Labor Secretary delivers rousing, pro-worker message

New U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez delivered a stem-winding speech Tuesday at the AFL-CIO national convention, pledging stronger worker protections and extolling the virtue of labor unions.

Perez, who’s been in the job only a few months, invoked his working class background in Buffalo. He recalled his mother’s faith in God, but also how he began to question whether the inequities in society are the result of God’s will.

“As I grew older, I grew to conclude that it’s not God’s will that people who work a 40-hour week should live in poverty. That it’s not God’s will that a coal miner should not live to see his children graduate. That it’s not God’s will that there are 11 million people in the shadows. And that it’s not God’s will to accept the fate of Alan White,” a Steelworker from Buffalo afflicted with silicosis.
 
“All these challenges are man-made!  And we will fix these challenges and they will be fixed by the people in this room. No matter who you are and no matter where you came from…we can do it together, because I know this president and he and I share your values. Our values are the same, and we’ll go it together and grow the middle class, so help me God!”
 
Unions and workers have high expectations for Perez, a former Maryland state labor commissioner, a son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic and a former elected county commissioner in the D.C. suburbs. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said two weeks ago he expects Perez to be a stronger secretary than his predecessor, former Rep. Hilda Solis, since Perez knows how to run major agencies and work with competing interests.
 
Perez certainly didn’t disappoint the crowd. Among his high points:
 
• “The labor movement is one of the greatest forces for middle-class economic security in the history of this country. President Obama’s vision of an economy that grows from the middle out can only be achieved if we continue to have a dynamic and empowered labor movement.” Perez promised to “do my best” to defend the right to collective bargaining.

• Blasted cuts in state and local government, which he said have hampered the economic recovery.  The recovery from the 2007-09 Great Recession, Perez said, “is the first in history in which government jobs haven’t come back. Many states and local governments have laid off teachers, police and fire fighters, among other. Had those jobs been maintained, “the unemployment rate would be well below 7 percent,” he said. 
 
• Called the economic agenda of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s. 1963 March on Washington its “unfinished business,” repeating a line that Arlene Holt Baker, the federation’s retiring executive vice president, often uses. “So who’s going to make up the ground where we’ve fallen short?  Who’s going to play a key role as we confront the challenge of income inequality, secure a better bargain for the middle class, ensure our workplaces are safe and build ladders of opportunity with sturdy rungs all people can reach?  My friends, I’m here to communicate in no uncertain terms that the Department of Labor can, must, does and will play an active role in securing a better bargain for the middle class.”
 
• Said the Department of Labor would step up its enforcement of Davis-Bacon prevailing wage rules. Perez said DOL now has four times as many probes of shady underpaying contractors as it did in 2008 and promised more. “We’re now debarring egregious violators who don’t play by the rules,” he said. Debarment bans them from federally funded contracts.
 
• Said the new proposed silicosis rule isn’t the only one to expect. That rule has taken 40 years to announce, and the AFL-CIO has long chafed at the delay. Perez acknowledged the gap, adding silicosis dangers were known in the 1930s.
 
• Vowed to take on companies that misclassify workers as “independent contractors,” depriving them of fair pay and coverage such as workers’ compensation insurance. Misclassification “sounds like a paperwork error,” Perez jabbed.  “I call it what it is. It’s fraud.  It’s cheating. It’s cheating the workers, of course. It’s cheating the honest businesses. I spoke to a restaurateur in Maryland who was playing fair with his workers and down the road, his competitor was paying people under the table and not paying taxes.”
 
• Advocated a higher federal minimum wage and stronger enforcement of wage and hour and overtime laws. “And we do not need to grow this economy on the basis of low wages and no benefits,” he said. “Raising the minimum wage enables people sweeping floors and cleaning rooms to make a living wage. We can have both.  Nobody who works a 40-hour week should have to live in poverty.”