United States Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the March jobs report, the labor market, supply chain issues, the state of the economy amid rising gas prices and inflationary costs, and his meeting with Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for being here. I want to ask you about that participation rate in particular, rising to 62.4%. We heard of a fun anecdote earlier from one of our guests, whose 72-year-old mother who retired early during the pandemic, has just gotten a job and gone back to work. And I'm curious how much of that you're seeing out there and what ways you have and you think employers have at their disposal to try to encourage people to come back out of what was maybe premature retirement. MARTY WALSH: Yeah, no, let me just quickly stop by. The report is good, good report. Every unemployment number went down in the white community, the Black community, the Latino community, the Asian community, the American Indian community. But I'll tell you, what I like the most about the report is what you just asked me. The participation rate went up a bit. And I think as we think about moving forward into 2022 here, we need to continue to get that participation rate going up. And we've seen a few months ago, we were talking about the Great Resignation. These are folks that might have had their years into retire, but they left a little early because of the pandemic. We're seeing some of those folks come back into the workforce. Last month, we saw a lot of high school students with less than a high school degree go into the workforce. So we just need to be really-- I'm going to be really focused on over the course of the next several months, is, how do we continue to bring that participation rate up? It's what the president has said from the beginning, whether it's been the American Rescue Plan investment, whether it's been what we're doing with masks and the vaccinations and all of that stuff that's been happening throughout last year. We're going to see-- we're seeing confidence back and people going back to work. We're seeing wages rise. And I know we'll probably talk about inflation in a second, but we are seeing wages rise as well. So it's going to bring people back into the workforce as well. So it's good to see that number. I think we have about 1.6 million people that have not come back in from previously to COVID-19. So we have to continue to get those folks back to work. BRIAN SOZZI: Mr. Secretary, there's a lot coming at American households right now. You mentioned inflation, gas prices over $4 a gallon in this country. Food price inflation just really continuing to be very high and accelerating. When you're out there talking to folks, how difficult is it right now for them to make ends meet? MARTY WALSH: Well, I mean, people are certainly worried about what happens at their kitchen table. That's the biggest, and what the conversations are on the kitchen table. And, you know, and the president has talked about-- not talked about. He's working on bringing those inflationary pressures down and bringing costs at the kitchen table down for families in America. And we have to do that. We also have to look ahead with the bipartisan Innovation Act that's going to Congress right now, the CHIPS Act, that will help us create more opportunities in this country for manufacturing. We also need to make sure that Congress passes the COVID relief bill. There's a second COVID relief bill. So that we're prepared and cities and towns are prepared moving forward. Cities and towns need to spend that American Rescue Plan money to make sure they continue to protect their constituents and their cities and towns folks in their cities and towns. But I mean, I can't sugarcoat this, so, obviously, we have a lot of work to do. And we're going to do everything we can to bring those costs down. JULIE HYMAN: Secretary Walsh, when I look amongst the different sectors in this jobs report, and one of the sectors that's probably being pinched by those rising fuel costs the most, talking truckers. We saw-- that was one of the few areas where we saw a decline in employment. You've spent a lot of time with truckers over the past several months, is my understanding, riding along with some of them. We talked to a trucker recently who said she's sticking with the business, even as she is seeing those fuel costs up. How can we help that industry, which helps us all, obviously, keep and attract and keep truckers? MARTY WALSH: Well, yeah, I was just out in Tacoma, Washington and Seattle and Portland, Oregon. And I visited a trucking company Yellow, who is putting on another class of apprenticeships. Certainly, they're part of the trucking plan that we have working at the White House to create more opportunities and pathways into trucking. You have companies, you have independent trucking companies. And I think that we need to continue to be very intentional about creating pathways into that industry. That's a good, strong industry that provides a living. Whether you're an independent trucker or you're part of a bigger company, if you're a part of the Union, that's a really good industry. That industry has put good middle class jobs all across our country for a long time. So we're focused on-- that's part of the supply chain issue that the president has asked myself and Secretary Buttigieg to be part of. We created something called the 90-day trucking challenge, where we have 100 employers right now that are getting-- working with the Department of Labor, working with the Department of Transportation, and creating these pre-apprenticeship programs into trucking. We have about 200 other companies that have contacted us, interested in joining this plan. So the focus on trucking is a real one because it's an industry, quite honestly, that doesn't always make the headlines. It's in the headlines right now because of supply chain. And I think we have to take advantage of the opportunity of getting people into that industry. BRIAN SOZZI: Mr. Secretary, one month ago when we talked to you, you said you would like Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO, to give you a call. It looks like that like that may have happened because you did, in fact, get to meet with him. What was your takeaway from that meeting? And do you think he is serious about unionizing the Tesla workforce? MARTY WALSH: OK, say that last part. I didn't hear that. You say unionizing? BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, Musk, he has floated this idea or welcoming in unions into his business. Is that something you see him doing? MARTY WALSH: Well, we had a very good conversation. I was out there a couple of weeks ago. We had a good conversation. We talked about the economy. We talked about manufacturing. We talked about a whole bunch of things. And I did ask the question about unionization. And he certainly said that he's not opposed to it. He said, if the workers were interested, he'd love to have those conversations. And I think it was a good conversation. I didn't go too much into the unionization of his plants. We talked more high level about the economy. I was asking him questions of what he thought. I was asking him about inflation and supply chain and all the manufacturing and what he sees in his factories. So we talked about all those issues. We had a good conversation. And hopefully, we'll have-- we're going to have another one at some point soon, too, just to continue the dialogue. JULIE HYMAN: And I'm just curious, we haven't heard that much about that meeting. What else can you tell us? And for example, what did you think of that factory that's under construction and how it compares to maybe some of the other automakers you visited? MARTY WALSH: Well, I'll tell you, he's building an amazing facility there, 10 million square feet. It's one of the biggest buildings I've seen. And it's challenging building. He built it on basically a landfill. So we talked about that. We talked about the culture of how he thinks about a company. So we just-- we talked to a lot of different issues. I really focused on the medical side of his company as well about what the research is on helping people that have accidents, paraplegics, and potentially MS and things like that. I was really interested to talk about what his company is doing there. So, really some innovative things. And, you know, I was really glad to talk about that. A little different from being the Secretary of Labor, but I got intrigued about it, just really thinking about how we can help people recover their functions with their bodies after an injury, after an accident, quite honestly. JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, definitely interesting stuff. On the union front, I did want to bring up what's going on at the Amazon warehouse at Staten Island, where they are voting, I believe, as we speak, about whether to unionize. [INAUDIBLE] been watching his vote count now where it looks like the union does have the lead. What conversations have had, if any, with the folks there making those efforts? And then what, I guess? If we see that Amazon unionization vote there, do you think we'll see a wave of that across the country? MARTY WALSH: Yeah, as the Secretary of Labor, I don't have conversations necessarily with people about when an active organizing drive is going on. I'm in a very different role here as Secretary of Labor. Certainly, I encourage people, if they want to join the union, they should be able to join the union. I support that. I support the Pro Act, as does President Biden. But I also don't-- I'm not part of the conversation on how you should organize when it comes to something like the Amazon facility or Starbucks or some of these other negotiations going on. Because at the end of the day, we saw with the Amazon situation, it ended up at the National Labor Relations Board, which is indirectly under the purview-- well, it's not really under my purview, but it's a separate agency. So I want to be very careful when I look at that. But I certainly encourage workers. Workers should have the right to organize and employers should allow them that free right to be able to negotiate and organize if they choose. BRIAN SOZZI: All right, we'll leave it there. US Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, always good to speak with you. Have a good weekend.