Joe Biden announced Friday that Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is his nominee for Labor Secretary, replacing outgoing Trump pick Eugene Scalia.
Calling him “a good friend and a standup guy,” Biden said he was “tough as nails,” beating childhood cancer, becoming a union member and president, as well as graduating from college at age 42 before becoming the mayor of the Massachusetts capital.
“Marty understands, like I do, that the middle-class built this country, and unions built the middle-class,” the President-Elect said when introducing Walsh.
Walsh is currently serving his second term as mayor, where a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave were signature issues.
“Working people have been struggling for a long time under the erosion of their rights, and the deep inequalities of race, gender, and class,” Walsh continued. “We are facing hard times, but nobody’s tougher than the American worker. And now we have the opportunity to put power back in the hands of working people all across this country.”
Working-class roots
According to CBS Boston, Walsh and Biden have been friends for several years. Biden attended and swore in the mayor for his second term in 2018.
Walsh served as a legislator for the 13th Suffolk District in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Democratic Party Labor Caucus, and Co-Chair for the Special Commission on Public Construction Reform.
He was also president of the Laborers’ Union Local 223, joining the union at age 21. He was elected secretary-treasurer and general agent of the Boston Metropolitan District Building Trades Council and ultimately named to lead the union in 2011.
Mayor Walsh received his bachelor’s degree from the Woods College of Advancing Studies at Boston College.
While dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and related issues will be an obvious priority once Biden takes office, it remains to be seen how aggressively he’ll pursue some of the retirement-related reform proposals he introduced or promised on the campaign trail, or actions he may take to undo recent rulemaking by the Department of Labor.