00:00 Thank you, Senator Hyde-Smith. Senator Schatz.
00:03 Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Secretary, for being here. And thanks for your great work and
00:07 the way you engage with Congress, even when members disagree with you. It's always substantive
00:12 and respectful, and I just wanted to observe that it's not that easy to do. So good job on that.
00:18 I just want to quickly agree with Senator Murray about the Office of the Solicitor,
00:24 especially as it relates to child labor. We can disagree about a lot, but the law already exists,
00:32 and it is not sufficiently enforced. You've got around 100 meritorious cases that we are unable
00:40 to prosecute per month, and there's a solution to that. We don't need a new statute. But I actually
00:46 want to talk to you about an area where we do need a new statute. Senator Young and I also have a
00:50 child labor bill that does something a fair amount more narrow than Senator Murray and Senator Casey,
00:57 and that is simply crank up those penalties. As you know, it is $68,801 maximum penalty
01:09 for a child labor violation that results in the death of a child. 68 grand is what we have in
01:17 federal statute. And so not only have companies made the judgment that between the Office of the
01:24 Solicitor and overall resources for the department that they may not get caught, but even if they get
01:30 caught, it's not that expensive, and it can be booked as a cost of doing business. If a child
01:38 dies on a factory floor, it's 68 grand capped. So I'm sorry to take such a long time to wind up,
01:46 but I'd like you to talk about the practical impact of those penalties and what would happen
01:51 if those penalties were turned up to the point where it was, you know, a real financial hit.
01:55 Yeah, thank you so much, Senator. I mean, I can't say it better than you've already said it. When
02:01 employers feel like breaking the law can just be a cost of doing business, because the consequences,
02:13 even when they're caught, are so minimal, the incentives to comply are too poor. And
02:21 we do everything we can at the Department of Labor through our investigative resources
02:27 to expose illegal practices, to hold all of the companies who are responsible accountable,
02:33 but we do appreciate the efforts of Congress in light of all of the attention to child labor and
02:40 the cases that we continue to see, to do everything in your power to help make it more costly for
02:47 those who break the law. Thank you very much. And I just, I guess I just want to reiterate this
02:52 point, you know, it's labor, right? So we're going to have a difference of opinion on a lot of things
02:57 about independent contractors and about union organizing and regulatory questions. But I think
03:05 we can all agree that there's no justification for a violation of federal law being so inexpensive
03:15 as to not be a disincentive. And so this is something that I just think we ought to fix.
03:20 We can either pass it by consent or in some other must pass piece of legislation,
03:24 but this is not the kind of thing that could get, that ought to get caught up in our pretty
03:29 fundamental ideological disagreements. Speaking of fundamental ideological disagreements, here I
03:35 move on to the Women's Bureau. I am continually impressed, and I have to say, I talk to my staff
03:42 and I'm always suspicious about bureaus because our tendency on our side of the aisle is to identify
03:47 a problem and then establish a bureau for the thing we want to see fixed. And so they had to
03:53 persuade me that this Women's Bureau was not just seven people in a bunch of cubicles, but boy,
03:59 they've done really important work. And I'd like you to just spend a little bit of time talking
04:04 about what the Women's Bureau has done for the workforce and for women in the workforce.
04:08 Thank you very much for that, Senator. So I think it's important to say that in many ways,
04:14 women have helped to power the economic recovery that we have seen in this country.
04:17 Last month, the labor force participation rate for prime age working women reached
04:22 an all-time high, a high since we started collecting this data, which was back in 1948
04:27 when Harry Truman was elected president. So the role of women in this economy simply cannot be
04:32 overstated. At the same time, we have much more work to do to tap into the full potential of women
04:37 in the economy. And one of the studies that the Women's Bureau put out that I think is so
04:44 important to note here is that if our country invested in care, in the care infrastructure,
04:52 and policies that support care like national paid leave, then about 5 million more women could enter
05:02 the workplace. And that would result in $775 billion worth of economic activity a year.
05:07 So Women's Bureau's research and work in this space helps to tell us not just, you know,
05:15 what policy, the impact of policies, but also what's happening when we don't invest in policies.
05:20 The other piece that Women's Bureau puts out are grants called WANTO. They're Women Apprentices
05:27 in Non-Traditional Occupation. And it is meant to make sure that women see themselves in some
05:33 of these good jobs that are being created that have been, that they have been underrepresented
05:36 in for a very long time. I also feel like I need to say, because you asked about the Women's Bureau
05:39 and it's almost Mother's Day, that I want to thank all the working mothers who do this work.
05:44 And our Women's Bureau is very much about continuing to lift up their voices and their
05:48 stories and opportunities for them. Thank you.
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