The "Dragon Lady" Nearly Breathes Her Last

Where else but the Op-Ed page of the Murdoch Street Journal could “Mrs. Mitch McConnell” (according to Wonkette, she just LOVES that salutation!) inflict the following assault on truth and logic disguised as a valedictory (here)…

When President-elect Barack Obama initially announced his economic team, one important player was conspicuously absent: his pick for secretary of labor.

I don’t know where Chao has been lately, but Obama nominated former Congresswoman Hilda Solis (yet another solid pick, apparently) on or about January 9th, as noted here.

But America's work force is central to our economic recovery in the near term and to our sustained prosperity in the long term. Seventy percent of our economy is consumer driven. And most of that consumption depends on workers' paychecks.

A startlingly obvious observation (without attribution, of course; actually, I’d like to know how Chao knows of the percent of our economy that isn’t “consumer driven”…and, as Secretary of Labor, why would she even care about that?).

The Labor Department has tremendous resources to protect American workers and help them be more competitive in the world-wide economy. The department also has the power to harm American worker competitiveness through misguided regulations and punitive policies that would cause jobs to go overseas or disappear entirely.

This is the first instance of true deceit from Chao, and there are so many ways to “blow it full of holes” that I’m not sure I can capture them all (her insinuating somehow that those dreaded “government regulations” are to blame for offshoring – plenty of “punitive policies,” though, but not the way Chao thinks).

As this post from 2005 notes, the “administration” she has toiled for has 1) "embraced foreign outsourcing, an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years," 2) "sponsor(ed)" and "participate(d) in conferences and workshops that encourage American companies to put operations and jobs in China," and 3) "allowed $70 million in tax breaks for off-shore construction contracts" as an incentive to move jobs offshore.

Back to Chao...

Over the past eight years, the Labor Department has worked hard to ensure that labor regulations protect workers, without needlessly making it harder to create and keep jobs in America.

Oh yes, like Chao “protected” American workers by making it harder to regulate their exposure to toxins in the workplace via a “secret rule,” as noted here by Dem U.S. House Rep George Miller of California.

And our record speaks for itself. Today we have record-low workplace injury, illness and fatality rates.

This is another opt-repeated lie from Chao; as noted here…

In 2006, 5,840 workers died while on the job, marking a 2 percent increase in workplace fatalities from 2005. Even more troubling, BNA points out:

The revised figures show that fatalities for Hispanic workers rose from 923 deaths in 2005 to 990 in 2006. The death rate also increased, from 4.7 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2005 to 5.0 in 2006, BLS found.

The largest revision in fatalities by occupation was in transportation and material moving operations–up by 38 fatalities from the preliminary report for a total of 1,501 deaths in 2006, BLS said. This was followed by construction and extraction occupations–up by 15 deaths for a total of 1,273 fatalities in 2006, according to the agency.

Back to Chao…

The department set new records in the number of workers recovering back wages owed to them through effectively targeted enforcement and our compliance assistance program.

Way too damn funny – as noted here by Miller…

Chao went on to severely weaken the department's Wage and Hour Division -- which enforces overtime, minimum wage, and child labor laws. Wage theft has skyrocketed at the hands of this administration: An ongoing U.S. Government Accountability Office investigation has uncovered repeated cases where the agency refused to go after scofflaw employers who admittedly owed their workers back wages.

Chao also consistently refused to support increasing the minimum wage, allowing it to erode to its lowest value in fifty years. It wasn't until Democrats took over Congress in 2006 that the minimum wage was finally raised for the first time in ten years.

And as far as money matters go with Chao, this New York Times story last Sunday tells us that “the record collection of back wages is a result of companies’ rushing to settle with her department to reduce the likelihood of facing large amounts of damages awarded by juries in private lawsuits.”

Ugh – back to Chao…

To meet the needs of workers in our knowledge-based economy we launched new programs to bring employers, workers, unions and educators together for new training and new career opportunities. The department also secured record monetary recoveries for workers' pension plans.

I’m not sure how much good job retraining is going to do if the jobs one can be retrained for are already lost; as the AFL-CIO notes here, “(In) April 2001, (the Bush) administration (withdrew) funding for 19 long-term training grants. Grant recipients had received a letter from OSHA on Jan. 4 congratulating them on being chosen for the long-term funding. But a March 29, 2001, letter to the grantees stated, “Because of budgetary circumstances and an evaluation of financial projections for this program, the long-term grant you had applied for cannot be funded.”

Back to Chao…

On the regulation side, we updated old, outmoded rules. These rules were written for jobs such as "key punch operator" that aren't relevant any more. These rules stymied productivity and made compliance nearly impossible, while doing little to protect workers.

Oh yes, those dreaded, outmoded workplace rules, such as the one concerning repetitive strain injuries that required 10 years of negotiation with the Clinton Administration; this is what Bushco canned with Chao’s approval, as noted in the prior AFL-CIO post, as well as workplace rules affecting miners, rescue personnel at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks, flight attendants…the list goes on and on and on.

Back to Chao…

You might have also heard about our efforts to update union financial disclosure regulations for the first time in over 40 years. Our new disclosure rules have helped rank-and-file members better understand where their dues are being spent.

God, this woman is such a liar!

Elaine Chao doesn’t give a damn about “help(ing) rank and file members better understand where their dues are being spent.” As noted here…

The current LM-2, which must be filed annually with the DOL by any labor organization with income over $200,000 (those with less file an LM-3), requires reporting on a range of information, including officer salaries, union assets, the date of the next officer election, the number of reported members, and whether any officer earns more than $10,000 from another labor organization.

The new rules would go further, requiring a breakdown of expenses to the nearest 10% for each of the following categories: political activities, lobbying, organizing/contract bargaining, and administration. Each staffer's time would also have to be broken down into the same categories.

This is all information that could be useful for union members and which few unions voluntarily disclose.

Chao and her handlers want to know this stuff because they want to know which unions are engaged in political activity and organizing and which ones aren’t. That’s why!

It’s getting pretty deep, if you know what I mean…

This is only a partial list. The bottom line is that we have worked to be pro-worker without strangling the workplaces that employ them. And we've done that because to ride out tough times and stay well positioned for future growth, it is vital that the Labor Department not push regulations that impede job growth.

Yet special-interest groups that purport to have workers' interests at heart are agitating for more workplace mandates. And there will be pressure on the department to retreat from efforts to make federal job-training programs actually prepare workers for real-world jobs in the new economy, instead of funding duplicative programs that train workers for the types of jobs that are disappearing.

One of these counterproductive, special-interest initiatives is "card check," which would deprive workers of the ability to vote privately in workplace unionization elections -- a vital worker protection that dates back to the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.

“Card check,” in case anyone hasn’t figured this out by now, is Republican-ese for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for employees to join a union and which is supported by 73 percent of those polled, according to this.

There is a push in Congress to enact card check despite the fact that the vast majority of workers -- including rank-and-file union members -- want to keep the private ballot system in workplace unionization elections and do not want it replaced by a signature card process that will subject them to the pressures of solicitation and potential intimidation by union activists. Ironically, to decertify a union, labor leaders insist on holding private-ballot elections to protect workers from employer intimidation.

I cannot imagine why Chao brought this up except to confuse the reader because, as noted here, the process for decertifying a union would not change under the EFCA (and the whole point behind the act is to remove the very employer intimidation in forming a union that Chao mentioned).

Another destructive and undemocratic aspect of the card-check bill is a provision for government-dictated labor contracts in newly unionized workplaces. Under the bill, if an initial labor contract is not agreed to within a congressionally dictated timetable, the government could designate an "arbitration board" to write a labor contract that employers and workers would be forced to live under for two years. This is not just a problem for employers. Workers would not have any right to ratify or reject the contract.

On the matter of arbitration, the following should be noted (from here)…

(The EFCA) provides that when an employer and newly formed union are unable to bargain a first contract within 90 days, either party can request mediation by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). If no agreement has been reached after 30 days of mediation, the dispute is referred to binding arbitration. All time limits can be extended by mutual agreement. This change eliminates current incentives for employers to delay and stall negotiations and will dramatically reduce the delay, frustration and animosity generated by the company-dominated system.

Back to Chao...

The Labor Department has a far-reaching impact on every worker and every workplace in America. For the sake of all of America's workers, special-interest agenda items must be balanced with economic reality and the need to keep all these workplaces in America.

I sincerely hope that this is the last time in my life that I will post on this woman, so I will “leave everything in the road,” as kos would say.

Under Chao’s sorry reign at the DOL, the rate of H-1B visa fraud increased by 27 percent, as noted here. She also instituted restrictive guidelines for overtime pay in August 2004, fought workplace safety regulations and encouraged offshoring, and sanctioned agreements with employers to fire whistle-blowing employees, as noted here (and she also made it easier to ignore complaints by whistleblowers on a technicality if they’re working for company subsidiaries, as noted here).

And as noted here, Chao said that foreign workers have “better workplace skills and discipline,” and questioned the personal hygiene of American workers. And in a revelatory, albeit catty (but funny) tidbit from Wonkette (here), we find out that Chao couldn’t “tinkle” with other staff when she worked for the Peace Corps, so she needed her own restroom; she also “blew out” all her first-term discretionary funds in a matter of months (her so-called “tea party” fund).

As you go down the list of Bushco sycophants who ran their agencies into the ground, it’s hard to pick someone who was the very worst (“Dirty Dirk” Kempthorne at Interior, Margaret Spellings at the DOE, Mike “City Of Louisiana” Chertoff at DHS, and on and on). However, Chao may be the worst if for no other reason than the fact that she (unbelievably) will be the only member of this cabal who “served” at her agency from Bushco’s first day until its very last.

Over the course of the last eight years, the Department of Labor would have been emerged much better had no one run it at all.