Remarks by Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su on Good Jobs Summer Tour in Phoenix (As Delivered)

Phoenix, AZ
June 6, 2024

Thank you so much, President Butler for your leadership, and thank you all for being here!

I also want to acknowledge President Crow and the Dean and all of our ASU family for welcoming us to your beautiful campus.

So, as has already been said, good jobs change lives. They bring dignity and respect, they sustain families, as President Biden often says, they're about being able to look your children in the eye and say everything's going to be OK and mean it. And that shouldn't be too much to ask for, but unfortunately for too long, for too many working people, it has been.

Good jobs are not just transformational for the individual who's doing them, and for that person's family, but they also uplift entire communities, and they instill hope, and that's why today's Good Jobs Principles are so important, and why the work of everybody in this room to breathe life into them, to make them real, is also critical.

So it is really great to be here with so many labor leaders like President Butler, like President McLaughlin of the Arizona AFL, who have been such invaluable voices in ensuring that federal investments are leading to good jobs right now and into the future, with employers, for state and local leaders, and community organizations. And I just want to mention one example of the innovative work here in Maricopa and Yuma counties is the coalition called Power Up Arizona, and many of the members are here today.

You are all a part of President Biden's Investing in America agenda and his belief that, if we invest big in American industry, in America's workers, that private investments will also follow and we can grow our economy, strengthen our supply chains and our national security, and create good jobs.

As just one example, the philanthropic, non-profit group Build US is actually here with us today and is giving $600,000 to two organizations: Organized Power in Numbers and the UAW Center for Manufacturing a Green Economy, who are helping to lead this coalition called Power Up Arizona.

So thank you for what you do and thank you to the foundation for helping support that work and build the capacity right here in Arizona, right here in Phoenix, to deliver on the promise of all these great investments. That funding is going to help make sure that these investments lead to good jobs in communities across this state.

And it's going to help us build an equitable economy, where no one gets left behind. Helping to make that more than just words.

I also really want to thank both of our mayors who are here. Mayor Gallego, thank you for our conversations, thank you for helping pull together today, to Mayor Woods for your work with us and our Good Jobs-based cities initiatives and also for your endorsement of the elements of the Good Job Principles, and I also do want to acknowledge City Councilwoman Betty Guardado who has also been a fearless champion for good jobs throughout her career, throughout her life, and I appreciate your leadership here and now.

So the good jobs we are talking about aren't happening by accident, and to appreciate how significant this moment, is I just want to take us back for a moment to where we were when President Biden first came to office.

So in January of 2021, COVID was out of control, there was no national strategy to address it, unemployment was high, and when people went to the grocery store, they didn't know if they were going to get groceries, they didn't know when they went to buy toilet paper if they would find toilet paper.

And I want to compare that to where we are today. So since President Biden has come to office, over 15,000,000 jobs have been created in this country. At the same time, the unemployment rate is at record lows for the longest period of time since the 1960s. Again, those things don't happen by accident, they happened because leadership matters.

And remember something else from the past, the promise of an infrastructure week that never materialized. Infrastructure week turned into a punchline. We have turned it into, not just a week, but an entire decade of investments.

In Arizona alone, the President's Investing in America agenda is directed $15.4 billion to infrastructure projects, like safe roads and bridges, like making sure that every family that turns on the faucets has clear drinking water, and that every community has access to high speed, reliable internet.

These should not be luxuries. They should be basics. And the administration has also announced its plans to invest more than $15 billion in Maricopa County, in advanced manufacturing jobs that are going to be viable to America's competitiveness and technological capability for generations to come.

So with our billions of dollars in investments, the Biden-Harris Administration has created a moment to build not just our physical infrastructure, and not just the manufacturing sector, but the opportunity to connect every worker to a good job in his or her community.

Today, Phoenix, Tempe, and the Good Jobs community partners are seizing that opportunity by signing on to the Good Job Principles. And commitment to these principles will allow us to do, what Mayor Woods already said, be intentional about seizing the historic moment to ensure that good jobs are the outcome, because no one should have to work full-time, year-round and live in poverty.

No one should have to work two or three jobs just to piece together a life. Good jobs mean jobs that come with good pay, good benefits, with security, with predictable schedules, with the knowledge that you will come home healthy and safe at the end of the work day, with the right to join a union, the right to organize, to be heard on the job, and with real security.

And those are the kinds of jobs that we are talking about. And we know that we can build them right here in Phoenix, in Maricopa County, throughout the state of Arizona, and throughout the country.

No we also want to bring attention to who gets those jobs. These Good Jobs Principles mean recruiting from underserved communities, it means breaking down systemic barriers, it means focusing on justice impacted individuals, as Mayor Gallego already mentioned, on single moms, on those who are struggling to find housing and connecting our systems and appreciate all those, for a year who've been talking about our K-8, our high school, our community colleges and our four year colleges, making sure that real opportunity is available, because we are creating an interconnected system that connects people to good jobs.

And so we know, I know I've seen it, that when we unite workers and unions and businesses and community-based organizations and civil rights and philanthropic organizations along with stellar local leaders, in common cause, we can lift up entire communities.

So today will lay the foundation for that work so that the people in Arizona do not just get by, but get ahead. And these Good Jobs Principles are going to fulfill the promise of this administration's generational investments in infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and climate—and in workers.

So again, this is not just about creating any job, it's about making sure that we're creating good jobs that lead the way, that lead the world and building on this momentum is why I am here and on the road all summer to kick off Good Jobs Summer, to talk to folks from different communities about the transformative power of a good job, and why this administration has made a commitment to creating more of them.

So we're calling it the Good Jobs Summer Tour because our message is that simple. That everyone should have a good job. Everyone who wants to work should be in a good job and every job should make life better and that people should not struggle every single day, just to get by.  

So from Arizona to Alabama from Florida to Michigan from Nevada to Georgia to Pennsylvania, we can't go back to where we were. We can't live in a world in which working people have to struggle and when a good job does not pay.

As for the future that we are building, it holds too much promise for working people, for our country for us to go back to another way of working.

So the Department of Labor is putting our hearts, our money, our people, our talent, our vision into this work, and we are all in with all of you. We are not done yet, we are just getting started. We have a lot more fight in us, we know you have a lot more fight in you, and we have a lot more bridges to build, right, the bridges from poverty to prosperity. The bridges from racial exclusion to real equity.

So let's create even more jobs with the power to change lives, let's pave even more pathways so that every community can see themselves in a bright future, and let's build all of that together.

So thank you all so much, and I understand that there will be a signing ceremony now.

Delivered By
Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su