Philadelphia, PA
August 29, 2023
Thank you, Secretary Treasurer [April] Verrett. April and I have known each other since we worked in California. We worked through the pandemic on worker safety and then on turning the lessons of COVID into better working conditions. Now, we’re working together on the national level. April: thank you for your tremendous leadership and partnership and for always making us better.
And of course, thanks to UNI for inviting me today – and for all you do to help workers build power across the world. It’s an honor to be here with you.
I know some of you are coming back here after the SEIU rally, so I want to take a moment to recognize 32BJ’s members. For decades, you have led the way. Your fearless campaigns have changed the game and created new models for organizing and corporate accountability.
I also want to send a message loud and clear to all workers, here and everywhere. The Biden-Harris administration has got your back, and we’re all in on putting workers first.
That’s what I want to talk to you about today: how we’re building a worker-centered economy that benefits communities everywhere who have been historically left out or left behind. Because at the Department of Labor, our North Star is connecting all workers to good jobs and raising the floor for working people everywhere.
That means enforcing laws that protect workers, and making sure employers understand their responsibilities, because every worker deserves to get a just day’s pay for a hard day’s work; every worker deserves to come home healthy and safe at the end of the work day. And every worker should have the sacred right to join a union
So, why is it that some workers are forced to choose between poverty in their home countries or exploitation abroad?
In the Biden-Harris administration, we reject these as the only options – and we dare to dream bigger.
At the Department of Labor, we know that the global work we do together with all of you to eliminate worker abuse and improve job quality for all is essential to our mission.
I know it, too – because I’ve seen it firsthand.
My first job out of law school was as a workers’ rights attorney. I represented migrant workers who worked on factory floors and in warehouses, at car washes and restaurants, and, in one case, behind barbed wire.
Those garment workers – who were trafficked from Thailand – were held against their will in an apartment complex where they were forced to sew garments from the crack of down into the wee hours of the morning, until their fingers bled and their vision was blurred, and then they dragged their tired bodies upstairs where they slept, 8-10 to a bedroom, on the floor. A guard with a machete stood watch. And they sewed clothes for brand name retailers.
Once they were “discovered,” the workers were thrown into a federal prison and told they would be deported.
I was a young attorney then and a small group of activists and I sat in at the federal building demanding that they be freed.
We then filed a lawsuit against the companies up the chain that they were sewing for – not just the contractor – and launched a campaign for corporate accountability.
The legacy of the El Monte Thai garment workers’ case is still being felt today.
It expanded manufacturer and retailer responsibility for the conditions in which their clothes are made. It helped launch anti-sweatshop movements that are organizing and building power among workers to this day. And it shone a light on human trafficking, changed our immigration laws, and resulted in millions of dollars in back wages. And it demonstrated what vulnerable workers could do when given a chance to organize, to demand better, to change the world.
The lessons I learned from that case three decades ago informs my vision for the Department of Labor. I saw up close that how workers are treated abroad and who is held accountable for their conditions deeply impacts how they live and work here in the United States – and vice versa.
In the years since, the world has only grown more interconnected and interdependent.
Now more than ever, we need to find new ways to make the global economy uplift workers everywhere – not just enrich multinational corporations.
What the Thai garment workers experienced was not an isolated incident. For too long, the global economy has left too many workers and too many communities behind. We all know how we got there: trickle-down policies.
And we now know the truth about trickle-down economics: It’s a failed theory that failed workers, that systematically favors wealth over work, and that led to a 40-year decline in unionization in the United States.
But we also know how to change this – and it starts from the bottom up and the middle out, and with putting workers squarely at the center of our economic agenda.
In the administration, we have a word for it – Bidenomics.
Bidenomics is about countering corporate power with worker power. It’s about a worker-centered trade agenda, led by our United States Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, who is challenging the old ways of thinking about trade and writing a new story where labor standards are not a barrier to trade—but a cornerstone of it.
And it’s about what we are doing at the Department of Labor, which boils down to these three values: empowerment, enforcement, and equity.
First, we’re empowering and educating workers – both at home and abroad.
Two years ago, President Biden established the first-ever White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment focused on expanding and protecting the right to organize here at home.
Corporations are global – and that means worker organizing and worker power must be global too. Because what happens on the factory floor in Bangladesh that impacts working families in Birmingham, Alabama.
Last year, we launched the Multilateral Partnership on Organizing, Worker Empowerment, and Rights – or M-POWER.
This historic initiative is backed by an investment of over $130 million to fund programs that strengthen workers’ rights around the world.
We’re taking a whole-of-government approach – led by the Department of Labor, USAID, and the State Department – to use our convening power to bring together countries, worker organizations, and other partners to protect more workers in vulnerable, low-wage jobs.
And to strengthen labor movements globally because we know they are foundational not only to workers’ rights but also to healthy, inclusive democracies.
And in the weeks ahead, the administration will unveil a new Global Labor Strategy to continue our work advancing worker rights through diplomacy. Because building a strong middle class here at home depends on workers around the world joining together and exercising their rights in solidarity.
Second, enforcement. I like to say we’re leading a new era of enforcement. President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is about building the middle class through high road jobs in every community. And we can’t build the high road if we don’t combat the low road.
Just as importantly, we’re engaging workers and worker organizations to be our partners in stepping up our enforcement efforts across the board. For example, just this year alone, the Department cited Amazon for violations at seven warehouse facilities. And we couldn’t have taken action without the courage of workers who came forward and reported how Amazon failed to keep them safe on the job.
The USMCA is another great example of what a worker-centered approach to enforcement looks like – and of what happens when workers have a voice, and labor is at the table. It contains the strongest, and most far-reaching labor provisions of any free trade agreement in the world. Part of its power as an enforcement tool stems from giving workers a binding mechanism to seek justice—and to hold bad employers accountable for violating their rights.
When I visited Mexico last April, I saw firsthand how workers are gaining and exercising new rights to organize independent democratic unions. Thanks to extraordinary cooperation and collaboration between the U.S. and Mexican labor departments – and the brave persistence of Mexican workers and their unions – Mexican workers are winning new contracts, earning significant wage increases, and transforming the labor relations system.
I was proud to see the labor provisions in a trade agreement being used so effectively to empower workers.
Finally, equity is at the center of our work – and we’re building it into everything we do.
The administration is dedicated to advancing fundamental labor rights for workers at home, and abroad. That includes protecting the rights of the most vulnerable members of our global community, including women, workers of color, migrant workers, and all those who have been historically marginalized or exploited.
It also means working in partnership with people on the ground, like the folks here, to support the brave and necessary work you’re doing to empower workers everywhere.
That’s just a snapshot of the work we’re doing, and we know that there’s much more to be done. So, I want to close by talking about how to measure success as we move forward together.
There’s a tendency when we talk about the global economy to zoom out to see the big picture. That’s necessary and critical to help understand the trends and patterns that are impacting workers across the world.
But it’s also important to zoom in – and to examine how we’re touching the everyday lives of workers and their families.
Earlier this month, we marked the anniversary of 28 years of freedom for the El Monte garment workers, and it recalled for me both how far we’ve come and how much we still have left to do.
Today, as the Acting Secretary of Labor, I lead the Department that is home to the Bureau of International Labor Affairs – or ILAB – where I get to work every single day with the extraordinary Thea Lee, Assistant Secretary for ILAB. We fight to combat the horrendous conditions that those garment workers endured and to ensure they are never repeated—in California, or anywhere in the world.
So yes, we’ve made important progress. And over the years, many of those same garment workers have bought their own homes in the United States, started or reunited with families, become successful business owners, and continued to speak out against worker exploitation.
That reminds us that real progress isn’t measured only in dollars or in policy changes. The most profound progress is personal, and it comes from witnessing working people like the garment workers stand up, build power, exercise their rights; and – against all odds – defy the message they had heard their whole lives: that they should keep their heads down and know their place.
Now, I know I don’t need to say this to the people in this room, but we all know where a worker’s rightful place is: at the table.
And next month, I’m proud that we’ll be inducting the El Monte garment workers into the Department of Labor’s Hall of Honor, so that they can also take their rightful place in labor history. Because their story demonstrates something I know this room understands: when workers build power, change is possible.
Now, more than ever, we need to keep up that work.
Right now, we’re witnessing a new wave of union organizing take hold – which I know many of you are on the frontlines leading. The wins that you are delivering are showing workers everywhere what is possible. So, it’s no surprise that public support for labor unions in the United States is now at its highest point since 1965.
And you better believe that when workers see the change you’re leading, they are asking themselves, “how do I fight for that too?”
The folks in this room are sending the message everyday that when workers organize, workers win. To those who say to workers, “know your place,” we say that a worker’s place is at the table.
And when this administration says workers deserve a seat at the table, you know we mean the bargaining table too.
That’s what Bidenomics is all about: advancing policies that empower workers everywhere and that lift up their families and their communities. That’s our economic strategy.
And you all are at the center of it. So thanks again for your partnership and solidarity. Let’s get this done.