Biden establishes national monument honoring first female Cabinet secretary

Perkins, who served as labor secretary from 1933 to 1945, was a critical ally supporting former President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda and a strong voice for organized labor.

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“She envisioned and helped create Social Security; helped millions of Americans get back to work during the Great Depression; fought for the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively; and established the minimum wage, overtime pay, prohibitions on child labor, and unemployment insurance,” White House officials said in a statement Monday morning.

Biden, who frequently bills himself as the most pro-union president in history, made the announcement Monday during remarks at the Labor Department.

Just prior to Biden’s remarks, acting Labor Secretary Julie Su added that Biden would be elected into the “Labor Hall of Honor.”

“Folks, you know, it’s an incredible honor, I really mean that,” Biden opened. “I measure the importance of any award I ever received based on the character and consequence of the organization that’s bestowing it, and the Department of Labor is an organization of character and consequence.”

Biden called Perkins “one of America’s greatest labor leaders” and recalled how she “became a fierce defender of unions and workers rights.”

“Many of the benefits we take for granted are a consequence of Frances’s dedication,” he continued.

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“It’s clear that Frances Perkins and a generation of activists and labor leaders laid the groundwork for much of what we’ve accomplished in the last four years,” the president claimed. “Together, we’re building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down, because we know this simple truth: Wall Street didn’t build America. The middle class built America, and unions built the middle class. That’s a fact.”

According to the White House, the Frances Perkins National Monument encompasses 57 acres in Newcastle, Maine, on the site of Perkins’s familial homestead.

The memorial is part of Biden’s push to establish new national monuments honoring leading women in America’s history.

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Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced five other national monuments “that will increase the representation of women’s history in historic sites,” per White House officials.

Biden’s remarks can be seen in full below.