President Joe Biden announced Feb. 10 that he will nominate Julie Su to the No. 2 post at the DOL.
Su currently serves as Secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency, appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in January 2019. As the head of that agency, she oversees the state's departments and boards that enforce labor laws and employment programs. She has received praise among labor and worker advocacy groups, but a California business group had earlier criticized her potential nomination as Labor Secretary over evidence of fraud in the state’s unemployment system. 
In fact, it appeared that her nomination to a post in the Biden administration may have been in jeopardy after Su held a press conference Jan. 25 acknowledging that hackers, identity thieves and overseas criminal rings stole more than $11 billion of the $114 billion that California paid in unemployment claims last year.
Su also served as California Labor Commissioner from 2011 through 2018, where she was responsible for enforcing the State’s labor laws. According to her bio, she launched in 2014 the first “Wage Theft Is a Crime” multimedia, multilingual statewide campaign to reach out to low-wage workers and their employers to help them understand their rights.
Prior to her appointment as California Labor Commissioner, Su was the Litigation Director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice–Los Angeles, a non-profit civil rights organization devoted to issues affecting the Asian American community. A graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School, she has also taught at UCLA Law School and Northeastern Law School.
Su’s nomination to the No. 2 post at the DOL may be somewhat of a disappointment to progressive labor groups that had been lobbying to have her serve as Labor Secretary. Biden instead picked Boston mayor Marty Walsh, who is awaiting his expected approval after a Feb. 4 hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
If confirmed by the Senate and given her background as a litigator, Su would likely focus on pandemic recovery efforts, and workforce protection, wage and discrimination issues brought up by Biden during the campaign. Among other things, Biden had called for passing the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act to provide public service and federal government workers with bargaining rights, and passing the Paycheck Fairness Act to help ensure women are paid equally.
