Event Details

About the lecture:
In order to create shared prosperity and an economy that works for everyone, employers must reject the false choice between treating their workers with dignity and turning a profit. Employers must recognize, as President Obama said in his final State of the Union address, “that doing right by their workers or their customers or their communities ends up being good for their shareholders.” In his talk, the US Labor Secretary Tom Perez will argue that the high road is the smart road, and that building great companies requires valuing employees.


From the speaker's bio:
Nominated by President Barack Obama and sworn in on July 23, 2013, Thomas E. Perez is the nation's 26th secretary of labor. Perez is committed to opportunity for all, through skills programs like Registered Apprenticeship and on-the-job training; promoting gender equality in the workplace; ensuring that people with disabilities and veterans have access to equal employment opportunity; and insisting on a safe and level playing field for all American workers. Most recently, Perez was assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, leading the same division where he worked for a decade as a career federal employee beginning in the late 1980s. From 2002 until 2006, he was a member of the Montgomery County Council. He was later appointed secretary of Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. He was a law professor for six years at the University of Maryland School of Law and was a part-time professor at the George Washington School of Public Health. He received a bachelor's degree from Brown University in 1983. In 1987 he received both a master's of public policy and a law degree from Harvard University.

This event is co-sponsored by the Ford School of Public Policy