Tom Perez

What you learn growing up in a place like Buffalo is that your job isn't just your paycheck, it's your identity. It doesn't just give you dollars, it gives you dignity.

Growing up in Buffalo, I saw shuttered factories that once housed thousands of steel manufacturing jobs. I remember the hollowing-out of the middle class in our community. I witnessed hope turn to hardship as a once-thriving city reckoned with a fast-changing world.

It's a false choice to say we either have job safety or job growth. It's a false choice to suggest that the only way for a business to survive is to make sure workers have low wages and little or no benefits. There are ample models across this country where we've demonstrated the contrary.

Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman's right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is not negotiable.

The Department of Labor's final conflict of interest rule will ensure that America's workers and retirees receive retirement advice in their best interest.

I believe we're making a mistake if we regard job creation and job safety as mutually exclusive or inherently in conflict; they can and they must go hand-in-hand.

The theme of the Labor Department's centennial is 'Then, Now, Next.' So in honoring Esther Peterson, we look not just to the past but to the future, acknowledging with honesty and a sense of purpose the lingering challenges we still face and the distance we've yet to travel before equality is truly a reality in the lives of all women.

I believe the passage of a national paid family and medical leave law is not a question of if, but when. But as is so often the case on important public policy issues, we need states and localities to be the incubators of innovation.

The first Friday of every month is what we call Numbers Day - it's the day that the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the monthly jobs report. We have a ritual at the Labor Department - at 8 A.M., we gather around a table in my office, and the commissioner of labor statistics briefs me and the department's senior leadership on the numbers.

From the outset, the Obama administration has recognized that building a robust skills infrastructure means building strong partnerships with community colleges.

Donald Trump is a fraud. Listening to him talk about how he's going to put American first again, he's spent his entire career putting his own profits first.

I've learned that it's important to listen to employees at all levels, to engage them, to empower them. Whether you're a first-line supervisor or the head of an entire agency, you should be asking career staffers, 'What do you think?'