Julie Su Subpoenaed by House Over Alleged Political Improprieties

Acting Department of Labor Secretary Julie Su was issued a subpoena today by the chair of the House Education and the Workforce committee for failing to provide information regarding a “political pep rally” held on the taxpayer’s dime.

The committee has been probing the “Workers’ Voice Summit” – held by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in DC last September – ever since reports surfaced that the event, about six weeks before the 2022 mid-term elections were held, was not a legitimate conference but in fact a Big Labor political lovefest.

Committee members have been requesting specific information about the event for more than a year, only to either be ignored or fobbed off with “non-responsive” blather by Su’s department.

“The Committee is asking for simple answers from OSHA and Acting Secretary Su. The fact that the Committee must issue a subpoena to compel the agency to do its job and be forthcoming is outrageous,” wrote committee Chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC).  “That kind of behavior may fly in the Biden administration but not here. Every taxpayer dollar must be accounted for and used appropriately, and we will not rest until our questions are sufficiently answered.”

At issue is a three-day conference, putatively to ensure employees are “empowered to speak up about their workplace concerns,” that was held at Department headquarters.  While such conferences are relatively common, they are not typically intentionally exclusive as has been alleged.

The Department has not been completely silent in the past year – it did tell the committee that the event complied with all of the then-still-extant COVID rules and that it “align(ed) with the department’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility plan, the Biden-Harris administration’s coordinated effort to expand diversity across the federal government and improve job quality nationwide.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Labor said they were “baffled” by the subpoena. 

“Far from being a ‘political rally,’ this event offered OSHA – the agency responsible for worker health and safety – an opportunity to hear from workers about health and safety issues,” said the spokesperson,

The Department maintains there was nothing secretive about the event as it received press coverage and numerous write ups by attendees.  The globe was able to find one story in Bloomberg Law News  (paywalled) and a number of post-event descriptions, including one by the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health which noted the importance of safe working conditions, including the group from southern California’s Strippers United union.

The Department also claimed that it has handed over a great deal of info, noting that OSHA chief Douglas Parker had recently testified in front of the committee that the event was important because “We’ve never had a meeting with rank and file workers to hear their needs. I get to meet with them when I travel, but people are always saying, ‘Washington is isolated, you’re not listening to people,’ so we had this event to listen to people. And that’s what the event was about.”

But the committee says the response have not been enough, specifically that Su’s department has failed to explain why an event that “involved a wide swath of DOL subagencies, including the Office of the Solicitor (SOL), the Office of Policy, the Wage and Hour Division, the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, and the Women’s Bureau” intentionally excluded “many interested parties,” such as, well, any actual employers who may have wished to attend.

Additionally, the event was not streamed or broadcast to the public in any way, a rather unusual occurrence when it comes to major government events.

“As this was a taxpayer funded summit, this exclusivity is particularly inappropriate and concerning,” committee members wrote in their initial request for information 13 months ago.

According to an OSHA news release at the time, the event featured a gathering of “workers, union representatives and labor organizers from a range of industries to discuss the value of building relationships and collaborating on ideas to address workers’ concerns.”

The subpoena demands Su produce a number of items, including : “Documents sufficient to show all Summit invitees and the organizations they represent” and “Documents sufficient to show all Summit attendees and the organizations they represented.”

While it is not known what exactly was said and/or done at the summit, the timing, the invite list of only labor-related groups who fund Democratic Party and Biden Administration political efforts, and the specific exclusion of any potential opposing political viewpoint raises serious concerns about its propriety and even legality.

“Your failure to provide full responses has deprived the Committee of the information it needs to determine the actual nature of this Summit. The Committee is interested in determining whether taxpayer resources were expended to implement the Occupational Safety and Health Act and other statutes, or whether they were used for political promotion,” Foxx wrote to Su. The Committee needs this information to legislate wisely and effectively. When mere requests for information are unavailing, some means of compulsion are essential for Congress to obtain what is needed. As a result, the Committee is invoking compulsory process through a subpoena.”

The deadline for Su to produce the requested information is December 6.  If she and her department fail to comply, Foxx could ask Congress for permission to get a court order holding Su in contempt.