And now from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, the Act spiles with your host, David Axelrod.

The Department of Labor in the Federal Government has been for years asleepy little backwater until recently when Tom Perez came there as Secretary of Labor, Tom Perez with a background in civil rights, the son of immigrants, and an entity.

An engine that always runs on high has taken on the big issue of our time, which is how do we get wages up, how do we reinvigorate the value of work using the tools that he has invested in him.

He has evangelical fervor about this project as you will hear.

Tom Perez, Secretary of Labor, so good to be with you. I want to talk about you, I think it's fair to say an activist in your role, but I want to talk about how you got to be who you are before we talk about what you're doing.

And you come from an immigrant family. So talk to me a little bit about that, tell me about your upbringing.

My life, my life, David is the intersection of Buffalo, New York and the Dominican Republic. My maternal grandfather was actually the ambassador from the Dominican Republic to the US in the early 30s.

And there was a brutal, what turned out to be a very brutal dictator to heal. And once it became apparent that he was brutal in the aftermath of a brutal execution of about 20,000 Haitians that he ordered.

My grandfather spoke out and said, this person's terrible and he was declared non grata. And so our family, my mom's family got kicked out.

My dad was part of the student activism movement. He left, came to the States. He was drafted as a legal immigrant served with distinction in the US Army. My parents met, got married. And after my dad got out of the army in Georgia, he got a job at the VA hospital in the late 50s. And that brought them to Buffalo.

When you're an immigrant family, politics is your lifeblood. Because when your family has been uprooted by political people, you, that's, that's a big part of your life. And I remember growing up, politics was the currency in our family. And, and the experiences that my parents had, they taught my siblings, I'm the youngest of five. They taught all of us to make sure that we love this country because it gave us opportunity and that we give back.

And so, actually, all my siblings are doctors and I had to promise never to be a plan.

Where did you go wrong?

Well, I had to promise never to be a plaintiff's personal injury lawyer. And I kept that promise. But I, you know, people often ask me, why didn't you become a doctor? And I think part of it is the fact that I was 12 when my dad died.

And I didn't really have the exposure to his professional life in the way that some of my siblings had.

That shape you're losing your dad, it's such an early, I lost my father in early ages as well.

Right. Well, you know, 1974 was the year my dad died. And if you had told me January of 74 that one of your parents was going to die, we would have all said it would have been my mother because my mother had a series of chronic illnesses. She had major surgery, January of that year.

She was just recovering when my dad had his first heart attack on Easter Sunday of 1974.

And unbeknownst to me, it was a very serious one, but they just said it. Don't worry about a time it's mild. He'll be fine.

And then the end of June, he dropped dead in the basement of our house. And then after we got back from the funeral in the Dominican Republic, my mom got sick again.

So she was in the hospital for a couple weeks. And I remember going to bed at night thinking, you know, they were telling me, don't worry, mom's going to be okay.

And I remember thinking, fool, do you want shame on you, fool, do you twice shame on me?

...