Former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh appears poised to return to the Biden administration, after securing a presidential nomination to serve as a governor of the U.S. Postal Service.
If the president’s nomination is approved by the Senate, Walsh, who previously worked as Joe Biden’s Secretary of Labor before departing last year to head the NHL Players’ Association, would sit on the nine-member board of governors.
“Marty Walsh has spent his life fighting for working people, as a labor leader, as a public official and as a private citizen,” reads a White House announcement.
The announcement further states that Walsh, a longtime union leader from Dorchester and big fan of Boston sports, will retain his role as head of the players’ association.
The board of governors of the U.S. Postal Service is comparable to a board of directors of a publicly held corporation. The board consists of up to nine governors, the deputy postmaster general, and postmaster general, the USPS website states.
Walsh served two terms as Boston’s mayor, having first been elected in 2014, before departing City Hall in 2021 to head Biden’s Department of Labor.
“During his two years in office, Walsh brought high-quality job training to millions of Americans, strengthened mental health support and access to treatment, and ushered in a historic surge in worker organizing,” the White House said.
He started his career “by following in his father’s footsteps as a union construction worker,” before rising in the ranks to become president of Laborers Local 223 in Boston and eventually head of the Greater Boston Building Trades Council, representing roughly 35,000 blue-collar workers, the White House statement said.
Walsh was later elected to the Massachusetts State of Representatives, in 1997, spending 16 years on Beacon Hill “fighting for workers’ rights and good jobs.”
A former alcoholic, he was a State House leader on substance abuse treatment and recovery support, and started the nation’s first municipal office of recovery services during his time as the city’s mayor.
