On Tuesday the Senate narrowly approved Julie Su as Deputy Secretary of Labor.  Union leaders embraced the news.  Su, a former civil rights attorney who currently leads California’s labor agency, has spent decades litigating on behalf of working people — including some of the most marginalized.  Her confirmation may accelerate the administration’s efforts to implement the broad prolabor agenda on which the President campaigned.

Staying in Congress for a moment, the Senate’s Democratic leadership unveiled a sprawling $3.5 trillion budget framework last night that would allocate hundreds of billions of dollars to social programs and clean energy initiatives.  Senate Democrats plan to adopt a budget resolution embodying the framework in the coming weeks, which would enable them to bypass the filibuster and enact the package along party lines.  It remains to be seen whether the handful of conservatives in the party will support the legislation; Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) recently signaled skepticism.

In international news, last week the United States and Mexico revealed a plan to ensure “free and democratic conditions” when thousands of employees at Mexico’s largest General Motors plant vote to ratify the collective bargaining agreement covering the facility.  For context, Mexico recently overhauled its labor laws so as to guarantee basic organizing rights and require member ratification of all existing contracts, and the labor ministry had identified “serious irregularities” with a vote conducted at the GM facility several weeks ago.  The GM episode offers a high-profile preview of whether Mexico’s labor reforms will be meaningfully enforced in the coming years.

Lastly, a Reuters analysis released this week demonstrates that unions continue to secure significantly higher pay for their membership, finding that the weekly earnings differential between union and nonunion workers in the retail sector more than doubled in the last decade.  The data confirms what decades of research has uncovered: “Unionized workers get paid more and have better benefits,” and the collapse of organized labor in the private sector has fueled “skyrocketing income inequality.”