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David Weil was one of Biden’s best appointees. The author of the classic book The Fissured Workplace, Weil is an expert on all the ways that corporations cheat workers out of earnings.
Biden reappointed him to the job he had under Obama, as head of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. In the intervening years, Weil has been my colleague as the dean of Brandeis University’s Heller School, where he has become an even more astute critic of labor abuses such as wage theft, misclassification of gig work, and the government’s underutilized powers to defeat them.
Word of this evidently reached corporate boardrooms. Weil’s confirmation was blocked by Republicans in committee for months. Democrats finally forced a Senate floor vote. But on Wednesday, three Democratic senators—Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and a novel faithless Democrat, Mark Kelly of Arizona, refused to support cloture and Weil went down, 47-53.
Politico described the trio as three of the caucus’s moderates. They are nothing of the sort. They are corporate.
Of the three, only Kelly is up for re-election, and in a swing state. But think about it. Is Kelly going to gain support because he voted against protecting workers from wage theft? Do swing voters even pay attention to confirmation of subcabinet appointees?
No, this is all about sucking up to corporate money and doing the bidding of America’s elites. Democrats failing to deliver for working families for decades brought us Trump. The more that corporate fakes like Kelly continue this shabby tradition, the more they prevent Biden from restoring a credible Democratic Party.
So we at the Heller School get to keep David Weil as our dean. That’s a comfort, but his country and his party needed him more.
There is a banner that hangs in the lobby of our school, where students and teachers research social injustice: Enough is known for action.
The time for action is long past. Manchin, Sinema, and now Kelly stand for reaction.
