The Senate should reject Julie Su for labor secretary

It is becoming clearer that Julie Su, President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Department of Labor, may not have the votes she needs, even among Democrats, to win confirmation by the U.S. Senate. However, Biden and his Big Labor allies have not given up trying to shore up support for what one senator called a “fierce champion for unions.”

The reason for the reluctance to vote to install Su as labor secretary is obvious: Her radically pro-union tenure as California labor secretary has proven disastrous, drying up opportunities for independent-minded freelance employees in the state while letting fraud and abuse run rampant.

Capitol Hill got another reminder of Su’s unfitness at a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing earlier this month. Su demonstrated that she can’t even defend her own record. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) had to threaten a subpoena just to bring Su before the committee, indicating that Su had done everything possible to avoid testifying.

At the June 7 hearing, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) asked Su very simple, direct questions about her record in his state, and specifically about Assembly Bill 5, a California law orchestrated and enforced by Su that forcibly reclassified many independent contractors in the state as full-time employees, upending their work arrangements. Presented repeatedly with the yes-or-no question of whether she thought AB 5 was a good law, Su would not give a straight answer.

Of course, given its results and its impact on workers, it would be difficult for anyone to defend AB 5. Su’s enforcement of AB 5 left a trail of destruction that devastated economic opportunities for Californians, all to please Su’s Big Labor political allies, whose aim was to cash in on gig workers and independent contractors as they became union dues-paying, full-time employees. AB5’s radical reclassification led to more than one million freelancers losing work in the wake of its passage, in addition to a tangle of ongoing litigation.

Most independent contractors — from Uber and Lyft drivers to songwriters, musicians, photographers, truck drivers and freelance writers — say they do not want to become employees and value the flexibility that independent contracting affords them. Faced with a brewing revolt, the California legislature created special carve-outs for some professions from AB 5, but others got trapped in the regulatory chaos. Even the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opined that AB 5 and its enforcement may have had no legitimate policy objectives, and may have instead been motivated by “animus” toward Uber and other companies that play large roles in facilitating independent contracting.

Su also stumbled on questions probing the unprecedented payouts of $30 billion to $40 billion in COVID-era unemployment funds to criminals, scammers, and fraudsters that occurred under her oversight. When Kiley presented statements from both a California state auditor’s report and from the Democrat chair of the California Accountability and Administrative Review Committee that Su’s department had passed on doing simple things to stop the rampant fraud, Su couldn’t answer whether she would have done anything differently.

Su’s hemming and hawing is particularly concerning in someone aiming to head up the U.S. Department of Labor. To put the numbers into context, the Department of Labor’s requested discretionary budget is only $15 billion. This means that Su lost to fraud more than twice the requested discretionary budget of the agency she will be responsible for managing in Washington, D.C.

Su’s difficulty defending her record stems from the fact that her record is indefensible: While the mismanaging of COVID-era relief funds may have just been due to mere incompetence, AB 5 and the forced unionism objectives behind it severely injured Californians’ economic opportunities and independence. Su played a pivotal role in inflicting those wounds.

Nonetheless, the Biden Administration is still pushing her nomination. The administration must repay its union boss cronies for their political support, and taking AB 5 nationwide with Su’s help would open enormous swaths of once-independent contractors to union control.

Combine that with the Biden Administration’s goal to eliminate Right to Work laws nationwide with the passage of the so-called “PRO Act,” and the forced-dues windfall for union officials is potentially unprecedented.

Americans and their senators should clearly understand that California is not a model for the rest of the nation — rather, it is a warning about what Biden and his nominee plan to do to the country. That certainly deserves a “no” vote.

Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Committee.