News: Julie Su's October of barnstorming

Monday, October 28, 2024

Julie Su's October of barnstorming

Oct 28, 2024

With help from Eleanor Mueller and Lawrence Ukenye

QUICK FIX

OUT AND ABOUT: Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and other top officials at the Labor Department have been criss-crossing the country of late to promote the administration’s record as President Joe Biden’s time in office comes to a close.

On Monday, Su is headed to Las Vegas to promote a more than $700,000 grant aimed at increasing women’s participation in the building trades and advanced manufacturing.

Last week she was with Mine Safety and Health Administration head Chris Williamson in Michigan to meet with union mineworkers and Cleveland-Cliffs executives — a day after an event in the same state with Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra to discuss workplace surveillance. She was also in Pennsylvania on Tuesday with Wage and Hour Division Administrator Jessica Looman.

Earlier in the month she was in Detroit alongside congressional Democrats to tout the multi-billion assistance program for beleaguered pensions included in the American Rescue Plan and toured a Pennsylvania steel mill with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai. Beyond that she’s also gone to Seattle amid the Boeing strike and up to the International Longshoreman’s Association’s New Jersey headquarters during their work stoppage.

Though a sizable portion of these events — in October and throughout the year — coincide with the map of political battleground states, Su has also ventured to places like rural Centralia, Illinois, and New Hampshire in October and traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, as part of her “Good Jobs Summer Tour.”

“The leaders of the Labor Department are continuing to do what they have done throughout this administration, which is bring our programs and resources directly to the people impacted by them, America's workers,” DOL spokesperson Jesse Lawder said in a statement.

Still administration officials are under a microscope in election years for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which restricts government employees from engaging in political activity while they’re on the job. Republicans have gone after Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan for recent public events, and Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro got dinged in September for breaking the law.

The Trump administration frequently crossed the line ahead of the 2020 elections , which the U.S. Office of Special Counsel later likened to “a taxpayer-funded campaign apparatus within the upper echelons of the executive branch.”

As for Su, Lawder said that “DOL staff regularly engage with ethics counsel in the department on any speaking engagements or events to ensure compliance with federal law.”

GOOD MORNING. It’s Monday, Oct. 28. Welcome back to Morning Shift, your go-to tipsheet on labor and employment-related immigration. Send feedback, tips and exclusives to nniedzwiadek@politico.com and lukenye@politico.com. Follow us on X at @NickNiedz and @Lawrence_Ukenye.

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In the Workplace

FIRST IN SHIFT: A poll out Monday from Global Strategy Group found that 91 percent of voters in battleground states support paid family and medical leave for workers, our Eleanor Mueller writes in.

That bumps up to about 95 percent for suburban women and for non-college women — both pivotal voter blocks this election. It's a dramatic spike from 2021, when just 70 percent of voters in battleground states said they supported paid leave.

Harris and Walz have both touted paid leave on the campaign trail. But Harris has yet to propose a specific paid leave policy.

"Paid leave is a moral and economic imperative — and one that should be a meaningful part of the closing argument that candidates are making to voters in these final two weeks before election day," said Dawn Huckelbridge, founding director of Paid Leave for All Action, which commissioned the poll.

Eighty-eight percent of voters support "closing corporate tax loopholes" to pay for paid leave, child care and long-term care.

More workplace news: “ New York City workers may soon get paid sick leave — to care for their pets,” from New York Post.

On the Hill

JUST CIRCLING BACK: House Education and the Workforce Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) sent a letter Friday to acting Labor Secretary Julie Su doubling down on the committee’s request for information about a series of recent missteps from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Foxx wrote that DOL has “once again ignored an oversight request” and reupped the series of questions the committee posed to DOL last month with a new deadline of Nov. 1.

“The Department of Labor throughout this administration has engaged in good faith with responding to requests for information from members of Congress,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement. “We will continue working to provide information that contributes to our shared mission to serve the workers, job seekers and retirees of this country.”

Pro analysis: “S. 4749 (118): Dueling Cassidy, Warren bills show party-line priorities post-Chevron,” from our Jordan Williams.

More Hill news: “Child of refugees runs for Congress as immigration divides his district,” from The Washington Post.

AROUND THE AGENCIES

OFFICE JOCKEYING: The union representing DOL field staffers said Friday the agency rebuffed its request to not move forward with a 5 day per pay period in-office requirement while the Federal Labor Relations Authority reviews the dispute.

“DOL responded by stating that they will not pause the implementation” slated to take effect Dec. 1, National Council of Field Labor Locals President Daryl Laurie wrote to members.

Government Executive had a detailed rundown of the back-and-forth that’s been playing out for a while, and Bloomberg Law reported that the saga could have implications for other federal agencies.

“They’re saying it's a one-size-fits-all situation and that’s what we’re pushing back on,” Laurie told POLITICO.

A similar mandate that applied to many DOL staffers in the D.C.-area also ruffled feathers last year, and the department has faced heat from congressional Republicans for not doing more to bring workers back to their desk.

More agency news: “Facing tight budgets, agencies turn to workforce restrictions to rein in costs,” from the Government Executive.

Unions

THE FIGHTING FIFTH: An appellate court ruled late last week that the National Labor Relations Board exceeded its authority in directing Elon Musk to delete a social media post that said Tesla employees could lose stock options if they ever unionized.

“The NLRB erred in ordering the deletion of Musk’s speech as a remedy for unfair labor practices,” the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a divided 9-8 decision. “We hold that Musk’s tweets are constitutionally protected speech and do not fall into the categories of unprotected communication like obscenity and perjury.”

However, the court did not rule on whether the underlying tweet violated federal labor law, as the NLRB determined and a three-judge panel of 5th Circuit judges previously upheld.

One of Musk's other businesses, SpaceX, is also asking the conservative-leaning court to upend the agency on constitutional grounds — as are several other high-profile companies.

ELECTION 2024

REVVED UP: Driving Force Action, a PAC that opposes government subsidies for electric vehicles, is calling for United Steelworkers to reconsider its endorsement of Harris after she received a donation from a Chinese EV executive with alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

“We hope Vice President Harris will distance her campaign from such foreign entities, demonstrating her commitment to protecting American jobs by returning the donation,” the group wrote in a letter being sent to the union on Monday.

Details: Ke Li, a top executive at Chinese EV maker BYD, donated $50,000 to the Harris-Walz campaign. The company also received a $395,000 subsidy from the administration’s program to electrify the nation’s school buses.

The PAC was launched by the Specialty Equipment Market Association, a trade group that focuses on aftermarket vehicle parts.

IN THE STATES

ANTI-CREDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said he pushed the Harris campaign to join the bipartisan movement to strip out certain degree requirements from government jobs, our Holly Otterbein reports.

“I can remember some conversations I had early on in the campaign,” he said of his 2022 gubernatorial run, “about how they felt disrespected by the Democratic Party that only talked about helping people earn a college degree.”

Harris nodded to the policy at a September rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, saying that “for far too long, our nation has encouraged only one path to success.”

THIS (GHOST) TOWN: The Election Is Looming — and These Washingtonians Are Running Scared,” from our Michael Schaffer.

More state news: “Inmate Labor Tests the Limits on ‘Involuntary Servitude,’” from The New York Times.

WHAT WE'RE READING

— “US Fed Board disciplined nine staff for sexual harassment in 2020-2023, document shows,” from Reuters.

— “The ‘Godfather of AI’ Predicted I Wouldn’t Have a Job. He Was Wrong,” from The New Republic.

— “Another Thing at Stake on Election Day: A $246,000-a-Year Pension Perk,” from The Wall Street Journal.

THAT’S YOUR SHIFT!

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