| | | | | |  | | By Rebecca Rainey | With help from Eleanor Mueller Editor's Note: Weekly Shift is a weekly version of POLITICO Pro's daily Employment & Immigration policy newsletter, Morning Shift. POLITICO Pro is a policy intelligence platform that combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day's biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro. | | | Top advisers to President-elect Joe Biden said on the Sunday show circuit that he'll announce his first Cabinet picks Tuesday, our Maya Parthasarathy reports. Senior adviser Jen Psaki touted the diversity of Biden's Cabinet picks on CNN's "State of the Union," following calls from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), among others, to include progressive voices in the process. "Their Cabinet and the team will look like America, so that means diversity of ideology," Psaki said on CNN. | 
President-elect Joe Biden speaks at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del., Nov. 19, 2020. | AP Photo/Andrew Harnik | SMOOTH SAILING? Several Senate Republicans have indicated they will vote to confirm most of Biden's Cabinet picks, but the incoming administration has been hindered by the General Services Administration, which has blocked Biden from accessing federal resources to aid the transition. THE POTENTIAL SHORTLIST — While Biden is likely to reveal his choices to lead for higher-profile agencies such as the Treasury and State departments first, here's a rundown of who could be the next secretaries of Homeland Security and Labor: AT DHS: Biden is reportedly considering tapping Ali Mayorkas, who was DHS deputy secretary and Citizenship and Immigration Services director in the Obama administration, or California Attorney General Xavier, NBC's Suzanne Gamboa reports. Democratic Rep. Val Demings of Florida is also under consideration, as is Lisa Monaco, an Obama White House homeland security adviser, according to The Washington Post. AT DOL: The head of the AFL-CIO has thrown his support behind Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who previously led the city's Building and Construction Trades Council, our Eleanor Mueller and Megan Cassella report. But other unions in the labor federation are pushing Biden to consider Rep. Andy Levin, a Michigan Democrat who worked as a labor organizer and ran the state's job training program before he was elected to Congress. Sanders has also been lobbying for the Labor secretary position. California Labor Secretary Julie Su, who is well-regarded by unions in her state, is another contender. Seth Harris, a deputy Labor secretary during the Obama era, and Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) are also on the AFL-CIO's preliminary list of preferred Labor secretaries, Bloomberg Law's Ben Penn reports. GOOD MORNING. It's Monday Nov. 23, and this is Morning Shift, your tipsheet on employment and immigration news. Send tips, exclusives and suggestions to emueller@politico.com and rrainey@politico.com. Follow us on Twitter at @Eleanor_Mueller and @RebeccaARainey. | | | BIDEN PUSHES FOR MORE ECONOMIC RELIEF: Biden is urging Congress to pass another aid package before he takes office, Megan reports with Theodoric Meyer and Ben White . But his support of Democrats' calls for a roughly $2 trillion in new relief spending — a price tag Senate Republicans have refused to accept — could spoil hopes for a deal anytime soon. HERE'S THE RUB: Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer need to get Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on board, though he "appears unwilling to pass the sort of multitrillion-dollar relief package that Democrats want, particularly when it comes to providing aid to state and local governments," the trio write. "People close to the Biden transition's economics team say they are acutely aware they will have to deal with a Republican Senate if Democrats don't win two runoff races in Georgia and may not be able to pass as big a stimulus package as they would like." BIG BUSINESS HOPES BIDEN WILL BREAK THE ICE: After months of failed negotiations, a coalition of trade groups is preparing to launch a digital ad blitz after Thanksgiving targeting Biden's transition as well as Congress and the White House, they report. "The trade groups will also urge the hotel owners, restaurateurs and others who make up their membership to make calls and send emails pressing lawmakers to reach a deal." | | | | TRACK THE TRANSITION : President-elect Biden has named his chief of staff and several other key White House positions. What's next? Treasury secretary? Secretary of State? These and other crucial staffing decisions made in the coming days send clear-cut signals about President-elect Biden's administration agenda and priorities. Transition Playbook is the definitive guide to one of the most consequential transfers of power in American history. Written for political insiders, it tracks the appointments, people, and the emerging power centers of the new administration. Track the transition. Subscribe today. | | | | | | | | HIRING LAGS ACROSS THE U.S.: "The growth in the number of daily job postings in Midwestern states, where the virus is raging, is slowing sharply compared with October, according to data from the job site ZipRecruiter," Sarah Chaney Cambon reported for The Wall Street Journal . "But other states with among the lowest virus infection rates in the nation, including California, New York and North Carolina, are also seeing a slowdown." WHAT'S DRIVING IT? Data suggests that "how state officials, businesses and consumers respond to the pandemic" appears to have a greater impact on the labor market's recovery than the level of Covid-19 infections in the state, Chaney Cambon writes. States with Democratic governors, including New York, Maine and North Carolina, "logged the lowest rates of coronavirus cases in the past week, and they have also been quick to reinstate restrictions or roll back reopenings as cases increase," she adds."The number of job openings and hours worked have recently pulled back in each of those states. For instance, in New York, small-business employees were logging about 62% of their January hours, a backslide from near 70% at the end of September, according to Homebase, a scheduling-software company." | | | FIRST IN SHIFT — GAO REPORT FINDS FEW CONSEQUENCES FOR FEDERAL CONTRACTORS: Though DOL's Wage and Hour Division has forced federal contractors to pay out about $224 million in back pay and benefits to workers over the last five years, it has debarred only 60 out of 600 violators, a new GAO review requested by House Education and Labor Democrats and provided to Weekly Shift found. Debarment prevents a given employer from being awarded new federal contracts for three years. But the report found that DOL does not always identify contractors that have been debarred, meaning "an agency may award a contract to an employer without being aware of or considering its past [labor law] violations." These and other communication difficulties "hamper DOL's ability to enforce the [law] SCA as effectively and efficiently as it could, increasing the chance that workers will not receive pay and benefits to which they are entitled," the report found. "The Government Accountability Office's report confirms what we already knew to be true: Government contractors are rewarded even when they fail to adequately pay their workers," House Education and Labor Chair Bobby Scott (D-Va.) said in a statement to POLITICO. Read the report. MISSISSIPPI MEATPACKERS HIT WITH WAGE VIOLATIONS: "Mississippi chicken processing plants bilked their employees of tens of thousands of dollars by paying them below minimum wage and incorrectly calculating their overtime pay," Alissa Zhu reports for the Mississippi Clarion Ledger. One of the plants, Koch Foods, illegally employed a 15-year-old child to work in meat processing, according to Zhu. SOUND FAMILIAR? "The same companies were among those targeted last year by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when federal agents arrested 680 undocumented workers in what amounted to the largest single-state raid in the country's history." DIVERSITY HIT AMID LAYOFFS AT UBER: When Uber laid off nearly a quarter of its workers as part of pandemic-related cuts earlier this year, the move "led to a decline in overall Black representation within its workforce," Sara Ashley O'Brien reports for CNN Business. When the ride-hailing giant let go of 6,700 employees , "those layoffs included thousands of its customer support employees, … underscoring how the diverse team helped buoy the company's overall metric," O'Brien reports. Black workers now make up 7.5 percent of Uber's overall U.S. workforce, down from 9.3 percent in 2019, according to O'Brien. "Uber said it took measures to mitigate bias in its downsizing efforts, noting that it had external counsel conduct an analysis based on protected classes as part of the process." | | | TRUMP SCORES WITH WORKING-CLASS LATINOS: President Donald Trump improved his margins in 78 of the nation's 100 majority-Hispanic counties this past election, despite his harsh immigration rhetoric and policies, our Marc Caputo writes. "And he did better with Latinos in exit polls of each of the top 10 battleground states," a POLITICO review of election data found. More than a dozen experts on Hispanic voters in six states told Marc that "no factor was as salient as Trump's blue-collar appeal for Latinos." "Most Latinos identify first as working-class Americans, and Trump spoke to that," said Josh Zaragoza, a top Democratic data specialist in Arizona, adding that Hispanic men in particular "are very entrepreneurial. Their economic language is more aligned with the way Republicans speak: pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, owning your own business." | | | | DON'T MISS THE MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF HEALTH SUMMIT 2020: POLITICO will feature a special edition Future Pulse newsletter at the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit. The newsletter takes readers inside one of the most influential gatherings of global health industry leaders and innovators determined to confront and conquer the most significant health challenges. Covid-19 has exposed weaknesses across our health systems, particularly in the treatment of our most vulnerable communities, driving the focus of the 2020 conference on the converging crises of public health, economic insecurity, and social justice. Sign up today to receive exclusive coverage from December 7–9. | | | | | | | | — "52 Years Later, IBM Apologizes for Firing Transgender Woman," from The New York Times — "The Trump administration is hampering the economic recovery at a critical time," from The Washington Post — " Undocumented and Pregnant: Why Women Are Afraid to Get Prenatal Care," from The New York Times — ICYMI: "California approves emergency workplace safety standard," from POLITICO — "Coronavirus Spurred Companies to Hoard Cash. Now They Are Starting to Dole It Out," from The Wall Street Journal — "Doctors and nurses want more data before championing vaccines to end the pandemic," from The Washington Post — "It's starting to sink in: Schools before bars," from POLITICO — " Federal unions look to turn the page on Trump's executive orders: 'The damage is not permanent,'" from The Federal News Network — "Why Some Tech Workers Leaving Silicon Valley Are Changing Jobs," from The Wall Street Journal THAT'S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT! | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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