30 Apr Roxanne D. Brown – Help Wanted: Put A Fighter in Charge of the Labor Department.
Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve as U.S. labor secretary and as a member of a president’s Cabinet, left the best possible legacy.
One measured in the lives still being saved.
Perkins wrote a law banning child labor, imposed some of the nation’s first labor standards and battled for safer working conditions as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.
We’ve had many labor secretaries since then, some who helped to level the playing field for workers and others, like Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who failed the working people she took an oath to serve.
Chavez-DeRemer’s recent resignation gives Donald Trump the opportunity to correct course and replace her with the kind of fighter, advocate and ally that working people need at this time of rampant exploitation and inequality.
Americans want a labor secretary who throws down, just like Perkins, who wielded the power of her office against industrial barons unaccustomed to following any rules but their own.
We need to bring a similar group to heel today.Getty Images
Just 10 percent of Americans control about 70 percent of the nation’s wealth, yet the billionaire class never stops trying to squeeze another ounce of sweat and a few more nickels out of the ordinary people already struggling to make ends meet.
Big corporations with obscene profits try to stop workers from joining the unions that provide a pathway to fair wages, safety and a voice on the job. The rich want to turn back time and abolish the National Labor Relations Board, the Roosevelt-era agency that forces employers to obey labor law.
They even oppose common-sense rules that would protect miners from cancer-causing silica exposure, require responsible staffing levels in senior care facilities and keep workers alive during heat waves.
Sadly, Chavez-DeRemer and the Trump administration abetted these attacks and agreed to cut dozens of additional regulations to help corporations pad their bottom lines on workers’ backs.
Chavez-DeRemer failed even before taking office, telling Congress during her confirmation hearing that it really isn’t the labor secretary’s role to “put the thumb on the scale” for workers.
The hell it isn’t.
Just look at the department’s mission, described on the official government website.
Working people want decent wages, affordable health care, respectful treatment, safe working conditions and secure retirements. They want work-life balance and opportunities to build brighter futures. They want employers to be held accountable.
It will be the next labor secretary’s job—this person’s one and only job—to stand with workers, take on these fights and follow in Perkins’ footsteps.