WASHINGTON — In his Labor Day proclamation, President Joe Biden hailed American workers as “the engines behind our nation’s prosperity.” This Labor Day also comes as a contentious campaign season is underway, and this year, the issues of jobs, inflation and the economy are front and center in the presidential race.

Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su told Spectrum News, “this is such an exciting time because there's so much to celebrate for working people in this country.”

“It's been a moment in which, you know, we've certainly seen a dramatic recovery from what was a devastating time for working people — the pandemic,” Su continued. “In the last four years, we've really made a dramatic change to a lot of those things.”  

Su has been on a “Good Jobs Summer Tour,” highlighting the Biden administration’s support for unions and efforts to create better quality jobs. Her stops have included Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Several of those states are critical election battlegrounds. 

“A good job changes lives, and good jobs in every community is something that people should be able to expect, and that when somebody goes to work at the beginning of the work day, they're going to come home healthy and safe,” Su said. “No worker should be invisible and no job should be a death sentence.” 

She touts the nearly 16 million jobs created, the increase in real wages, and federal investments in manufacturing, infrastructure and clean energy since Biden took office. 

“I travel the country, I talk to working people. I'm in union halls. I see apprenticeship programs that are bursting at the seams, and we're just getting started. So most of the investments that are coming out, you know, are still to come,” Su said. 

Su said since Biden took office, 400,000 American workers have joined a union. 

“Unions are are more popular than they've been in a very long time in this country, and that's partly because union contracts are winning wages and benefits and retirement security,” she said. 

Despite the economy’s encouraging performance post pandemic, there has been a disconnect in public sentiment around the economy.  

“We understand that working people still feel like they're struggling, right?” Su said. “That's why this administration has also been hard fighting against inflation, fighting against price gouging.”

Su added that the administration has called out how “companies that have consolidated over the years and now have essentially monopoly power, are raising prices,” as well as how there is a gap in CEO and frontline worker salaries.  

“We want to make sure that our policies, our investments and our support for unions and workers is addressing those kinds of things that give people real anxiety,” Su said. 

Former President Donald Trump paints a far different picture as he seeks to return to the White House. He has railed against inflation, questioned the legitimacy of the job creation numbers and portrayed America as in decline. Polls consistently show that more Americans trust Trump to better handle the economy than they trust either Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.

When asked to respond to Trump’s recent comments that there has been an “economic reign of terror,” Su said, “In my official capacity, not speaking for the campaign, what I'll say is, you know, one of the things that I get to see every day as the acting labor secretary is just how significant it is when you have real pro-worker people in leadership positions. You have policies that allow you to expand overtime protections. You have policies that support workers' right to bargain. These things matter, and we saw that under the last administration, these things were cut back.” 

“We know exactly what a Trump administration looks like. It was massive cuts to the Department of Labor. It was decreased standards for working people. It was, you know, undercutting union power,” she continued. 

Su was previously California’s labor commissioner and worked with Harris when Harris was the state’s attorney general. 

“Then-Attorney General Harris reached out to me to say, hey, you've got this wage theft as a crime campaign, right, and we should work together,” Su said. “She's somebody who's collaborative, who recognizes that any one of us may not have all the solutions, but when we work together, we are more powerful, and that government should be a force for good. Government should be on the side of the little guy, right, of the person who's struggling to get by, who needs an advocate and an ally.”   

Su is scheduled to spend Labor Day in Charlotte, North Carolina, and march alongside union leaders during an annual parade.