The Louisville Courier-Journal slammed Elaine’s MSHA today in an editorial criticizing the agency for failing to properly implement safety requirements and regulations while disingenuously claiming it’s doing everything it can.  The paper calls out Elaine and President Bush for “finding the time and manpower to put industry’s favorite items atop its ‘to do’ list” while cutting the budget for coal mine enforcement, failing to fully implement the MINER act and opposing follow-up safety legislation:

When congressional hearings open soon, somebody should check the implementation claims made by federal Mine Safety and Health Administration officials on the second anniversary of the MINER Act.

They bragged about hiring 332 coal mine inspectors, but that was a net increase of only 163, since so many of those filled vacant positions. Remember, under the leadership of President Bush and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, the number of inspectors was cut by 18 percent, at a time when the number of mines rose by 9 percent.

In the new fiscal year, Mr. Bush proposes a 6.5 percent reduction in coal mine enforcement funds…Earlier cutbacks are blamed for MSHA’s failure to complete mandatory mine inspections in some areas.

And as we’ve noted:

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said in April that MSHA has been inconsistent in telling mine operators what their emergency response plans should include and enforcing safety laws across the country.

Some legacy, Elaine.

“60 Minutes” and Carolyn Merritt, the former head of the Chemical Safety board, take OSHA head Ed Foulke to task over combustible dust:

Tune into “60 Minutes” this Sunday, June 8, for a big story on OSHA and combustible dust regulations. 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelly will interview Carolyn Merritt, the former head of the Chemical Safety board about OSHA’s failures and the problem of combustible dust. Here’s a preview:

Sunday, June 8, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

There’s an excuse for everything.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao issued the following statement on the May employment situation report released today:

“Today’s increase in the unemployment rate reflects the fact that unusually large numbers of students and graduates are entering the labor market.”

For those following at home, the aforementioned “May employment situation” is the largest jump in unemployment since 1986.  That’s 49,000 lost jobs for a total unemployment rate of 5.5%.

But as EPI notes (via Mother Jones), Elaine’s “blame the kids” excuse doesn’t explain everything.

An increase in the youth labor force played a role in May’s unemployment spike. However, even if we take teenagers out of the data, unemployment still rises from 4.5% to 4.8%, a considerable 0.3% increase, and well above the 4.0% adult rate of one-year ago.

Elaine Chao is still in denial about America’s economic crisis.  What will wake her up?

Wow.  An investigative reporter for WSPA-TV looked at workplace accidents and the number of times OSHA reduces fines for violations. They found fines reduced in most cases, and an alarming amount of repeat offenders:

We dug through nearly four years worth of accidents investigated by the state’s OSHA office and found that fines are reduced nearly 70 percent of the time through either settlements or employment penalty option agreements.

Our investigation also found reduced fines involving companies with repeat accidents or violations, like the Michelin plant in Sandy Springs. In 2006, one person died from burns involving an exposed water pipe. A few months later, another Michelin worker’s arm, crushed and then amputated, after getting caught in a machine.

On Tuesday Elaine was in Tucson, stumping for GOP candidate Tim Bee, running for the congressional seat in AZ 8th District. Elaine seemed to take an active role in the 2006 midterm elections—sometimes awarding government funding, with great public fanfare, to districts where Mitch’s embattled colleagues were fighting to hold onto their seats. Looks like she’s at it again.

There’s a growing consensus among political and opinion leaders that a criminal investigation into the Crandall Canyon disaster is in order—but is Elaine listening? Separate investigations by the House, Senate and even the DOL’s own Office of the Inspector General found evidence of negligence by Crandall Canyon’s managers and owners—including Elaine & Mitch’s friend Murray Energy. They also found negligently insufficient oversight from Elaine’s MSHA. Now the New York Times has joined the chorus of voices calling for a criminal inquiry into the disaster.

Despite all this, Elaine’s MSHA thinks it’s “premature” to call for criminal inquiries. And Elaine herself? She hasn’t said a word about the mine collapse since it happened in August of last year. Isn’t that something?

On Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations subcommittee had Elaine over to testify about the nearly $1 billion dispersed by the Labor Department under her tenure.

Labor Secretary Chao, appearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, defends the administration’s $53.1 billion FY 2009 budget request for DOL against criticisms that it devotes too little attention to worker safety and job training and too much attention to investigating unions. (BNA, sub req’d)

Specifically, Senators wondered whatever happened to about $273 million handed out without any competition or oversight.

“This GAO report confirms what Congress already believes-that there hasn’t been appropriate oversight and accountability in how these grants have been administered,” said Rachel Gragg, director of federal policy for the Workforce Alliance in Washington. “These grants are circumventing the current workforce development system.”

“Under this administration, the Labor Department’s ability to … support a prepared and competitive workforce has declined significantly,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa and chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the agency, in prepared testimony at a hearing Wednesday, May 7.

Elaine’s response? We don’t really know what she’s even talking about:

Too many people lack “the training they need, and that’s a tragedy,” Chao said.

And workers in the system can be misguided. “We’re training people for jobs that don’t exist,” she said.

Riiight. So even though they lack training, and you’re training people for “jobs that don’t exist,” it’s still a good idea to cut the training budget by 16%, which is what Elaine advocated for on Wednesday.

It’s becoming more and more clear that Elaine Chao has effectively run the Department of Labor into the ground, screwing America’s workers day in and day out. By the time she leaves, the next administration is going to have a lot to repair.

We have lots of Elaine news from the last week, so kick back and check out what we have on our shady, shifty, shoddy Secretary of Labor.

Shady Appointees: Elaine lets appointee hide behind diplomatic immunity. Last month, Elaine met with the NAFTA council—the body that could waive diplomatic immunity for lobbyist and former official Mark Knouse. Knouse is the one whose numerous questionable expenses—nearly $10,000 in travel expenditures and about $1 million in shady contracts and vendor payments—forced him to resign. So did Elaine bring this to the NAFTA council? You guess.

Shoddy work: House votes to force Elaine to act. In April, we reported on a House hearing held because Elaine’s OSHA has failed to create comprehensive combustible dust regulations. Last week the House of Representatives got fed up, and voted to require OSHA to write safety standards for combustible dust in workplaces.

Federal regulators would have to come up with new ways to prevent combustible dust explosions in factories under legislation passed by the House… The bill now goes to the Senate, but the White House already has said President Bush would veto it. Despite worker deaths, Congressional votes, Elaine and her buddy President Bush still don’t seem to think combustible dust is a problem.

Read more…

This week the Washington Post published a story we’ve been hoping to see since the start of our campaign - Elaine’s Labor Department has been doling out millions in noncompetitive grants at taxpayers’ expense, with little or no oversight for how the money was used:

In the past seven years, the Labor Department awarded more than $271 million to groups to help train workers for high-demand jobs, but a new audit suggests that the agency often failed to ensure the public was getting something for its tax dollars.

The Labor Department inspector general found that one of President Bush’s signature initiatives to better prepare the American workforce for industry changes was giving money to industry and nonprofit groups with almost no competition and little oversight.

You’ll remember that the woman in charge of all this, Emily DeRocco, recently left the Labor Department for a lucrative job at NAM, the same organization to which she doled out at least half a million dollars while at the DOL.

When DeRocco’s replacement was asked about the report’s serious allegations, his response was deeply disturbing:

Brent Orrell, acting assistant secretary for the Employment and Training Administration, which was supposed to monitor the grants, wrote that it was “not necessary or valuable” to measure and evaluate all grant results.

We’re troubled that Elaine seems not to see the problem: she told a congressional panel she was “passionate” about her questionable system, and even bragged to a Chamber of Commerce audience about the millions of taxpayer dollars doled out through non-competitive grants.

We’re looking forward to the continued investigation of these serious charges, as this is the second report from Elaine’s own agency that faults her for this lapse.