Steven Senne/AP Photo
Joe Biden with Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, right, June 5, 2019
Given all the support that the labor movement provided for Joe Biden, including heroic get-out-the-vote work by the hotel workers locals of UNITE HERE in Philadelphia and Las Vegas, labor will have more influence than usual in the selection of Biden’s secretary of labor. One new name on the list of people being seriously considered for the job is Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. Bloomberg first reported on Wednesday that Walsh was in the running.
Really? Why him?
Walsh is both a successful big-city mayor who knows real-world politics and a strong ally of the labor movement. He’s a white working-class progressive. He got his union card when he was 21. Before running for mayor, he headed the Boston Building Trades, where he was a tough negotiator.
“When the twerps from McKinsey try to take over, someone like Walsh is the kind of guy I’d like to have on the other side of the table,” one key player tells me. Walsh stars in the new, surprisingly affectionate Fred Wiseman documentary City Hall.
Two other labor stalwarts are in strong contention. Bill Spriggs, chief economist of the AFL-CIO and a senior economics professor at Howard University, served as assistant labor secretary under Bob Reich in the Clinton administration. (Disclosure: Spriggs serves on the Prospect board.)
Last June, Spriggs sent a powerful open letter to economists after George Floyd’s murder. In his letter, Spriggs called on fellow economists to recognize the racist roots of disparities in income and wealth.
People who can navigate the tricky shoals of labor and race are in short supply, and Spriggs is one of the best. These issues arise in the context of public works and public infrastructure programs, where community groups seek opportunities for young people of color and some unions want the jobs to go to established trades. These projects and jobs will likely be increased under Biden.
Another contender with a background in the labor movement is two-term Michigan Rep. Andy Levin. Before serving in Congress, Levin worked as an organizer for the Michigan SEIU, and then as assistant national organizing director for the AFL-CIO.
Levin comes from a storied Michigan labor family. His father is former congressman Sandy Levin and his uncle is former senator Carl Levin.
He has not been shy about pitching himself for the job. “When’s the last time we had a labor secretary who actually came out of the labor movement?” he recently told The Detroit News. “How many cabinet secretaries really come from the heartland? People in Michigan and people in the Midwest would like to see more representation.”
Another person often mentioned is Seth Harris, who was Obama’s labor deputy secretary and acting secretary. People I spoke to in the labor movement are at best lukewarm about Harris, if not hostile. “It would be a betrayal,” says one senior union official.
Harris worked to find a middle ground in efforts by Uber and Lyft to deny labor rights to their workers, which culminated on Election Day in the passage of California’s Proposition 22, after a $200 million campaign by the two ride-hailing giants and DoorDash. The measure blocks California law from regulating gig workers as employees.
In their material promoting Prop 22, the gig companies cited a 2015 report co-authored by Harris seeking a middle ground with some worker rights but not others. The effort to give gig workers full labor rights, not partial ones, is seen as an existential struggle in the Biden era.
Yet another name who shows up is Julie Su, California secretary of labor and workforce development. Su is a former litigation director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California and a co-founder of Sweatshop Watch.
In making his selection, Biden will have to play the three-dimensional chess game of race, ethnicity, gender, region, ideology, expertise, strategic smarts—and loyalty to labor. It’s also crucial that this labor secretary be a core part of the senior economic team, and not an outer planet distant from the power centers of Treasury, OMB, and the National Economic Council, as has often been the case.
This time, the labor movement will likely be a major player in both the selection and the definition of the role.
When Bill Clinton named as his labor secretary our colleague Bob Reich, who used his close personal relationship with the president to become a tough and effective champion of labor rights, it came as a total surprise to the AFL-CIO. The last Democratic president to name a labor secretary with direct ties to the labor movement was John Kennedy, who appointed Arthur Goldberg, the legal counsel to the Steelworkers.
Since then, the convention has been for Democrats to name people friendly to, but not part of, the labor movement. This could be the administration where that tradition changes for the better.
