US Labor Secretary Tom Perez has pushed to revitalize President Obama’s stalled plan for raising the minimum wage from $7.50 to $10.10 an hour, and for making the paid maternity leave for mothers of newborns more widely available.
Speaking at the National Press Club, Perez suggested that US employees generally have “failed to fully benefit from the nation’s economic recovery.”
“Nobody wins unless everybody wins,” he said.
Perez also argued that the US should join the rest of the industrialized world and offer paid maternity leave.
“Why are we making people choose between the job they need and the family they love?” he asked.
He continued speaking about the issue of voter fraud, saying he did not think it is a big problem. “As we prepare to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, I do not believe the enduring voting issue…is in-person voter fraud,” he said, referring to the March 7, 1965 incident when many civil rights activists were severely clubbed and beaten at a voting rights march in Selma, Alabama.
“I don’t believe that because I did those cases when I was over there [at the Justice Department], and that is a phantom problem,” he said.
Perez, who formerly headed the Justice Department’s civil rights division, is also among those believed to be under consideration to replace Eric Holder as new attorney general. President Obama has not yet announced his choice for the position, possibly until the November elections.
Perez has emphasized that workplace issues are key Democratic themes in the upcoming midterm election; they are what he called the “stairway to shared prosperity.”
“We need to raise wages and ensure that everyone who wants to work full time can do so. As the economy continues to recover, the number of people who are working part time but want to work full time has decreased by hundreds of thousands. We still have more work to do in this area, just as there is more to do on the challenge of raising wages and ensuring that prosperity is shared,” he said in an interview with MSNBC.
“My particular focus,” Perez also stressed, “is on the job of being the head of the Department of Labor. I’m still doing my day job.”
(With reports from Associated Press and MSNBC)
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA Midweek October 22-24, 2014 Sec. A pg.1)
