By Gwyneth K. Shaw
Julie Su’s immigrant parents worked minimum-wage jobs until her mother got a union position with the Los Angeles County government.
“Once she got that job, it really turned our lives around. I noticed it mainly because she started to come home at 5:30 p.m. and because we were able to go to the doctor when we needed to,” Su told the audience at a recent event with the UC Berkeley Law Center for Law and Work (CLAW).
“I didn’t have the terms like ‘predictable scheduling,’ ‘paid sick leave,’ and ‘health insurance’ to understand those things, but I did feel that we had a little bit more breathing room as a family,” she said. “So I know the transformative power of a good job, because I have lived it.”
That experience was the first step in a long and distinguished path in labor law Su has since paved for herself. After college at Stanford and law school at Harvard, Su joined Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Los Angeles as a Skadden Fellow, then stayed on.
There, she picked up a career-defining case: representing 72 Thai nationals who’d been enslaved in an El Monte, California, sweatshop. Su and her team won legal immigration status for the group and $4 million in stolen wages from the up-the-chain manufacturers and retailers they had been sewing for.
Su saw litigation as a tool for organizing vulnerable communities to come together to exercise their power. She also advocated for multi-racial coalition building and expanded state and federal worker protection laws. Together, this work became a model for what came to be known as “movement lawyering” — legal advocacy that works hand-in-hand with grassroots organizing and worker power. It also won her a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 2001.
Su moved into government service in 2011, serving as California’s Labor Commissioner in then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration and as Secretary of Labor, overseeing the California Labor & Workforce Development Agency under Gov. Gavin Newsom. She was confirmed as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor in 2021 and was President Joe Biden’s pick to be secretary in 2023.
Serving in that role through the end of Biden’s term earlier this year, Su worked to build an economy that centered on communities that had been left behind to ensure that federal investments translated into real gains for working families — jobs that paid fair wages, supported union organizing, and sustained communities. She was the only Asian American cabinet secretary in the Biden administration.
Now, Su is bringing her expertise and insights to UC Berkeley Law. As a visiting professor, she will engage with students and faculty and work closely with CLAW to advance policies and research on labor rights.
“Julie is the personification of hope — the kind of hope reminding us that it is possible to create bold, actionable strategies to really do something about injustice, and to demand nothing less than justice for the most vulnerable among us in the courts, in the legislatures where laws are made, and in the halls of government agencies where laws are enforced,” says CLAW Executive Director Christina Chung, who has known Su for almost three decades since they worked together at Asian Americans Advancing Justice and subsequently in the state labor agency.
“Even in the most hopeless times, Julie and her life’s work shine as a beacon showing us that what we strive to do, both individually and collectively, can in fact make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. We are so incredibly fortunate to have her here with us.”
Building a fairer world for working people
Su says she’s excited to be at the law school because “there is so much good that law students and lawyers can do in the world, especially in this moment.”
“Law school is already hard but today, students are learning doctrine, rules, case law, processes, and norms that are being violated and thrown out at the highest levels, and seeing courts issue orders that are ignored by the very agencies who are supposed to help enforce laws,” she adds. “I look forward to bringing my experience as an advocate for marginalized communities and at the highest levels of government to the law school, engaging with students, the stellar faculty, and the law school community.
“I am particularly grateful to be working with the Center for Law and Work to be bold and creative about how we build a world that does right by working people.”
Su grew up translating for her parents, and realized as she got older that law is a language — and those who speak it decide who gets what in society.
“I went to law school to become a translator in the language of law for people who were marginalized, discriminated against, and exploited,” she says.
Initially, she wanted to work with young people, but two experiences led her to focus on workers’ rights. The first: seeing how difficult it was for children and teens to watch their parents work around the clock yet not make enough to survive, or to see them try hard to get ahead only to suffer mistreatment on the job.
“I saw that worker exploitation affects the entire family, including young people’s belief in whether the system is fair and worth fighting for,” Su says.
The other experience was personal: Su waited tables one summer in college and saw firsthand how tipped workers “endure mistreatment that no one should have to experience.”
Those elements fueled her passion for workers, and her early advocacy helped build not just a career trajectory but a network she still counts on today.
“I love working alongside workers to help them realize their own power,” Su says. “I also found working at a nonprofit and being a public interest civil rights and workers’ rights advocate right out of law school to be so rewarding because you meet the best people, who become more than co-workers; you meet people who are passionate and committed, who push you to be better and to dream bigger, and who become allies, friends, and teachers.”
Su is the latest of several former Biden administration officials who’ve joined UC Berkeley Law since they left the government. Catherine E. Lhamon, a renowned public service lawyer and former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, is now the executive director of the Edley Center on Law & Democracy, and Seth Frotman, Sam Levine, and Doka Mekki are senior fellows at the Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice.
Expanding the focus on workers
At CLAW, Su will further bolster the center’s thriving research and policy agenda alongside Chung, also a seasoned California worker’s advocate and former Brown and Newsom political appointee. Founded in late 2020, the center is a hub for cross-disciplinary scholarship — from faculty as well as graduate students in UC Berkeley Law’s Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program — and a home base for professional development among students and the school’s numerous alumni working in the field.
At the CLAW event, Su shared an anecdote about her parents that doubled as a call to action for students. When Biden told her he planned to nominate her as labor secretary, she replied that there was “no way my immigrant parents could have ever imagined their daughter sitting in the cabinet of the United States president,” she said.
“And he said, ‘Let’s give them a call.’ So he took my hand, walked me over to the desk, and said, ‘Dial their number,’” Su said. “And the whole time I’m thinking, my dad’s not going to pick up his phone because they will not recognize the number. Sure enough, my dad didn’t — and Joe Biden left a very sweet message for my parents.
“One lesson is, sometimes pick up your phone.”
Alex A.G. Shapiro contributed to this article.