WASHINGTON – Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh today issued the following statement on Workers Memorial Day as the nation remembers those whose work claimed their lives:

“In the past year, nearly 5,000 workers left home for work and did not return. None knew that going to work would cost them their lives. While each life lost is a tragedy, those taken in incidents that might have been prevented – had their employers followed required safety and health standards – are especially painful for their families, their co-workers and friends, and their communities.

Today, we join the families of those workers we have lost on Workers Memorial Day to remember them, reflect on the difference they made in our lives and recognize the high cost of failing to adhere to workplace safety and health regulations.

Amid the losses of thousands of workers each year – 13 people a day on average – we have also endured the heightened risks brought by the coronavirus pandemic for more than two years. Many workers suffered fatal exposure to COVID-19 as they worked to care for our health, protect our safety and feed our families.

While we have made much progress toward safer workplaces, we must do more to ensure that employers understand and take responsibility for addressing workplace hazards and keep them from causing workplace fatalities. As our economy continues its recovery, we are determined to empower workers as well so they can recognize the hazards around them, and demand their rights to a safe workplace without fear of retaliation.

On Workers Memorial Day, we honor the fathers, mothers, sons and daughters whose lives ended tragically and, in their memory re-commit ourselves to our belief that no worker should ever have to trade their life for a paycheck.”

WASHINGTON – U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Marty Walsh visited New York City today for the first in a series of roundtable discussions on how to build better retirement security for the nation's workers.

The Secretary and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the Secretary's representative for pensions and retirement, joined Rep. Jerry Nadler, New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew and investment fund managers, educators, advocacy group leaders and others to review current retirement security policies and the need for reform.

"Every single American worker should be able to retire with security. It's fundamental to the dignity of work, and fundamental to our mission at the Department of Labor," said U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh. "In this nationwide campaign, we want to hear all the challenges people are facing, in every industry and at every stage of their career – and we want to hear about solutions as well. We want to work collaboratively to improve our nation's retirement system so that no one has to worry about outliving their money. I'm grateful to all the stakeholders helping us launch this vital conversation."

Other participants at today's event included BlackRock Managing Director Anne Ackerley; Tax Counsel in the Office of Sen. Robert Menendez, Jennifer Brown; Main Street Alliance Executive Director Chanda Causer; State Street Managing Director, Brendan Curran; Boston College Center for Retirement Research Associate Director, Andrew Eschtruth; New School for Social Research's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy, Dr. Teresa Ghilarducci; Main Street Alliance member Diana Mora; AARP Executive Vice President & Chief Public Policy Officer, Debra Whitman; NAACP Vice President Patrice Willoughby; and Millennial Action Project President and CEO Layla Zaidane.

In the coming months, Kennedy Townsend will host similar discussions around the country to promote retirement security reform and open a dialogue between unions, the private sector and non-profits on retirement reform. The discussions will also focus on the following policy areas:

• Encouraging all employers to offer auto-enrollment plans so that employees can easily save.
• Making it easy to carry one's retirement benefits from job to job.
• Transforming lump-sum payments to lifetime income that is affordable and easy to understand.

LOS ANGELES – Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh and Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm toured the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator on April 21, 2022, to highlight the Biden-Harris administration's Bipartisan Innovation Act. They emphasized the need to expand research and development in clean energy technologies, boost domestic manufacturing to lower prices, establish more secure supply chains and create good-paying jobs.

"The Biden-Harris administration believes climate change can be addressed in a way that expands opportunity and greater equity in our economy. The Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator shows that by combining innovation, investment, community engagement and workforce training, a successful transition to clean energy is possible," said Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh. "The Bipartisan Innovation Act would deliver billions more for domestic manufacturing which would create good jobs, lower prices and scale-up innovations like those we've seen here at Cleantech."

Secretaries Walsh and Granholm were joined by Reps. Norma Torres, Linda Sanchez, Maxine Waters and Judy Chu; and by Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Hilda Solis.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Labor today announced the appointment of seven members and leadership for the 2022 Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans, also known as the ERISA Advisory Council.

The 15-member council provides advice on policies and regulations affecting employee benefit plans governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

The council’s first meeting in 2022 will be held online on May 9, 2022, from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. EDT. Open to the public, the meeting will determine the topics for the council’s consideration in 2022 and receive an update from the Employee Benefits Security Administration.

By law, members for staggered 3-year terms representing nine fields. Three members represent employee organizations, three represent employers and three represent the general public. One member is selected from the accounting, actuarial counseling, corporate trust, insurance, investment counseling and investment management fields.

“The perspective of stakeholders in the employee benefits’ field greatly improves the Department of Labor’s work,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Employee Benefits Security Ali Khawar. “The expertise possessed by the members of the ERISA Advisory Council is an invaluable resource. We are grateful that they are willing to share their time and talent.”

The appointees and their areas of expertise are as follows:

Actuarial Counseling: Tonya Manning is U.S. Wealth Practice Leader and Chief Actuary for Buck Global LLC. Manning has more than 30 years of retirement plan actuarial experience in the private and public sector, and is a lecturer in actuarial science at Columbia University.  

Employee Organizations: Marcelle J. Henry is a partner and the chairperson of the ERISA/Employee Benefits Group at Pitta LLP. Henry has more than 20 years of experience practicing employee benefits law, with expertise counseling multiemployer pension and welfare funds on all aspects of plan administration and compliance. 

Employee Organizations: Shaun C. O’Brien is policy director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. With more than 25 years of experience in employee benefits, O’Brien now oversees AFSCME’s federal policy work on employee benefits issues. 

Employers: Holly Verdeyen is a partner at Mercer. Verdeyen leads Mercer’s defined contribution retirement plan and financial wellness business in the U.S., and has more than 20 years of experience in addressing the retirement plan investment needs of employers and their employee benefit plans. 

General Public: Jeffrey Lewis is a partner at Keller Rohrback LLP. Lewis has specialized in employee benefits law for more than 45 years, and has been a litigator on behalf of plan participants and retirees. Lewis has also served as a plan fiduciary, and counseled plans and service providers. In addition, Lewis has been a law school professor, mediator and senior editor of employee benefits publications. 

Insurance: Alice Palmer is vice president and chief counsel for Retirement Plan Service for Lincoln Financial Group. With more than 11 years of experience counseling insurance companies on employee benefits law, Palmer now sets strategic priorities for the company’s retirement plans’ legal and compliance teams.

Investment Counseling: Beth Halberstadt is senior partner and U.S. Defined Contribution Investment Solutions Leader for Aon Investments USA Inc. With more than 30 years of experience in retirement plan administration and investments, Halberstadt now has responsibility for delivering innovative investment and plan design solutions for defined contribution clients. 

Current ERISA Advisory Council member Peter Wiedenbeck will serve as the chair of the 2022 Council. Wiedenbeck is the Joseph H. Zumbalen Professor of the Law of Property at Washington University School of Law. With more than 30 years of experience teaching employee benefits law and taxation, Wiedenbeck has published extensively in those areas. 

Current member Megan Broderick will serve as vice chair. With more than 30 years of experience in compensation and benefits, Broderick is now senior director for Global Retirement and Financial Wellbeing at PepsiCo. and leads the strategy, design and governance team for more than 120 PepsiCo retirement programs.

More information about the ERISA Advisory Council, including information on how to attend the May meeting and the reports of the 2021 ERISA Advisory Council, can be found on the council web page.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Labor today published its Equity Action Plan in response to the Biden-Harris administration’s Executive Order 13985 on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities, issued in 2021. The order promotes a whole-of-government equity agenda that addresses systemic barriers to opportunities and benefits offered by the federal government.

The plan summarizes the department’s efforts to identify barriers to more equitable access to programs and services for underserved, marginalized and excluded communities and outlines the next steps for expanding access to those communities. It also serves as a roadmap to help those communities better understand the department’s vision for advancing equity so that they can provide input and hold the department accountable for meaningful change.

“The Biden-Harris administration’s coordinated effort to ensure marginalized, underserved and excluded communities have access to the benefits and services offered by federal programs has never been more important,” said U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh. “By making equity for historically underserved communities a priority, the Department of Labor will provide workers with greater opportunities to share the benefits as our nation’s economy continues its historic rebound.”

To advance equity, the Equity Action Plan focuses on five high-impact areas that include the following:

• Enforcement of wage and hour laws.
• Administration and improvement of the federal-state Unemployment Insurance system.
• Broadening of access to department programs, services and information for workers with limited English proficiency.
• Expansion of sector-based training and employment strategies.
• Diversification of the federal workforce by building new pathways into government apprenticeships.

The plan also highlights the progress the department has made in its efforts to reach marginalized and underserved populations since 2021. These improvements include:

• Broadening the equity impact of department grants.
• Centering vulnerable and underserved communities in the rulemaking process.
• Building stronger partnerships with community-based organizations.
• Improving equity data collection and analysis.

The department’s current and future efforts around equity help ensure that all working people, job seekers and retirees have the economic security, opportunity and voice they need to thrive in our society.

Read Secretary Walsh’s blog on the Equity Action Plan.

Learn more about how the Department of Labor is advancing equity.

Learn how the Department of Labor is centering the most disadvantaged communities in its work, and how these efforts benefit us all.

Read the Department of Labor’s Equity Action Plan.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh and the Austrian Minister for Digital and Economic Affairs Dr. Margarete Schramböck signed a memorandum of understanding today to expand Registered Apprenticeships among Austrian companies and Austrian-invested companies in the U.S. to promote job creation in both countries. Austria invested a total of $17.18 billion in the U.S. in 2020, sustaining 33,500 jobs primarily in the areas of industrial equipment, software and IT services.

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo also signed the MOU between the U.S. Departments of Labor, Education and Commerce and Austria’s Federal Ministries for Digital and Economic Affairs, Labor, Education, Science and Research.

“Registered Apprenticeships are a proven model for workers and employers that create paths to good paying, middle class jobs,” said U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh. “The partnership will help promote the establishment, growth and diversification of Registered Apprenticeship programs. Through these programs, we can increase foreign investment in the U.S. and expand opportunities for America’s workers.”

The ceremony at EGGER Wood Products in Linwood, North Carolina, the company’s first manufacturing plant in North America, highlighted the newly ratified agreement to increase employment and training opportunities in Austria and the U.S. through increased investments in Registered Apprenticeship programs.

EGGER is an Austrian firm that started a Registered Apprenticeship program in partnership with the Davidson-Davie Community College, based off experience with the Austrian apprenticeship model. EGGER’s program has 30 apprentices currently enrolled and is planning to enroll 12 additional apprentices this year alone.

“The signing of this Memorandum of Understanding reinforces the strong bilateral relationship between Austria and the United States and recognizes the added-value of Austrian-style apprenticeships in the U.S.,” said Austrian Minister for Digital and Economic Affairs Dr. Margarete Schramböck. “Apprenticeships benefit our economies and societies, ensure a talent pool of skilled workers, and can positively influence a company’s innovation capabilities and productivity. I am very pleased that Austria’s apprenticeship model continues to serve as inspiration for other companies in the U.S.”

Specifically, the MOU will promote the exchange of ideas and best practices for expanding apprenticeship programs in both countries. The U.S. currently has similar MOUs with Germany and Switzerland to establish new apprenticeship programs, increase awareness of opportunities and create career pathways for Registered Apprentices.

“The Department of Education and our partners across the Biden-Harris administration are committed to ensuring that all Americans, especially those in historically underserved and marginalized communities, have access to high-quality career and technical education and the skills to emerge from the pandemic stronger than ever,” said Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “This partnership will help propel our efforts to make that vision a reality, building on the historic investment in secondary and postsecondary education made through the American Rescue Plan that is already reengaging both high school and postsecondary students and connecting them back to college and career pathways.”

“The Department of Commerce deeply values our critical partnership with the Austrian government as memorialized through the signing of this memorandum,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “Austrian investment in communities across the United States are creating new pathways through apprenticeships, empowering more Americans to gain skills and enter quality jobs. The memorandum provides a framework for our governments to support even more investments and opportunities for American workers and for Austrian companies to build diverse, high-skilled workforces through Registered Apprenticeships.”

View the signed MOU.

Learn more about Registered Apprenticeship.

WASHINGTON – Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh today joined Gov. Tom Wolf, leaders of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and Yellow Corp., and union members to announce the expansion of the trucking company’s 17th Commercial Driver’s License Driving Academy in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

The expansion comes in response to the Biden-Harris administration’s 90-Day Trucking Apprenticeship Challenge to get more well-trained drivers behind the wheel in good-paying jobs through Registered Apprenticeships.

Secretary Walsh met with Gov. Wolf, Teamsters’ Vice Presidents Sean M. O’Brien and John F. Murphy, Yellow Corp. CEO Darren Hawkins and President Darrel Harris, and Teamsters Local 776 truck drivers and dockworkers at Yellow Corp.’s facility.

“The success of Yellow’s CDL Academy in producing some of the safest drivers on the road reflects the great power and promise of apprenticeship to be a proven workforce tool in the trucking industry,” said Secretary Marty Walsh. “The 90-Day Trucking Apprenticeship Challenge has shown that joint labor management programs and public-private partnerships are critical, and that we succeed when we work together.” 

“We’re pleased that our 17th driving academy will soon open, giving men and women the opportunity to train for a commercial driver’s license and begin a new career in trucking. Truckers are American heroes, responsible for delivering essential goods to businesses and homes coast to coast,” said Yellow Corp. CEO Darren Hawkins. “We’re delighted that Secretary Walsh and Governor Wolf are committed to furthering apprenticeship programs, which help companies like ours train the next generation of professional drivers.”

Registered Apprenticeships like the Yellow CDL Driving Academy support high-quality, earn-as-you-learn training to connect drivers to good jobs, and strength the nation’s supply chains. These efforts align with the Biden-Harris administration’s Trucking Action Plan.

Learn more about Registered Apprenticeships programs.

Read more about the Yellow CDL Driving Academy.

WASHINGTON – The Biden-Harris administration today released the President’s Fiscal Year 2023 Budget and Fiscal Year 2022-2026 Strategic Plan. The President’s Budget details his vision to expand on the historic progress our country has made over the last year and deliver the agenda he laid out in his State of the Union address: to build a better America, reduce the deficit, reduce costs for families and grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out. 

The strategic plan describes the goals and objectives the department plans to accomplish over the next four years.

“President Biden’s 2023 budget request of $14.6 billion in discretionary resources for the Department of Labor is an explicit value statement on empowering workers morning, noon and night,” said Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh. “It calls for investments in the foundations of our country’s strength – our workers, their families and their communities. The Budget delivers on the heart of the President’s economic agenda, seeks to advance equity and harnesses our economy to lift our people toward good middle-class jobs.” 

The budget makes critical investments in the American people that will help lay a stronger foundation for shared growth and prosperity for generations to come. At the Department of Labor, the budget would:

• Empower and protect workers. To ensure employers treat workers with dignity and respect, the discretionary request invests $2.2 billion – an increase of $397 million over the 2021 enacted level – in the department’s worker protection agencies. This will enable the department to conduct the enforcement and regulatory work needed to ensure workers’ wages and benefits are protected and improve workplace health and safety. It also restores resources to oversee and enforce the equal employment obligations of federal contractors, including protections against discrimination based on race, gender, disability, gender identity and sexual orientation.
• Equip workers with the skills they need to obtain high-quality jobs. The budget invests in effective, evidence-based training models to equip workers with the skills they need to obtain high-quality jobs by requesting $303 million to expand Registered Apprenticeship opportunities while increasing access for historically underrepresented groups. Community colleges play a critical role in providing accessible, low-cost, high-quality training. The budget calls for $100 million to build their capacity to work with the public workforce development system and employers to design and deliver high-quality training for in-demand jobs. It also includes $100 million for a new Sectoral Employment through Career Training for Occupational Readiness program, which will support sector-based training programs focused on growing industries, providing underserved and underrepresented workers access to good jobs and creating the skilled workforce the economy needs to thrive.
• Improve access and equity in the unemployment insurance system. Unemployment insurance benefits helped over 53 million workers who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and put some $870 billion back into the economy during the pandemic. The budget invests $3.4 billion to modernize, protect and strengthen this critical program. This includes several investments aimed at tackling fraud in the UI program, including funding to support enhanced identity verification for UI applicants and help states develop and test fraud-prevention tools and strategies. They will also allow the Office of Inspector General to increase its investigations into fraud rings targeting the UI program. The budget also puts forward principles for UI reform. As the pandemic has made clear, regular UI benefits in most states are far too low, leaving families without the resources needed to make ends meet during an economic crisis.
• Safeguard equal opportunity and nondiscrimination. The budget provides additional support to the Civil Rights Center to expand its enforcement work and also supports the efforts of the Women’s Bureau to remedy the negative impact of the pandemic on women. In addition, the budget provides additional funding to allow the Office of Disability Employment Policy to test new strategies to enable low-income youth with disabilities to transition to employment.
• Strengthen mental health parity protections. The budget requires all health plans to cover mental health benefits, ensures that plans have an adequate network of behavioral health providers and improves the department’s ability to enforce the law. Additionally, the budget includes $275 million over 10 years to increase the department’s capacity to ensure that large group market health plans and issuers comply with mental health and substance use disorder requirements and to take action against plans and issuers that do not comply.

The President’s Budget makes these smart investments while also reducing deficits and improving our country’s long-term fiscal outlook.

Learn more about the President’s FY 2023 Budget.

WASHINGTON – Women in the U.S. must work until March 15 to be paid the same amount men were in the prior year. This unequal burden on women – especially on women of color – reflects the distance that remains before we achieve an inclusive economy with good jobs for everyone. Among other health, security and education inequities, this economic disparity drove the Biden-Harris administration’s creation of the Gender Policy Council, which has led a historic effort to dismantle these structures of inequality.

“Equal Pay Day is a concept intended to get us thinking differently about how insidious the pay disparity between men and women really is – and to get us motivated to remedy it, once and for all,” said U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh. “Gender inequality shows up everywhere in our society, but its expression in the workplace is striking in its fundamental unfairness. The Department of Labor has long been a leader in combating that inequality, and we continue to find new ways to understand and address it, as we are doing today by releasing new research.”

The pandemic complicated this dynamic, laying bare some of the factors that contribute to the gender pay gap. One of these is the reality of occupational segregation, whereby women are concentrated in certain occupations that pay lower wages. And the occupations and industries where women are most concentrated experienced greater job losses during the pandemic industries.

To better understand how this impacts women, the department has produced “Bearing the Cost: How Overrepresentation in Undervalued Jobs Disadvantaged Women During the Pandemic,” a report on women’s employment impacts during the pandemic and the role of occupational segregation being released today.

The report newly finds that segregation by industry and occupation cost Black women an estimated $39.3 billion, and Hispanic women an estimated $46.7 billion, in lower wages compared to white men in 2019. 

“Occupational segregation is a long-standing driver of gender and racial inequality in the workplace, but the COVID-19 pandemic exploded many of its outcomes, causing real economic harm to working women and their families, especially women of color,” said Women’s Bureau Director Wendy Chun-Hoon. “We encourage our partners and coalitions working throughout the country to use the occupation segregation data contained the department’s report to accelerate and strengthen their work.

The department is committed to addressing occupational segregation by supporting women entering male-dominated fields, raising wages and job quality especially in women-dominated jobs, and ensuring racial and gender equity in all jobs. To achieve this, the report includes a series of recommendations for action, such as:

• Creating more equitable educational and training opportunities for women to enter non-traditional fields through pre-apprenticeships and apprenticeships.
• Increasing access to policies that support workers with caregiving responsibilities, like paid leave and childcare.
• Building worker power by supporting workers’ right to organize and collectively bargain.
• Addressing discrimination and harassment in workplaces.

These actions are key components of the department’s Good Jobs Initiative, an effort Secretary Walsh announced in January 2022 to provide critical information to workers, employers and government entities as they seek to improve job quality and create access to good union jobs – free from discrimination and harassment – for all workers and job seekers.

Learn more about the Women’s Bureau.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg today announced a partnership with the signing of a memorandum of understanding to promote the creation of good infrastructure and transportation jobs with a focus on equitable workforce development using funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The partnership between the two departments will advance strategies to ensure investments create good-paying jobs with the choice to join a union and the use of proven workforce development strategies, such as Registered Apprenticeship, to connect workers in underserved communities to modern day infrastructure and transportation jobs.

“Partnering with the Department of Transportation will enable us to make the most of this historic investment in America and its workers by ensuring these investments lead to good jobs and that workers have the training they need to access these jobs, especially women, people of color and workers in communities who for too long have been left behind,” said U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh. “Together, our departments can provide resources and support that states and local communities need to rebuild our nation with good-paying jobs in the transportation and infrastructure sectors.”

This partnership aligns with the Department of Labor’s Good Jobs Initiative. Announced in January, the initiative aims to improve job quality through the nation by providing critical information to workers, employers and government entities as they seek to improve job quality and create access to good union jobs – free from discrimination and harassment – for all workers and jobseekers.

“President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is a once-in-a-generation investment to modernize our infrastructure – and that's going to create a lot of good jobs,” said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. “We’re teaming up with the Department of Labor to ensure that all Americans, especially those too often underrepresented in transportation and construction, have access to these high-quality jobs with a free choice to form a union.”

As an example of this new partnership, the Federal Transit Administration today announced a new funding opportunity for low and no-emission buses that dedicates 5 percent of funding be used for workforce development to retrain workers as transit agencies transition to zero-emission fleets. Applicants who develop training with union partners and use registered apprenticeship to retrain transit workers will be more competitive for these grants.

Similar to other recently released Department of Transportation funding opportunities, applicants for construction projects are also being asked to put in place preferences to increase hiring for people from disadvantaged communities into the local area, as authorized by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The Labor and Transportation departments will collaborate to help local leaders understand how they can use pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs with supportive services to get more people into good-paying infrastructure jobs.

Read the Memorandum of Understanding announced today.