A Big Labor Partisan Named Julie Su
By The Editorial Board April 18, 2023 7:02 pm ET Julie Su, nominee to be the next Secretary of Labor, speaks in the White House on March 1. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images President Biden’s legislative agenda has little chance in the current Congress, but that means he’ll try to govern even more through regulation. It also means his regulatory and Cabinet nominees deserve extra scrutiny, and an example is Julie Su, his choice to run the Department of Labor. Currently the deputy secretary, Ms. Su has a record of putting union interests above those of individual workers or flexible busin
Julie Su, nominee to be the next Secretary of Labor, speaks in the White House on March 1.
Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
President Biden’s legislative agenda has little chance in the current Congress, but that means he’ll try to govern even more through regulation. It also means his regulatory and Cabinet nominees deserve extra scrutiny, and an example is Julie Su, his choice to run the Department of Labor.
Currently the deputy secretary, Ms. Su has a record of putting union interests above those of individual workers or flexible business models that workers like but unions oppose. As labor secretary in California, she drove implementation of the state’s AB5 law, which reclassified independent contractors as employees.
The law was aimed at Uber drivers and other gig workers, but it ended up smacking workers seeking flexible hours in multiple industries—comedy performers, personal fitness trainers, midwives, transcriptionists, hairdressers, music-lesson providers. After the law passed, Ms. Su promised statewide investigations and audits to enforce compliance.
The ensuing labor and economic harm caused the state to exempt numerous professions from the law, while voters in 2020 overwhelming passed an initiative exempting many gig workers from the statute. Ms. Su’s Labor department is nonetheless taking AB5 national with a proposed regulation that replicates California’s mess by reclassifying millions of contractors as employees.
Ms. Su also opposes the franchise industry, a well-trod path for small-business ownership. She’s supported California’s Fast Act, which empowers an unelected board to impose work rules and a minimum wage as high as $22 an hour. California’s Department of Finance opposed the law, warning it would raise costs. The law, which passed in the fall, is on hold after California voters gathered enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot in 2024.
She also wants to eliminate the so-called tip credit, which lets workers earn a lower minimum wage as long as their overall tips provide compensation at least equal to the statutory minimum. Most workers find they earn much more in tips, and last year voters in progressive Portland, Maine, defeated an initiative to replace the tip credit with a minimum wage. The Biden Labor Department has issued a rule limiting the number of employees who can qualify for the tip credit.
Another concern is competence. In California Ms. Su’s department issued some $30 billion in fraudulent jobless-benefit payments during the Covid pandemic. The U.S. Labor Department repeatedly warned California it needed to improve its fraud protection, but Ms. Su’s department sent out checks faster.
The Senate confirmed Ms. Su as deputy secretary despite this record, but now she wants a promotion. In the top job she’d be in a position to intervene on behalf of unions in looming labor negotiations that could have a major economic impact. Maritime employers and longshoremen are sparring over a new contract, while UPS and the Teamsters began negotiating a new contract this week. The country needs a Labor secretary who is a credible arbiter, not a union partisan.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee will hold her confirmation hearing on Thursday, and Democrats Jon Tester, Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema
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