Julie Su, President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Department of Labor, was just 26 and two years out of Harvard Law School when she took on the defining case of her career that led to profound immigration and labor reforms.
Su was a member of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center’s staff in 1995. He led a legal team to obtain for 72 Thais who were enslaved and working in an El Monte sweatshop, California, legal immigration status as well as $4m in stolen wages. This case led to the federal government establishing protections for human trafficking victims. Su, the Wisconsin-born, daughter of Chinese immigrants won a MacArthur Genius Award for representing garment workers.
“She’s a creative, rigorous, incredibly committed public servant,“ said Ai-Jen Poo, a labor activist and the president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. “Growing up in an immigrant household and working as a civil rights lawyer gives her a unique perspective on both the incredible opportunities and the inequities that exist in this country.”
Su was nominated in February as the new Labor Secretary to replace Marty Walsh. She’s facing an uphill battle to confirmation, though, with business lobbying groups and prominent Republicans campaigning against her. That was on display in the first confirmation hearing Thursday before the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee, where Republicans criticized her record as California’s labor secretary and a handful of moderate Democrats remained noncommittal to voting her through. Su was narrowly elected deputy secretary by the Senate in 2021. The vote followed party lines.
Labor advocates say Su’s political career has been shaped by the enduring legacy of the El Monte sweatshop case – a grassroots campaign that “turned my life upside down and changed me forever”, Su has written.
If confirmed, the veteran civil rights attorney and California’s former top labor official – who’s endorsed by the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus and more than a dozen Asian American advocacy groups – would be the first Asian American cabinet secretary to serve under Biden.
In a raid conducted by federal and state officials in the early morning, after the Thai garment workers were released from detention and sent straight to an immigration center they had them forced into prison orange uniforms. After a week, Su’s team was able to secure their release.
The workers, most of whom were women and undocumented, had been locked up in a factory surrounded by barbed wire, forced to toil from dawn to midnight for less than $1 an hour – some for as long as seven years.
In 2000, the case forced Congress to pass an anti-trafficking bill that established a federal human trafficking task force and a special visa for victims of crime who work with law enforcement.
“The combination of having been a nonprofit attorney representing workers of color in civil rights litigation, then moving into government, is unique among people in higher ranks of government,” said Julia Figueira-McDonough, an attorney who has worked for Su for more than a decade at both Advancing Justice and the California labor commissioner’s office. “She has a level of empathy and compassion that comes from her personal experience.”
Over the past three decades, as California’s labor commissioner and labor secretary, Su has spearheaded programs to educate and protect garment workers who still toil in sweatshop conditions.
Poo of the National Domestic Workers Alliance worked with Su from 2011 until 2018 when she served as the California Labor Commissioner. Su’s ability to bring together stakeholders including business owners, community activists, and elected officials was praised by Poo. In 2014, Su launched a sweeping “Wage Theft Is a Crime” campaign to inform low-wage workers of their rights and how to report labor law abuses.
The El Monte case played a pivotal role in Su’s career, but it also won her detractors. Some community activists said that Su and the media greatly exaggerated Su’s involvement in the 1995 anti-sweatshop campaign which catapulted Su to fame.
“Julie and the Legal Center completely hijacked the case from the Thai community and turned the spotlight on themselves,” said Chanchanit Martorell, founder and executive director of the Thai Community Development Center, one of the social services groups that helped liberate, resettle and obtain redress for the garment workers.
In a 2020 letter to Biden opposing Su’s nomination for deputy secretary, Martorell noted that, in contrast with Su’s stated position as “lead attorney”, she played only a “minor role” winning the multimillion dollar settlement against the clothing manufacturers, nor was she responsible for securing the garment workers’ release from immigration detention. More experienced lawyers bore the brunt of the legal work, including filing briefs, Martorell said, and social services groups attended to the survivors’ housing and basic daily needs.
“For the Thai community that stands for social justice,” she said, “we really consider her exploiting the case for her own self-aggrandization as a betrayal.”
Stewart Kwoh (now Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California), the former executive director of the Legal Center, said Su and her staff spent thousands of hours preparing the garment workers to give depositions. Su, he said, learned some Thai language and kept in touch long after the settlement of the case. The news media distorted the role of many LA-based attorneys and organizers who were involved in the multi-year grassroots campaign.
“In my view, it was a collective victory, but we don’t control the media,” said Kwoh, who worked with Su at Advancing Justice for 17 years. “There were a lot of people who contributed to it, and they should all take credit for the work done.”
Su was the California Labor Secretary from 2019-2021. She expanded apprenticeships that train workers without college diplomas and launched initiatives to reduce wage theft. Su was also criticized by Republicans over the $30bn lost in fraud during the pandemic and business groups because she helped craft AB5, a bill that forced companies to treat some independent contractors like employees.
Kent Wong of UCLA Labor Center, who knows Su from the mid-1990s onwards, says the criticism she’s received over the scandal of unemployment fraud is unfair. It was the result of a system that had become overwhelmed and outdated, not equipped to deal with the avalanche in cash aid requests.
“It was a problem in the making for decades,” he said. “To hold the last person in charge responsible is wrong.”
Wong added that it is her stance against policies like AB5 which makes her a strong candidate for Labor Secretary.
“We’ve seen unbridled corporate greed during the pandemic, epitomized by the Silicon Valley Bank scandal,” he said. “To have someone who’s dedicated her life to supporting a living wage and the end of exploitation is a huge breakthrough.”
The committee is expected to vote this week on whether to advance Su’s confirmation to a full vote in the Senate.