Trade economist Thea Lee named U.S. Labor Dept international chief By Syndicated Content
May 10, 2021 | 5:31 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) â The U.S. Labor Department on Monday said trade economist and former union official Thea Lee has been named to lead the agencyâs International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB), an office that will police the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreementâs labor provisions.
Lee, who was previously president of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank in Washington, spent 20 years at the AFL-CIO as the union federationâs chief of staff, policy director and chief international economist until 2017.
In a statement, Lee said she was âthrilledâ to have the opportunity to lead the bureau as deputy undersecretary at a consequential time for workers.
White House Task Force Is Payoff to Biden’s Union Cronies
Joe Biden, seen here Oct. 4 campaigning for president at the Service Employees International Union s Unions for All Summit in Los Angeles, is paying back his union supporters with a White House task force on “Worker Organizing and Empowerment.” (Photo: Frederic Brown/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
Commentary By
Rusty Brown is the national outreach coordinator for the Freedom Foundation and was a policy adviser for the Department of Labor under the Trump administration.
With little fanfare, President Joe Biden on April 26 signed yet another executive order, this one establishing a White House task force on “Worker Organizing and Empowerment.”
President Biden pushed back Monday against Republicans and business groups who say enhanced jobless benefits are discouraging Americans from working, defending his economic prescriptions and saying his administration would make clear that people can’t turn down suitable jobs and keep collecting benefits, except in specific circumstances. “I never said and no serious analyst ever suggested that climbing out of the deep, deep hole our economy was in would be simple, easy, immediate or perfectly steady,” Mr. Biden said at the White House Monday.
The U.S. economy is poised for rapid growth this year as vaccination rates climb and consumer and business activity picks up, spurred in part by a flood of federal aid. But Friday’s lackluster employment report has fueled concerns among policy makers that a shortage of workers could restrain the pace of the recovery. U.S. employers added a seasonally adjusted 266,000 jobs in April, the Labor Department said, a sharp slowdown from the pr
Keep your handout money, Joe! GOP governors of Arkansas, Montana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Alabama REFUSE Biden s $300 per week unemployment benefit because it s time to stop paying workers to stay home
Republican governors in five states are declining the $300 per week boosted unemployment benefits meant to help during the coroanvirus pandemic
They claim the extra money is incentivizing their citizens to stay home
Jobless residents in Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, South Carolina and Alabama residents will no longer receive the extra money
Experts claim those who made $32,000 before the pandemic can now make the same – or more – with combined benefits from state and federal government