By Kim Kelly
After a tumultuous two years, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh is reportedly leaving the Biden administration to head up the NHL player’s union. Walsh is the first former union leader to hold the top spot at the Department of Labor since the Ford administration (shout out to International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers member W.J. Usery Jr.), and his credentials as a bona fide union guy were a major reason why he ended up in that position; as the former head of the Boston Building Trades Council, Walsh has a genuine connection to the labor movement, and his appointment gave people hope that he would fight for the rest of the country’s workers as hard as he had for his own union siblings in Laborers’ Union Local 223.
But as his short tenure comes to an end, it’s hard to say how well the former Boston mayor lived up to those expectations. Labor reporter Hamilton Nolan takes an unsparing view of Walsh’s achievements: “a lot of promise, a lot of unnecessary compromise and, ultimately, a disappointment that the working class of the future will likely look back on with regret.”
During his time in Boston, Walsh was known as not just a stalwart friend of labor, he was a union guy—a former laborer turned politician who always remained friendly with the building trades and labor unions more generally, and pushed for pro-worker policies. The assumption was that he would bring that same energy with him to Washington, and Walsh did make history in a few other ways when he assumed the mantle of the office.
Incredibly, he was the first labor secretary to visit an active picket line on the side of the workers, joining striking Kellogg’s workers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in October 2011 (as Fast Company noted then, in 1989, Labor Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole visited striking coal miners, but also met with the company to get “both sides”). Walsh’s small gesture was a big deal, and was in line with the Biden administration’s branding of itself as “the most pro-union administration” in recent memory.
Walsh continued to take a hands-on approach toward mediating strikes. He helped broker the resolution of the St. Vincent Hospital nurses’ strike in December 2021, and jumped in to help resolve a Major League Baseball lockout in early 2022. He also played a major role in the September 2022 negotiations that ultimately ended the potential of a nationwide rail strike—but the negotiations saddled thousands of rail workers in multiple rail unions with a contract they’d already voted to turn down. Both Walsh and the administration were heavily criticized by union members and labor activists for forcing the contract down rail workers’ throats without meeting their most important demands.
In 2022, a tentative agreement Walsh had negotiated between several rail companies and rail workers’ unions fell apart after members of multiple unions voted against it, angry that the deal did not include important demands like paid sick days and time off. Desperate to avoid a major rail strike and the resulting economic impact it would bring, the Biden administration rushed through a bill imposing the contract on all of the unions involved, even those whose members had rejected it.
By siding with the rail bosses over the workers, Walsh and the administration were seen to have betrayed labor for the sake of capital. (Walsh has also not been as proactive in addressing other major conflicts; for example, the Warrior Met Coal strike in Brookwood, Alabama, which has been ongoing since April 1, 2021, has had no offers of federal mediation).
On a brighter note, Walsh’s building trades experience showed in his championing of apprenticeship programs and programs to help immigrant workers, and he made efforts to push through helpful regulatory changes. But by and large, there’s simply not all that much to say about Walsh’s tenure. While the National Labor Relations Board has become very proactive in handing down pro-worker judgments and slapping violators with fines and unfavorable rulings, the DOL has been quieter under Walsh’s leadership.
Now that he’s headed to the much more lucrative ranks of professional sports, some are hoping that he will use his newfound influence to bring that world—and its highly paid, dues-paying union members—closer into the orbit of the AFL-CIO. The influx of dues money from such a uniquely wealthy workforce would certainly be helpful for the federation’s newly aggressive organizing goals, and for shoring up power more generally. (And as a burly Boston guy, one wonders if Walsh simply decided he would rather pull down seven figures to hang out with a bunch of hockey players than deal with the stuffed suits in Washington).
Though the news of Walsh’s departure just began leaking last week, there have already been whispers about who may be tapped in to replace him. Senator Bernie Sanders made his preferences clear in a press gaggle when he mentioned Association of Flight Attendants CWA President Sara Nelson as a possible contender; others have floated former Representative Andy Levin of Michigan, a former union organizer and strong friend of labor, as a potential replacement.
Nelson is no stranger to being volunteered for high-profile jobs—before the confirmation of AFL-CIO President Luz Shuler, many voices among the rank and file clamored for Nelson to take the role instead—but her schedule is already jam-packed with her duties as a union president, including steering the AFA-CWA’s large-scale campaign to unionize Delta’s flight attendants.
The corporate wing of the Democratic party has weighed in, too. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has reportedly been working the phones on behalf of former New York Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, a prolific fundraiser with few ties to labor but close relationships with the party’s business-friendly centrists.
For now, the White House has not yet confirmed Walsh’s resignation, but it’s expected that Deputy Secretary Julie Su will fill the role until a permanent replacement is chosen. Su, a former California Labor Secretary, is a favorite of progressives for her strong relationship with labor and deep history of advocating for vulnerable workers as a civil rights attorney and elected official. The Department of Labor will be in good hands with Su—and if we’re lucky, it’ll stay there.
The next Secretary of Labor—whoever they may be—will have a lot of catching up to do. During a moment of historically high public approval for unions and historically low union membership, there are a wealth of potential avenues an ambitious, fearless, hard-nosed labor secretary may take to actually make a real material impact on the survival of the American labor movement. Here’s hoping we get one of those next time.
Kim Kelly is an independent journalist, author, and organizer whose writing on labor, politics, class, and culture has appeared in Teen Vogue, Rolling Stone, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, and many other publications. Her first book, Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, is out now via One Signal/Simon & Schuster. She is currently working on her second book.
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