Perez sidesteps rumors he might be Attorney General, urges 'shared prosperity'

Amid speculation that he might replace departing Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez dodged questions on the subject at a National Press Club luncheon Oct. 20.

"My singular focus is on the job of being at the Department of Labor," he told a laughing room when asked about the most pressing issues at the Department of Justice.

Perez hailed Holder's achievements, saying that he "stood up for voting rights" and "commonsense criminal justice reform," but also faced backlash.

"I don't believe the enduring voting issue 50 years later is in-person voter fraud," he said, referring to state movements to enact voter ID laws so long after the 1965 Voting Rights Act. "I did these cases when I was over there, and that is a phantom problem... I applaud [Holder's] candor and the movement they have done in that area."

Perez outlined the Obama Administration’s position on the minimum wage, skills training, and work-life balance. He stressed raising the minimum wage to $10.10, and giving workers greater opportunities to build middle class lifestyles, as in other equally developed nations.

"Shared prosperity is not a fringe concept cooked up by socialists," he said. "If you look across the pond you see countries governed by conservative leadership, such as the U.K., where they recently announced an increase in the minimum wage to $11.05 an hour… They did it for the same reason that that flaming liberal Henry Ford did it. He doubled the wages for people on the assembly line because, as he said, countrywide high wages spell countrywide prosperity."

"Seventy percent of GDP growth is consumption. So let’s stimulate consumption in order to strengthen the economy," he added.

Perez touted technical training and apprenticeships as "golden tickets," particularly after the Obama Administration's $2 billion investment "to help community colleges develop innovative training programs and curricula that help people launch middle-class careers."

Part of that journey into the middle class includes collective bargaining rights, which he insisted must be protected.

"Worker voice is so important," Perez said. "Unions don’t succeed at the expense of business. They succeed in partnership with business."

He also made an impassioned case for paid leave - an area where the U.S. ranks at the bottom of the list, he said.

"We stand alone as the only industrialized nation on the planet where paid leave is not the law of the land," he said. "[It's] good economic policy and good family policy" because "thriving businesses and flexible workplaces" are not "mutually exclusive."

Perez pointed to Canada, where government-mandated maternity leave means mothers can take up to 12 months before returning to their jobs.

"The labor force participation rate of women ages 25 to 54 in the year 2000 in the U.S. and Canada was virtually identical," he said. "Today Canada is ahead of us by roughly 8 percentage points."

Perez summed up his motto with a Bruce Springsteen lyric: "Nobody wins unless everybody wins."