The department’s decisions in allowing contractors to compete for bureaucrats’ work — known as “competitive sourcing” — also demoralized workers, according to most of the 60 agency employees interviewed by the GAO.

“DOL’s savings reports are not reliable: a sample of three reports contained inaccuracies, and others used projections when actual numbers were available, which sometimes resulted in overstated savings,” the GAO report said. “Because of these and other weaknesses, DOL is hindered in its ability to determine if services are being provided more efficiently as a result of competitive sourcing.”

President Harry Truman had a famous sign on his desk proclaiming “The Buck Stops Here.” It’s clear that his sentiment isn’t shared by Elaine and company.

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We need a Labor Secretary in the mold of Frances Perkins, whose top priority was to help the working man…we need a Secretary of Labor who cares about workers and who will at least try to address issues faced by workers. Unfortunately for the nation, we have a Secretary of Labor who is Missing in Action.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Kim also gives a suggested list of new priorities for our next Labor Secretary, including:

[E]nforce the wage and hour laws in meaningful ways.

[L]ead the charge in supporting unemployed workers.

[C]ommit to developing the 21st-century supports America’s workers need.

We particularly like this item:

[S]upport the fundamental rights of all workers to organize into unions of their choice. Although Perkins wasn’t the first choice of labor unions for secretary, she overcame their hesitations with her steadfast support for workers’ rights to organize in the workplace. Elaine Chao, in contrast, has used her public voice to attack the Employee Free Choice Act , the most significant labor law reform to come along in decades.

No matter who wins this hotly-contested election, workers desperately need a new Labor Secretary who will put their interests first. The new Secretary would do well to examine Frances Perkins’ example.

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303 out-of-town trips by senior Bush appointees meant to lend prestige or bring federal grants to 99 politically endangered Republicans that year, in a White House campaign that House Democratic investigators Wednesday called unprecedented in scope.

Now, it’s illegal for federal employees to use public money to support candidates for federal office, but that didn’t stop Elaine, who went on 25 of these partisan excursions.

Federal law prohibits the use of public funds for partisan activities…but the agencies involved said most of the trips were paid by taxpayer funds, according to the draft report issued Wednesday by California Rep. Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Elaine certainly seems to be up to her old tricks this year. While Americans lose jobs and the economy tanks, Elaine makes campaign stops, attends awards dinners and rides in the Toyota Grand Parade of Horses.  While campaigning, she makes sure to praise Mitch’s votes against the interests of America’s workers and even brags that Mitch “…has stopped the majority in Congress from enacting climate change legislation.” (I guess no one has told her that green investment could create 2 million new jobs in two years.)

No matter who voters choose this November, let’s hope we end up with Secretary of Labor who spends time looking out for workers, not engaging in illegal partisan activity.

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On Saturday, October 4^th:

Sen. Mitch McConnell made a campaign stop in Georgetown on Saturday evening and warned supporters against voting for his opponent, Bruce Lunsford.

“If I were replaced by a freshman, Kentucky would have a severe loss in clout in the Senate,” McConnell said while meeting supporters at the Scott County Republican Party headquarters.

McConnell and his wife, Elaine Chao, U.S. Labor Secretary, who called the senator her soul mate and roommate, shook hands and thanked supporters before riding in the Toyota Grand Parade of Horses.

          On Monday, October 6^th:

U.S Labor Secretary Elaine Chao spoke in London Monday, asking Laurel Countians to support the “entrepreneurial spirit” of America as well as her husband, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Chao spoke during the London-Laurel Chamber of Commerce’s Women in Business dinner Monday evening, sharing a little about her life story - from arriving in America as part of a cargo ship, to becoming the nation’s 24th Secretary of Labor.

She also attended a meet and greet reception at the north London Hampton Inn hosted by the Laurel County Republican Party, where she talked about McConnell’s reelection campaign and the presidential race.

“This is going to be a tough, tough season for Republicans,” she told the crowd, “and I think when you are talking with your various friends and neighbors, and they want change, we need to ask them, ‘what kind of change are you talking about? What kind of change do you want?’… We need to be very careful that we’re actually opting for the right kind of change.”

America’s workers want change, and it starts with a Secretary of Labor who actually does his or her job. Elaine’s partisan and personal priorities couldn’t be any clearer.

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She also took the opportunity to dodge a question about whether she favored extending the unemployment insurance time frame, saying Congress already had extended it this year.

(Let’s see…Chao’s Labor Department reported yesterday there were 1,772 mass layoffs initiated in August, the most since September 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And two weeks ago, Chao’s Labor Department reported unemployment worsened from 5.7 percent to 6.1 percent, a figure that economist Jared Bernstein noted in Sunday’s FDL Book Salon is more like 10.7 percent when underemployment is factored in. But I digress. Why would rising unemployment have anything to do with a need to extend unemployment insurance?)

Why, indeed?

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Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), chair of the House Education and Labor Committee subcommittee on Workforce Protections, opened the hearing by airing her concerns with the speed of the rulemaking and the Labor Department’s priorities.

“I am troubled by the Agency’s attempt to rush through this rule without a full consideration of its effect on the health and safety of the American worker. This proposed rule has without explanation leapfrogged ahead of many other worker protection standards that OSHA should have been working on for the last 8 years, including a standard for diacetyl, the long delayed silica standard, the long delayed beryllium standard, and the long delayed crane standard…[The rule] is being propelled forward at lightning speed.”

Hasn’t Elaine learned from past lessons on the consequences of lax oversight? Or does she just not care?

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You’d think with the important tasks left undone on Elaine Chao’s desk, perhaps she’d roll up her sleeves and work for the American people. Yet apparently Elaine’s greatest priority isn’t doing her job as Secretary of Labor, but rather helping her husband’s re-election campaign.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that this past weekend:

Kentucky Republican power couple U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao were on hand, along with more than 100 activists, to open the GOP’s Fayette County office Saturday.

And of course, Elaine couldn’t stop herself from being a good wife by making another partisan diatribe:

“You’re all going to be so important in ensuring Mitch McConnell remains the Republican leader in the United States Senate,” Chao said. “There’s one person in the Senate that basically is a bulwark, is a fire wall who contains all the bad ideas that … majority in the Congress is currently pushing. I’m very proud of Mitch for his steadfastness.”

If only she were so passionate about her job.

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As the Log Angeles Times notes:

“The U.S. has now shed 605,000 jobs since the beginning of the year, the Labor Department said Friday.”

Is this one of Elaine’s “accomplishments” she’s so proud of while leading the Department of Labor for the last seven years? Let’s hope not.

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An author of a report critical of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration’s role in last August’s Crandall Canyon mine disaster said Saturday he fears agency personnel could face retaliation for participating in the probe because the Labor Department gave MSHA boss Richard Stickler access to transcripts of their interviews.

Earnest Teaster Jr., an MSHA retiree retained by Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to conduct an “independent” review of MSHA’s activities before and during the disaster, said he learned Friday that Stickler had received authorization several weeks ago to review transcripts Teaster considered confidential.

The report, which came out earlier this month:

contained some unflattering portrayals of Stickler’s performance during the ill-fated rescue effort in which three miners died, including an MSHA inspector,

and was the latest of several reports (by the House, Senate and the DOL’s own Office of the Inspector General) faulting MSHA for the mine disaster.  And now Stickler wants to know who helped paint that picture.  As former MSHA director Davitt McAteer put it, now that MSHA has been confronted with its mistakes,

“instead of focusing on the conclusions, there is an effort to determine where the information came from.”

Wow.

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Serving on the seven-member US delegation to the Beijing Olympics, Elaine praised the games for giving China the opportunity to “introduce its history, culture, and values to the world.”

History and culture we can understand, but what values is Chao speaking of? Flagrant human rights abuses? Child labor? Unfair trade practices? Please Elaine, tell us what kind of values the Chinese government should be proud of…Americans and others who have suffered from abusive Chinese policies would like to know.   

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