Washington, DC
June 10, 2024
For decades, we've heard that when workers organize, and when workers demand more, that it's bad for our economy.
For decades, government has undermined the right to strike as being "too disruptive."
We've been told that our economy is a pie and the more people that want a share of it, the smaller everybody's piece has to be.
And today, in President Biden's America, we are rewriting that narrative.
Friday was jobs day, and as you all know, we announced another historic month of job growth and record low levels of unemployment.
And that's not all.
Across our country, we are seeing workers—from healthcare hospitality to Hollywood, from auto workers to delivery drivers to flight attendants to dock workers—demanding their fair share, saying that, we deserve to be valued, organizing like never before, including in places and in industries that were once thought unorganizable, and demanding things at the bargaining table. And winning them.
I've been in the room for many of these negotiations. And invariably, companies argue that the wage demands that workers have are above the market wage. They're too high because they're above the market wage.
My response to that is instead of telling workers that their demands are too high, maybe it's time we question why the market wage is so low. Why should we accept as normal the fact that workers work full time year-round and still can't afford to live near where they work?
Today, union organizing is helping to reset the market wages in many industries in a way that we haven't seen in a very long time. And it's not just wages, it's also health and retirement benefits. It's leave policies and fair scheduling. It's workers demanding and getting a voice to the table around things like AI, supply chain resilience, and the transition to more climate-friendly policies.
And those issues are ones that the government also has tremendous power to affect. And on those issues, we're using government levers to prioritize workers. And you've seen that:
You've seen that in the AI principles that we recently released. You see that in the use of labor standards in Investing in America dollars and our recent tariffs and trade policies- thanks to our amazing ambassador, Katherine Tai, our U.S. trade representative.
So today, instead of saying a little about a whole lot of things, I want to actually talk about how we are using the powers that we already have inside the Department of Labor and this administration to affect change. There are too many smart people in this room for me to pretend to have all the answers about what the 2025 progressive vision should look like. So, I'm actually going to focus on two ways that the Department of Labor is thinking about the role of government differently right now, and how we are working differently than government has in the past. So, that pro-worker and pro-union are not just talking points but are actual policies.
So first, we are reorienting workforce development. Not many people like to talk about that, but I know this room does. It's a staple of DOL policy, but we are using it to build a high road to good jobs that is accessible to communities that have been shut out in the past.
And second, because we can't build a high road without combating the low road, we are reimagining enforcement to enhance worker power.
So let me first start with how we are transforming the workforce development system.
For too long, that system has failed. It has failed when workers have to work full time year-round and still live in poverty. It has failed when people work two or three jobs just to piece together a living. And it has failed when people of color and entire communities are shut out of opportunity and access to good jobs.
Now the workforce development system, on its own, cannot end all of the problems of poverty jobs. But it can do much more than it has.
So, as you all know, and as you probably talked about this morning, we are making historic investments right now to fix roads and bridges, to make sure that every community has access to clean water, high-speed reliable internet, to bring manufacturing home and to create the conditions for a clean climate future. And all of those are opportunities to create good jobs and expand the promise of a good job to all communities.
So workforce development is the system that's supposed to connect workers and employers. It represents the largest investments that the DOL makes. In this fiscal year alone, the Department of Labor will invest $6.8 billion dollars in our nation's workforce system.
We should be thinking about our workforce system as infrastructure too.
I call it our nation's opportunity infrastructure. It's the roads and bridges that connect people to the good jobs they want and need and employers to the people that they want and need. But that system also needs some attention. It's also got some cracks. It's got some potholes and prohibitive toll roads. And our workforce system infrastructure, like our physical roads and bridges, does not connect to every community the way that it should.
Now, there are some misconceptions about our workforce system that I just want to dispel.
Sometimes, people hear "workforce development" and think "job training." I think we have to reject this narrow notion every chance that we get. Especially training programs for skills that might be needed for jobs that might materialize. We can't build effective workforce infrastructure if we don't know where it's leading. That's like a bridge to nowhere.
We have to start with actual jobs and use workforce development funds to incentivize, promote, and reward job quality. Merely connecting an employer to a worker where the worker gets a job That doesn't offer the pay and benefits that it should, job security, and a work environment in which they can thrive, should not count as success.
For employers who are hand-wringing over how they'll find workers, our answer has to be: invest in the opportunity infrastructure. Advocate for workforce dollars going to creating a connected system that gives workers more options and better options.
Now, the quality of jobs has been outside the scope of the workforce development system for far too long. So the first myth is that workforce development is primarily about more training programs rather than about good jobs.
The second I want to mention is something we've also heard for far too long that some communities just lack the right skills, and that's been an excuse to leave entire communities out of opportunity.
But people of color, women, those impacted by the justice system and others have been left out not because they lack the skills, but because we haven't built the roads and bridges that connect people to good jobs in their communities.
Not this time.
So the Department of Labor has created "Good Jobs Principles" that make clear the kinds of jobs that we want to see. And we are working directly across the administration and with communities, including mayors, to adopt these Good Jobs Principles.
We're being intentional also about who we want to see in these jobs. The principles are clear about recruiting from underserved communities about building infrastructure to the very communities that have been redlined in other contexts.
Last week, I launched a Good Jobs Summer Tour in Arizona where Phoenix and Tempe signed on to our Good Jobs Principles. Tomorrow, I'm headed to Birmingham. All summer, I'm going to be traveling to communities that are seeing new federal investments and that need workers who can fill the jobs that are coming to their area. And as they commit to our Good Jobs Principles, we are going to work to build the opportunity infrastructure around them.
So an example of this—getting really technical with the policy wonks in the room—is "High Road Training Partnerships." You've all heard of "High Road Training Partnerships," yes? I don't need to go into too much detail about them.
So "High Road Training Partnerships" involve management and labor coming together to plan for training tied to actual jobs and utilizing registered apprenticeships, pre apprenticeships, community colleges and supportive services—like childcare and transportation—all working together so that workforce training is not an end in itself, but is an onramp. And improving supportive services is like eliminating roadblocks in rush hour traffic. It just helps everybody get to where they need to go faster.
Now, high road training partnerships—and I have seen this—have produced such effective results that they attract more employers to them as well, who must commit to good jobs to participate.
So when communities come together to identify the good jobs and the roadblocks, then the entire workforce system can work better for all. Employers, unions, community-based organizations, state and local government, philanthropic groups, educational institutions. If all of them see themselves as part of a coherent, connected system then each can fill the right gap. For example, under this approach, the city of San Antonio, along with my team, identified that child care was a major gap in the opportunity infrastructure in their city. And so we are working with Mayor Ron Nerenberg to build and fund a solution. And there's lots of examples like that.
So the elements of this "opportunity infrastructure" that I just mentioned are really just a start. I can call out many other DOL grants, initiatives, and players in the workforce system—for example, how we're reimagining Job Corps centers as the infrastructure academies.
But what's important is what we are creating, and that is a system where workers have a seat at the table, where those who have been left behind reveal a breakdown in the system rather than a failure in them, and where additional workforce investments, including those that have yet to be made, can shore up and strengthen a cohesive infrastructure rather than fund a bunch of disconnected programs.
So I said at the beginning that we can't build a high road if we don't also combat the low road. And enforcing labor laws provides a floor beneath which no one should have to live and work. It's really one of the most important things the government does. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what we're doing with enforcement.
Now, government has never had and does not have sufficient resources to do its enforcement work. You all know that, and we are still recovering from significant cuts inflicted from the prior administration.
But we have kicked off a renaissance of enforcement not measured by the number of investigations we do, but by how we do those investigations. We are engaging with worker centers, community-based organizations, and unions as strategic partners in enforcement, along with state and local government agencies.
So first: worker organizations. Government has long partnered with worker organizations, but often to do things like outreach. But I believe, and we have seen, that those organizations that have the trust of workers can both provide us with critical information, in order for us to do our investigations and support workers throughout our investigations in critical ways. Including keeping workers engaged for the duration of an investigation and beyond; organizing so more workers in a workplace come forward to provide information on violations; helping identify all the parties who should be responsible, including joint employers and up-the-chain employers; and supporting workers and defending their rights so that enforcement isn't just about putting wages into workers pockets in the short term or fixing in immediate health and safety violation, but about creating the circumstances for workers to advocate for themselves long after the case is done.
We've been working on a network of strategic partners across the country, but especially in the Southeast part of our country.
So this is related to another strategy around enforcement I think is important and it's based on the principle that workers should have the highest protections to which they're entitled.
In 34 states and territories, the minimum wage is higher than the federal minimum wage, and many of the states with higher standards actually have their own enforcement agencies. These are states, and there's also local, as you all know, local ordinances that provide even higher wages and some have their own enforcement arm as well.
And that means that if DOL conducts an enforcement action by ourselves in those states, then workers could receive less wages than their owed. The consequences for employers who break the law could be less than what the laws that apply to them say, and the penalties for violating the law would likely be less than if the state enforced the law.
Conversely, in 20 states, the minimum wage is set at or below the federal level. All but one of those states, without their own minimum wage or their own labor enforcement agency are in the Southeast—states with a disproportionate number of Black workers. So in those states, DOL is likely the first and only line of defense when it comes to protecting the wage floor for working people.
So our approach to enforcement should, one, ensure that workers get the highest standard to which they're entitled, not $7.25 if they were entitled to more. And two, focus on resources strategically to protect the most vulnerable workers, i.e., those whose labor rights are violated and where DOL, is the strongest enforcement arm that they have, sometimes the only enforcement arm.
Specifically, what does that mean? It means proactive, effective, and ongoing partnership with state and local enforcement agencies where worker protections are higher than the DOL has, and strategic, ongoing partnerships with worker-led and worker-serving organizations, so our enforcement actually helps to build worker power.
Too many employers, as folks in this room know, have decided that it's cheaper to break the law, that the chances of getting caught are slim and the cost, even if you do get caught, are minimal.
We are saying not on our watch. We're engaged in strategic partnerships to advance shared agendas for worker justice for worker voice and worker empowerment.
So, since this is the Roosevelt Institute, I want to close with something I know everyone in this room already knows.
FDR believed that the economic security of working people was essential to shore up our democracy. And President Biden believes that, too.
President Roosevelt and Labor Secretary Frances Perkins took ideas that changed the world for workers, ideas that were once thought radical and made them mainstream. Like the 40-hour work week, nationwide minimum wage, unemployment aid.
So today, as workers raise their voices, demand to be heard and stand up for their rights, with a president who has their backs, people are finally recognizing that worker power is not actually bad for our economy. It isn't a threat to our democracy. It is essential to the health of both.
So this is our moment to be bold. With our investments, with our enforcement, with the systems we create, and with the intention on who and how those systems serve.
And if we do this right—just to focus on the two things that we are doing right now at the Department of Labor—then the reimagining of our workforce system as an opportunity infrastructure that reaches all and that focuses on good jobs and our enforcement as a backstop to create a world in which workers are empowered to fight and to end exploitation will one day be mainstream too.
So thank you all very much.