The Subtle Force of Tom Perez - 2016 piece that covers his career

The Subtle Force of Tom Perez
The labor secretary, a son of Dominican immigrants, has used his power to make real gains for workers—so successfully that he’s become a vice presidential prospect.

Justin Miller
June 22, 2016


http://prospect.org/article/subtle-force-tom-perez

"...“Everything is a workaround, just about,” Perez told employees at the website Gawker last year. “I’m not waiting for a functional Congress to do my job. And the good news is, I have ample tools in my toolbox to do my job,” he told The Washington Post. His mission, as the Post describes it, is to “shore up workers’ rights with the regulatory equivalents of duct tape and string.”

"...An institutional ball of energy, Perez comes to meetings armed with data, facts, and ideas, but he aims to listen more than speak. He is a quick study; a wonk able to quickly grasp the granular details of an issue and their potential consequences, but also zoom out and see the big picture. “He has a real curiosity, which is very good in a leader. In all my interactions with him, I’ve never felt like he’s come in to just make a speech and leave. He’s really wanted to engage people and ask a lot of questions,” says Sarita Gupta, head of the worker advocacy organization Jobs With Justice. “It’s never the Tom Perez show.”

"...PEREZ IS THE CHILD OF POLITICAL refugees who fled dictator Rafael Trujillo’s vicious rule in the Dominican Republic. His maternal grandfather was the republic’s ambassador to the United States but was exiled after speaking out against the dictatorship’s massacre of thousands of Haitians. Perez’s father, a doctor, also fled the country for the United States, where he went on to serve in the Army as a physician. His parents both ended up in Buffalo, New York. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, Perez had a front-row seat to the devastating effects of deindustrialization that swept through Rust Belt cities. Buffalo was hemorrhaging jobs and its middle class was disintegrating—in the 1970s alone, the city lost more than 100,000 residents. It’s left an impression on him politically as he’s been quick to critique the shortcomings of NAFTA.

This is a long article and covers the vast array of issues that Perez has worked on in his various government positions. Really worth the read!