After a delay of more than three months, the Senate has finally confirmed Julie Su as Deputy Labor Secretary, the No. 2 post at the department.
The Senate confirmed Su July 13 on a party-line vote of 50-47, with three Republican senators not voting. When President Biden first took office, progressive labor groups had been lobbying to have her serve as Labor Secretary, but she will now serve as deputy to Marty Walsh, who was confirmed for that post in March. 
Su, who was nominated by Biden in February to serve as Deputy Secretary, pledged during her confirmation hearing to make defending retirement plans against cybersecurity threats a high priority. She also expressed support for providing workers without access to a retirement plan through their employer with access to some sort of plan, though she was not specific on what that might entail. Su also will probably focus on workforce protection, wages and discrimination issues.
Since January 2019, Su served as Secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency, where she oversaw the state’s departments and boards that enforce labor laws and employment programs. During her confirmation hearing, she came under fire for billions of dollars in unemployment compensation fraud that happened during her time as head of California’s labor department. In questioning how she was qualified for the job, the Senate HELP Committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), noted that California suffered from some of the largest fraud in the nation’s history during the pandemic, with over $11 billion and perhaps as much as $30 billion in fraud occurring in California’s unemployment system. Su argued that the unemployment system was attacked by a criminal enterprise that cost every state, and that she would use her experience to battle that fraud at the federal level.
Su is widely supported by unions and worker-advocacy groups, and has come under fire from business groups for her support of a 2019 state law making it more difficult to classify workers as independent contractors.
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.
