Dubai: Tom Perez, 55, served as labour secretary under the Obama administration since July 2013, and left the job last month.

During his time as labour secretary, Perez introduced a number of reforms including new overtime rules to ensure workers get overtime pay and an expansion of federal labour protections to cover overtime home care workers. Perez also extended minimum wage safeguards and established worker safety rules. Under his leadership the Labour Department announced the first federal minimum wage, provided paid sick leave and ensured employment protections for federal contractor employees.

Perez, a native of Buffalo, New York, received a bachelor’s degree from Brown University, a law degree from Harvard Law School and a master’s of public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

His parents were political refugees from the Dominican Republic. His father died when Perez was only 12 years old, and he later financed his college education by working in a warehouse, cafeteria and on the back of a garbage truck.

Perez started his career in the mid-1990s as a civil rights attorney at the Department of Justice and later served as special adviser to Sen. Ted Kennedy (Massachusetts) dealing with matters of civil rights, criminal justice, and constitutional issues. Perez served as deputy assistant general for civil rights under Attorney General Janet Reno, and toward the end of the Clinton administration, he was the head of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services.

In January 2007 Perez was appointed as Maryland’s labour secretary.

Perez’s organisation CASA de Maryland, an initiative to bolster Central American immigrants, established worker centers which provided services for day labourers and vocational training in partnership with local community colleges in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. Perez has been dedicated to the empowerment of immigrants ever since.

“Tom is a dedicated public servant who has spent his career fighting to keep the American dream within reach for hardworking middle class families and those striving to get into the middle class,” a White House official said in a statement sent out Sunday.

Before President Obama nominated Perez to his Cabinet, he returned to the Justice Department in 2009 to serve as assistant attorney general for civil rights.

— Compiled by Aishwarya Shukla, intern at Gulf News