Joe Biden announced Deputy Labor Secretary Julie Su as his nominee to replace the outgoing Marty Walsh as labor secretary. Biden would never pick a labor secretary we agree with ideologically, but he can certainly do better than Su.
News reports on Biden’s decision tend to note that Su would be his first Asian-American cabinet secretary. NPR’s coverage was especially race-obsessed, highlighting Su’s career as a civil-rights advocate for Asian Americans and her support from Asian-American lawmakers.
Not all Asian-American lawmakers, though, as NPR begrudgingly notes. Representative Young Kim (R., Calif.) joined with other California House Republicans to write a letter to Biden opposing Su before she was even nominated.
Before becoming deputy labor secretary, Su was California’s labor secretary, a role in which she performed terribly. One of the worst state-level benefits frauds in American history occurred under her watch, with an estimated $32.6 billion in pandemic assistance being paid to scammers while Californians who actually qualified and were in need were put on waiting lists.
The NBC affiliate in Sacramento put together a documentary series on the fraud at the Employment Development Department, a state agency overseen by the Labor and Workforce Development Agency that Su led. They uncovered single addresses that received dozens of checks made out to dozens of different people. Payments were made to “Minnie Mouse” and “Poopy Britches.” The agency did not crosscheck recipients against prison records, and thousands of inmates, including convicted murderers, fraudulently took unemployment benefits. It sent out tax forms to people who never applied for benefits, forcing them to unravel the problems that identity thieves created. In a failed effort to constrain the fraud, the agency froze benefits for thousands of legitimate disability recipients, leaving them in a bureaucratic quagmire while scammers continued to steal billions.
The U.S. Department of Labor has its own fraud problems, with its inspector general telling Congress that at least $191 billion in payments were improper during the pandemic. Biden has said in the past that he wants to clean up pandemic fraud, but putting Su in charge of the federal labor department after her tenure at California’s labor department sends the opposite message.
Aside from basic questions of administering the law, California has some of the worst labor policies in the country, and they should be kept as far away from the federal government as possible. A.B. 5, which Su supports, restricts the ability of workers to be independent contractors. It has been especially damaging to the state’s trucking industry, where independent contracting is the norm. Despite widespread opposition from truckers, it has been pushed aggressively by the state government, at the urging of the Teamsters.
Not content to restrict workers’ freedom only in the most populous state in the country, unions want A.B. 5–style regulations at the federal level. Independent contractors overwhelmingly are satisfied with their employment status, and contrary to media impressions, most of them are not “gig workers.” Many are well-paid, full-time workers who value the flexibility that independent contracting allows them. Government shouldn’t ban their working situation in order to empower labor organizers to strong-arm them into joining a union.
California also passed the FAST Act, which Su supports. That bill would allow government to micromanage the fast-food industry in the state, with an unelected board that would have the power to set wages and create new regulations. It would allow the board to raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $22 per hour, which would then be subject to cost-of-living adjustments every year.
The FAST Act is so radical that even Californians said it went too far. The state’s own Department of Finance opposed the bill. As the result of a statewide petition, the law has been put on hold until a 2024 referendum.
The U.S. does not need to be more like California, especially on labor policy. Su is not being nominated to be secretary of Asian-American affairs, but rather secretary of labor. Her record as California’s labor secretary makes clear that she is unfit for the job.
She received zero Republican Senate votes when she was confirmed 50–47 to be deputy labor secretary. She should receive zero Republican Senate votes again, and Republicans should make the case against her nomination, and Democrats’ labor policies, in the strongest possible terms.