RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits, attacking income inequality, they are all at the top or near the top of President Obama's domestic agenda. And all fall under the purview of one cabinet member, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. Perez has been on the job since last summer.
NPR's Brian Naylor has this profile.
BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: If not exactly a kid in a candy store, Tom Perez was having fun this week at the Detroit Auto Show. He sat in a Corvette, climbed into a new pickup, and gamely posed for pictures next to a $140,000 Dodge Viper.
TOM PEREZ: Any federal employee who's driving a Dodge Viper either has a really good spouse, you know, a really good inheritance, or needs to be investigated by the inspector general.
NAYLOR: Perez was one of a parade of Obama administration officials to stop by the auto show this week, celebrating an industry that has staged a remarkable comeback in recent years, thanks in part to help from the administration and taxpayers. As Perez told a local TV interviewer...
PEREZ: Oh, the main note I'm taking is that manufacturing is alive and well in America and here in Detroit, and that the auto industry is absolutely roaring back.
NAYLOR: The health of manufacturing in the U.S. is an issue close to Perez's heart. He's the son of Dominican immigrants, and grew up in Buffalo, another industrial city that's seen better days. Lately he's become a high-profile pitchman for the president's economic message. He's fond of describing the Department of Labor as a kind of online dating agency, matching workers with jobs.
PEREZ: We're kind of like the Match.com for employers and workers, and sometimes in order to make that match work we need to help somebody upscale and get those critical skills to enter that Allied Health profession or the advanced manufacturing.
NAYLOR: At his next stop, Focus: HOPE, a Detroit job training and community center, he chats with Jamal Edwards, a senior at Wayne State University, who in addition to pursuing a degree in engineering is also learning how to make auto parts.
JAMAL EDWARDS: I've been on the machine (unintelligible) about a year now.
NAYLOR: Are you pretty comfortable with it?
EDWARDS: Yes, I am. I'm pretty comfortable.
NAYLOR: Is it like driving a car?
EDWARDS: No. It's not like driving at all.
NAYLOR: Perez is the former labor secretary from Maryland, but his most recent job was with the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was assistant attorney general for civil rights. He says there are a lot of parallels between the two posts. He cites the March on Washington that took place 50 years ago last August.
PEREZ: That march was a march for jobs and a march for justice. When Dr. King was bailed out of jail in Birmingham, it was Walter Reuther and the UAW who bailed him out. And the interconnection between labor rights and civil rights is very real.
NAYLOR: Perez's final stop in Detroit is at the home of Shinola, once a shoe polish firm that now manufactures high end watches and bicycles. It gives Perez a chance to take one of the bikes for a spin around the company's office.
PEREZ: You know, this is inspiring me now to - this is inspiring me to ride my bike back to work now. Even though...
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: That's perfect.
PEREZ: Yeah. You know, it's really light.
NAYLOR: Shinola is a feel-good story. Its watch assemblers include a former pizza deliveryman and a woman who worked her way up from janitor. Perez says it's the American spirit at work. He says his department has to do more to help businesses like Shinola connect with potential employees.
PEREZ: We have 2,500 American job centers out there, and one of the things we're doing is more aggressively marketing that fact. Too many businesses don't know that we exist. Too many people in need don't know we exist. That's why I spend so much time with large and small businesses alike educating them about who we are and what we do.
NAYLOR: Perez's big push now is for an increase in the minimum wage. It's part of what he seeks to accomplish in the next three years, giving people ladders of opportunity, as he puts it, like the one he had, to climb into the heart of the middle class. Brian Naylor, NPR News.