particularly vocal outcry during the pandemic.The DOL passed rules that exempted large numbers of workers from the paid sick leave requirements in the Families FirstCoronavirus Response Act, and issued strict guidelines for unemployment insurance payouts to gig and self-employed workers that many saw as restrictive.
Its workplace safety division, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, has declined to institute ironclad safety standards for the coronavirus, issuing only recommendations for employers instead of an enforceable set of rules.Before the pandemic, the Department took moves to restrict the ability of workers told hold joint employers accountable for wage and hour violations, and reduced the number of workers who were eligible for mandatory overtime payments.
Marty Walsh
Boston mayor
Walsh, who got his union card in 1988 when he joined Laborers Local 223, has a long history in organized labor, most recently as the head of Boston Building Trades before he became mayor. He also served as a state representative for 16 years.
Source: Washington Post Reported by Eli Rosenberg.
************************
2021-01-12 Marty Walsh: ‘I’m not going to Washington alone. I’m bringing Boston with me.’
2021-01-08 Biden Formally Introduces ‘Tough As Nails’ Marty Walsh As Labor Secretary Nominee “He sees how union workers have been holding this country together during this crisis, health care workers keeping our hospitals safe, clean and effective and efficient,” said Biden. “This is one of the most important departments to me; I trust Mayor Walsh.” If confirmed, Walsh would be the first union member to be Secretary of Labor in nearly 50 years.
2021-01-07 What Biden’s Nomination Of Boston Mayor Marty Walsh To Be Secretary of Labor
2020-11-11 Multiple national union leaders are backing Marty Walsh to be Joe Biden’s labor secretary
,
2021-01-05 Biden and Labor, Revisited I understood Walsh’s support from AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka, but that I found his support from AFSCME President Lee Saunders and AFT President Randi Weingarten—progressive leaders of powerful progressive unions—to be somewhat inexplicable. “He’s been at the forefront when it comes to promoting people of color, making sure people of color have a fair shake,” Saunders told me. “I can’t speak more highly of him.”
Which is to say, Walsh occupies a very special and important niche in the Democrats’ ecosystem. Unlike the overwhelming majority of today’s leading Democrats, he is of the white working class, championing its workers’ interests while also working to align its perspectives with the needs and goals of today’s more multiracial and less predominantly male working class. It’s easy to see why Biden should want at least one prominent member of his administration to credibly play that role. Subsequently, it’s easy to see why he would want Walsh at Labor.
2020-12-24 Mysteries of the Labor Secretary Pick By various accounts, President-elect Biden is still agonizing over his choice for secretary of labor. Politico reports that all else being equal, he’d like to pick his old comrade, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. But there’s substantial pressure on him to choose California Labor Secretary Julie Su or former Ambassador to South Africa and Open Society Foundations President Patrick Gaspard instead.
Walsh seems to be the clear choice of the labor movement’s old guard. Before he became Hizzoner of Beantown, he headed the city’s building and construction trades union council, where he aggressively promoted the inclusion of women and minorities in the ranks of these largely white working-class toilers.
In recent years, though, the white male working class constitutes a shrinking percentage of the workforce and the labor movement, as industries with diverse unionized workforces like teachers, housekeepers, nurses, and janitors gain prominence. Then again, the building trades unions, still largely led by white males, have punched above their weight in the AFL-CIO, not least because two of the nation’s largest unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), aren’t Federation members.
2020-12-24 Will California’s Julie Su Be Biden’s Labor Secretary? President-elect Joe Biden campaigned on the most ambitious pro-union platform since Franklin Roosevelt. Labor activists hope that he’ll also pick the most pro-worker secretary of labor since FDR selected Frances Perkins for the job.
The one leading candidate who best fits that description is California Labor Secretary Julie Su, whose candidacy is being avidly promoted by the state’s labor and immigrant rights activists. Like Perkins, Su became an acclaimed public figure as an advocate for immigrant sweatshop workers and has spent her career fighting for workers’ rights and a fair economy. And like Perkins, Su has been witness to an almost unfathomable outrage inflicted on workers.
Perkins, the nation’s first female Cabinet member, held the post from 1933 to 1945, during the Great Depression and World War II. She was the longest-serving and most influential labor secretary in the nation’s history. Perkins championed many of the New Deal’s boldest programs, including Social Security, the minimum wage, the 40-hour workweek, and the National Labor Relations Act, which gave workers the right to unionize.
.
progressiveissuesblog 