Julie Su is a labor and civil rights lawyer who served as Acting Secretary of Labor in the Biden administration. Prior to this role, she was the United States Deputy Secretary of Labor from 2021 to 2023. Before her federal service, Su served as the Secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency from 2019 to 2021. She is a spring resident fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics, where she leads a weekly study group. The HPR sat down with Su to discuss her thoughts on the Biden administration’s accomplishments, upcoming changes in a new presidential term, and advice for public service-minded college students.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Harvard Political Review: Transitioning from a legal career to a prominent labor leadership role is notable. How did your experience as a civil rights attorney shape your approach to labor issues, and did you find any particular legal skills or practices most applicable?
Julie Su: When you work in a nonprofit civil rights organization, you’re always trying to make a small budget and do big things, with fewer staff and resources than you need. This was good preparation for the government.
Being a civil rights attorney at a nonprofit organization also demands you dream big about what your clients deserve. Many of the people I represented had been told their whole lives that they should stay quiet and put their heads down. They were told, “Work hard, know your place.”
What they were doing by coming forward was the opposite. They were saying, “We deserve better.” My job was to work with them to try to get that. Coming into the federal government, I was able to say, “We should dream big about what is possible, especially for the most vulnerable people who need the government to function well.”
Gaining substantive knowledge and expertise in the law, specifically in workers’ rights, was very helpful as I moved into government as the leader of enforcing wage and hour laws and making policy.
HPR: In 2013 the documentary “Inequality for All” narrated by Robert Reich, Reich advocates against the wealth gap by building a strong middle class. What are your thoughts on this perspective or others analogous to it?
JS: The wealth gap is a serious problem in this country. There’s a gap between frontline working people and CEOs where a worker has to work for years to make what a CEO makes in a month. This gap is not fair, and it’s also not good policy.
Not only does it strain our social contract, but it also harms economic growth if wealth is concentrated in just a few people. We need to address this in a myriad of ways, including enforcing laws already on the books. We also need to consider what policies are needed to address such inequities.
Unions and other organizations that give workers the power to determine their future are very important antidotes to that phenomenon. However, it’s too hard for workers to organize right now. Workers are afraid of losing their jobs, they’re threatened when they try to organize.
The struggle for workers’ rights is to make sure that the people who put food on our tables, stock our grocery store shelves, sew our clothes, clean in hotels, and do so much more are not invisible. The quality of their lives is the measure of whether we are a just and free society.
HPR: You have been a major proponent and protector of workers’ rights. As Acting Secretary of Labor, you achieved major wins negotiating with unions and companies by securing deals to end worker strikes. What are your major takeaways from these experiences?
JS: President Biden’s vision for workers and willingness to throw the federal government’s weight behind that vision was an absolute game-changer. He made it clear that when you build an economy that does right by workers, it’s better for the nation. Both his voice and the policies that we pursued to do that made a big difference [during negotiations].
The other piece is believing in workers and their value. Because of President Biden’s commitment, I played the negotiating role far more than several of my predecessors combined. When workers and employers come to the table in the collective bargaining process, the results are better for everyone. I helped both parties find a path to a good result where workers go to bed a little bit more secure each night.
HPR: The first Trump administration significantly weakened labor policies. Former President Biden and other officials talked about having to work from the ground up when they came into office. What did that look like for you, and do you believe you were able to make significant change?
JS: When we entered office, we were confronting multiple challenges, particularly COVID-19 and the economic strain it caused. In many ways, it was an economy hurtling toward disaster. The entire time I was in office, I was asked many times, “Are we going to have a recession?” That is where we were headed without President Biden’s interventions and leadership. Our view was that we had to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure, but many of those industries had been decimated four years prior.
I visited a factory that was shut down in Ohio in 2019. It has now opened up again with United Auto Workers workers making electric batteries for vehicles. These things don’t happen by accident. We demonstrated that when the government takes a focused approach with real strategic policies, we can revive industries and communities that have been decimated.
At the end of the administration, there was still work left to do. Now, many of us will continue to do everything we can from outside the government to achieve those goals because these goals don’t solely rely on government action.
HPR: It is difficult to write legislation and even more difficult to get it passed. Continuity across administrations is also a challenge. How do you see the longevity of the work you’ve been able to do?
JS: Right now, there are people in political positions for whom it’s more of a game or power play than trying to solve problems. That’s something very problematic.
President Trump’s threat to reverse the Inflation Reduction Act or the CHIPS ACT ignores the fact that those investments have made a positive difference and were just getting started. It’s the same problem around legislation. Congress members had negotiated a bill around the border, but it didn’t pass because Donald Trump, who was not the president, wanted an issue to run on.
It’s unconscionable that this administration would rather roll things back than make progress. Empowering people with a sense of agency to fulfill a mission is important because that work needs to continue. The federal workforce is attempting to hold the line now under the threat of Donald Trump’s cuts, which is slowing down the current administration’s efforts. Once people realize the power they have to effect change, it becomes much harder to take that away from them.
HPR: President Trump has heavily attacked both legal and undocumented immigrants using the rhetoric that they are “stealing” American jobs. Given your background as a daughter of immigrants and a strong immigration advocate, what would you want Americans to know about the immigrant workers who work alongside them and why they matter?
JS: Immigrant workers do some of the hardest and most important jobs in our economy.
We don’t live in a zero-sum world. The question is not, “How are we going to share a small pie?”—which is Donald Trump’s view. We worked to decide “How do you make the pie bigger?”
By every measure, I believe we are on the right track where this issue of immigrant workers taking jobs becomes less salient. In the Biden economy, there was such tremendous job growth that employers struggled to find enough workers.
In that situation, you can clearly see that these anti-immigrant and mass deportation policies are about creating division. It is about using racism to distract from the need to solve real problems about whether people feel secure and make enough to survive.
Mass deportation is sending a chill through many communities across the country. Children aren’t going to learn if there is a climate of fear where ICE is coming into schools. Teachers can’t teach in that kind of environment that threatens immigrant communities by dividing their families and making up lies about them.
Trump said he was gonna bring down the price of eggs. That hasn’t happened, but people aren’t talking about it because he’s created this whole set of other so-called enemies from within.
HPR: Careers in consulting or finance provide financial stability but also pressure some students into pursuing it, while at the same time not believing it is their path. What did your definition of success look like in college or before your career? How has that shifted after going through so many professional transitions?
JS: I want to say very clearly to those students who want to follow a nontraditional path: Being a civil rights attorney at a nonprofit organization as my first full-time job not only opened up opportunities for me to make a difference but also allowed me to walk into spaces where people like me are still very rare.
That doesn’t mean that finance and consulting aren’t viable paths. I think we need good people who care about others and want to use their power instead of hoarding it to build pathways for others in every space.
However, I recognize that when I was at Harvard Law School, there was this idea that going into corporate law was the “right” path. Only those who couldn’t make it went down the public interest path. Looking back on my journey over the last three decades, I think it is important for people to follow a path where they can take the privilege of this education and turn it into an impact on the world and themselves.
When you’re on the public service path, you also meet the best people who all share that passion for public service. People who’ve chosen to forego a big paycheck for something deeply fulfilling. Those people will become your village and will drive you to continue to want to dream big, do hard things, and take on bold challenges. Even if you don’t win all the battles, you still feel like it was fulfilling.
HPR: What important morals and values have you gained from juggling motherhood and a demanding career? How would you advise students to be happy with their professional success but also prioritize personal fulfillment?
JS: The privilege of a Harvard education is unique because so many people in the world will never have it. Once you have it, it’s important to make it count for something beyond one’s self-advancement.
However, I also believe that doing good work in the world does not require you to be a martyr. Your own joy and fulfillment are so crucial, not only because they influence your ability to sustain your work.
I’m very fortunate to have many relationships that sustain me. President Biden’s surgeon general, who is a friend of mine, warned of the epidemic of loneliness in this country. We are not meant to go through life alone or to sacrifice the fulfillment of being around people that we love.
My kids and nieces have shown me why it’s so important to believe in something and fight for it, but also why it’s so important to stop and play a board game.
I believe that choosing to do meaningful work or have a meaningful life does not have to be a binary choice. Those two things go together and have gone together for me. Being able to share my work and my world with my two adult children and two nieces has been truly fulfilling.
Your work shapes the people around you and, when your work matches your values, helps you find the people you truly connect with.
