About time!
The U.S. Senate confirmed today Cheryl Stanton of South Carolina as head of the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor.
Ms. Stanton was initially nominated in September 2017. After the Senate failed to vote on her, she had to be renominated in January of this year.
This is the only photo I could find of Ms. Stanton that I know is legal. She is on the left.
According to her LinkedIn page, Ms. Stanton spent a number of years in the private practice of law, including several with a management-side labor and employment firm. From November 2007 through May 2008, she was the principal legal liaison for President George W. Bush to the DOL, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
(According to her Wikipedia bio, she also clerked for then-Judge Samuel Alito when he was on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.)
In June 2013, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) appointed Ms. Stanton as executive director of the state Department of Employment and Workforce, which administers the unemployment program among other things. Ms. Stanton resigned from that position in the fall of 2018, presumably in anticipation of being confirmed as Wage Hour Administrator in the Trump Administration.
Senate rules had allowed for 30 hours of debate on nominees, which the Democrats used to delay votes on Trump nominees unless various Obama appointees were reconfirmed as well. (I've written -- ok, ranted -- about the delay with the President's EEOC nominees a number of times, but I think this is my most recent.)
Last week, the Republican majority voted to reduce the debate time to two hours for nominees to federal district courts and non-Cabinet posts, which allowed Ms. Stanton to be voted on and confirmed by a 53-45 vote.
The Wage and Hour Division administers a number of federal laws, most notably the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
I hope that Ms. Stanton's confirmation is a sign of things to come, and that we'll soon get some more people in charge of the many other federal agencies that govern the workplace.
