That depends on your politics. After President Obama named Thomas E. Perez, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, as his pick to replace Hilda Solis as Labor Department Secretary, Rush Limbaugh promptly compared Perez to the late leftist Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
East Room
11:47 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) Everybody have a seat. Have a seat. As I’ve said before, my top priority as President is doing everything we need to do to make sure that we’re growing our economy and that we’re strengthening our middle class. And as I said in my State of the Union address last month, every day we should be asking ourselves three questions. One — how do we make sure America is a magnet for good jobs? Number two — how do we equip people with the skills they need to get those jobs? And number three — how do we make sure that hard work actually pays off in a decent living?
These are the challenges that I’ve instructed my team here at the White House and in my entire Cabinet to focus on. And a position that’s instrumental to tackling these challenges is having an outstanding Secretary of Labor.
So I want to begin by thanking Hilda Solis and her entire team — (applause) — including Acting Secretary Seth Harris — (applause) — for the outstanding work that they’ve been doing over the past four years. Their efforts at the Department of Labor have given more young people a chance to earn new skills, more returning vets the chance to find a job. They’ve looked out for worker safety from construction sites to coal mines. They’ve stood up for workers’ rights to organize, women’s rights to get paid equally for the work that they do. They’ve done an extraordinary job fighting on behalf of working families across the board.
And today, I’m proud to nominate a leader to carry on those efforts as America’s next Secretary of Labor — Tom Perez. (Applause.)
Like so many Americans, Tom knows what it’s like to climb the ladder of opportunity. He is the son of Dominican immigrants. He helped pay his way through college as a garbage collector and working at a warehouse. He went on to become the first lawyer in his family. So his story reminds us of this country’s promise, that if you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, what your last name is — you can make it if you try.
And Tom has made protecting that promise — for everybody — the cause of his life. As a civil rights attorney, an aide to Senator Ted Kennedy, a member of the Montgomery, Maryland County Council, Tom fought for a level playing field where hard work and responsibility are rewarded and working families can get ahead.
And this is not the first time that he’s chosen to be a labor secretary, either. We’ve got here today Governor Martin O’Malley, and Martin appointed Tom as Secretary of Maryland’s Department of Labor, where he helped implement the country’s first statewide living-wage law, because he understood that a minimum …read more
Source: White House Press Office
Filed under: Labor, Job Market, U.S. Government, Barack Obama, Economy, People
By JIM KUHNHENN and SAM HANANEL
WASHINGTON — Seeking to fill yet another second-term Cabinet vacancy, President Barack Obama is set to nominate Thomas Perez, an assistant attorney general, to be the next secretary of labor, the White House says.
If confirmed by the Senate, Perez, who has been head of the Justice Department‘s Civil Rights Division for 3½ years, would take over the Labor Department as Obama undertakes several worker-oriented initiatives, including an overhaul of immigration laws and an increase in the minimum wage.
Before taking the job as assistant attorney general, Perez was secretary of Maryland’s Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, which enforces state consumer rights, workplace safety and wage and hour laws.
Obama plans to nominate Perez, 51, on Monday.
In choosing Perez, the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Obama would be placing an already high-ranking Hispanic official in a Cabinet slot. Perez, a lawyer with a degree from Harvard Law School, would replace Hilda Solis, a former California congresswoman and the nation’s first Hispanic labor secretary.
Perez’s nomination has been expected for weeks, and comes with vigorous support from labor unions and Latino groups. But a newly released report by the Justice Department‘s inspector general is likely to provide fodder for Republicans who say the Justice Department‘s Civil Rights Division has been too politicized.
The report, released last week, said Perez gave incomplete testimony to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights when he said the department’s political leadership wasn’t involved in the decision to dismiss three of the four defendants in a lawsuit the Bush administration brought against the New Black Panther Party.
The report also concluded that Perez didn’t intentionally mislead the commission and that the department acted properly. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said Perez appeared to be “woefully unprepared to answer questions” from the Civil Rights Commission.
Lynn Rhinehart, general counsel at the AFL-CIO, said the report shows that Perez, who was first hired by the civil rights division as a career attorney under President George H.W. Bush, restored integrity to the voting rights program at the Justice Department.
By Adam Ozimek, Contributor Watching Up With Chris Hayes on MSNBC this morning I heard two people, one of whom was former labor secretary Hilda Solis, argue that we should be focusing on educating our own workers as an alternative to bringing in guest workers. The argument is common mostly among immigration restrictionists, including restrictionists on the left. It goes something like this: Why should we bring in workers from other countries for these good jobs when we can train U.S. citizens to take them? The problem is that we don’t give our citizens a good enough education. We should focus on educating our own citizens instead of bringing in workers from around the world. This is at it’s core a fundamental failure to appreciate Ricardo and the gains from trade. This same basic economic argument can be applied to trade: why import goods from abroad when we could get them from American businesses? No matter how good our education system is, immigration will always be economically desirable. It is impossible for education to make this untrue.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
