President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday that he would nominate Julie Su to be his next Labor secretary, moving swiftly to fill a coming vacancy within his cabinet.
“It is my honor to nominate Julie Su to be our country’s next Secretary of Labor,” Biden said in a statement. “Julie has spent her life fighting to make sure that everyone has a fair shot, that no community is overlooked, and that no worker is left behind. Over several decades, Julie has led the largest state labor department in the nation, cracked down on wage theft, fought to protect trafficked workers, increased the minimum wage, created good-paying, high-quality jobs, and established and enforced workplace safety standards.”
Su is currently the deputy Labor secretary and will be nominated to replace Marty Walsh, who is departing the administration to run the professional hockey players’ union. Su’s confirmation fight could be a tough one in the Senate; she was confirmed 50-47 to her slot in 2021 with no Republican support.
Asian American members of Congress had pushed hard for Su to lead the Labor Department at the beginning of the Biden administration before the president picked Walsh, whose impending departure prompted the lawmakers to again lobby for Su.
Influential labor unions like SEIU had also rallied around Su. Others in organized labor were generally supportive of her becoming Labor secretary, even if they stopped short of a formal endorsement.
Though Su quickly emerged as the frontrunner to succeed Walsh, the Biden administration did explore several alternatives. Among those was Sara Nelson, the leader of Association of Flight Attendants-CWA who had the backing of Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whose committee will handle Biden’s nomination.
Su is already in line to become acting Labor secretary once Walsh leaves mid-March, and she has taken on an increased presence in recent weeks as the agency prepares for the handoff.
The two were scheduled to appear together midday Tuesday in Houston for a tour of a local apprenticeship program, alongside the heads of the Teamsters union and United Airlines.
Until recently, Su rarely traveled outside of the capital while Walsh was a frequent presence for the Biden administration across the country and regularly appeared with the president at high-profile events, according to a POLITICO review of the pair’s public schedules.
If confirmed, Su would be the Biden administration’s first AAPI Cabinet secretary, though she would join fellow AAPI Cabinet members Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar.
Sara Ferris contributed to this report.
