The House Education and Workforce Committee issued a subpoena on Monday to acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su for failing to provide materials related to the department’s return-to-work plan.
Committee chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) stated that the Department of Labor under Acting Secretary Su has been blatantly negligent in responding to the Committee’s oversight requests, with vague answers and repeated failures to provide requested materials becoming the norm.
This comes after Foxx previously threatened to subpoena Su during a committee hearing last week, when the labor chief appeared before the panel.
Foxx had sent a letter to Su on March 6 pressing her over the department’s failure to submit their return-to-office policies after the White House requested the information. She asked Su to do so by March 20, but last week she stated that an adequate amount of information was not provided and threatened to subpoena Su by May 6 if additional information was not submitted.
Foxx expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the Committee’s March 6th letter to the Department of Labor requesting information on its return-to-work action plan remained unanswered. She also pointed out that Acting Secretary Su had ignored a request during her May 1 appearance before the committee to provide a copy of DOL’s return-to-office plan, which the White House had instructed each agency to prepare and submit.
The department provided what Foxx described as an insufficient response on April 18 to the March letter, failing to address the Committee’s core request.
In Foxx’s initial letter to Su, she referenced a report from the Government Accountability Office that found the DOL and five other agencies utilized an estimated 23 percent of their headquarters space on average. an analysis
Foxx cited guidance from the Office of Budget and Management (OMB) issued in April 2023 which urged federal workers to return to the office full time.
Foxx emphasized the need for an accurate understanding of the headquarters staffing situation to ensure that DOL is fulfilling its mandates faithfully and in compliance with the law. She also pointed out that employees failing to return to the office could expose taxpayers to significant waste, fraud, and abuse.
The Hill reached out to the Department of Labor for further comment.
The nomination of Su to replace former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh has faced numerous obstacles over the past year due to opposition from Republicans in the Senate.
Su was selected by President Biden last March to take over for Walsh, but the nomination was never voted on in the upper chamber. By June, it seemed that Democratic leadership made little progress in persuading holdouts to support her nomination.
She was renominated by Biden to serve as Labor secretary in January, and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved the nomination in a party-line vote in February. However, it has not yet been brought to the Senate floor for a full vote.
