Today’s Washington Post article exposes once again the gross mismanagement Elaine Chao has exercised in her role leading the Department of Labor. In particular, the Government Accountability Office issued a report on Monday revealing the Labor Department gave Congress erroneous and unreliable figures minimizing the actual expense of a practice we are all too familiar with - contracting out its own employees’ work to private firms.As the Washington Post reports:

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.

Elaine Chao is no Frances Perkins. We’ve made the comparison before to FDR’s legendary Labor Secretary, and Elaine certainly doesn’t come out well.  And as Elaine’s term winds to a close, it’s time to begin thinking about the next person to fill this position. Kim Bobo of Interfaith Worker Justice expanded on both these themes in a recent must-read piece:

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.

We told you about it in March and described it last week; now a congressional committee reports it’s been going on since at least 2006: Elaine Chao’s been campaigning for her husband (and other GOP candidates) using taxpayer money.  According to a draft report released Wednesday, Elaine broke the law by using her office to support candidates in the 2006 election. As the Washington Post reported, she joined other officials in:

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.

In the month of September, the United States lost an additional 159,000 jobs, with 9.5 million Americans being out of work. Combined with the collapse of our financial markets and increased economic uncertainty, you’d think Elaine Chao might be spending her last months on the job working to ensure that those who are laid off can find new jobs and receive assistance. Instead, she’s barnstorming Kentucky in an effort to help her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell, hang on to his hotly-contested Senate seat. In the last week alone, she’s made two campaign stops at opposite ends of the state. According to the press:

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.

By now, it’s no surprise that Elaine Chao is opposing workers’ rights advocates on the financial bailout.  (She called for the original bailout proposal to be passed “quickly and cleanly,” and never answered workers’ calls for strong oversight, improved financial regulation, or any measures aimed squarely at helping America’s struggling workers.)  The AFL-CIO’s Tula Connell makes another good point in a recent post, noting that when Chao endorsed the proposal:

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?

As Elaine’s time screwing America’s workers is beginning to run out, it is becoming more evident that she’s taking drastic steps to implement rules that put workplace safety at risk:  namely, making it harder for the government to regulate on-the-job exposure to hazardous chemicals and toxins. As we saw at a Congressional hearing yesterday, lawmakers on Capitol Hill apparently aren’t on board with this flawed policy, and for good reason. According to OMB Watch:

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?

Rising unemployment.  Unsafe workplaces.  Incompetent federal agencies.

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.

While Elaine was busy jet setting around the world and helping rob whistleblowers of their privacy, America’s workers suffered another major blow in the month of August.  According to the Department of Labor’s own statistics, unemployment in the month of August rose from 5.7 percent to 6.1 percent, as our nation lost 84,000 more jobs.

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.

While most Americans are struggling in this economy, one with rising unemployment, skyrocketing energy prices and rampant outsourcing, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao has more important matters to attend to rather than address the challenges of America’s workers.

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.   

Following up on an earlier article by the Washington Post on Elaine’s last-minute attempt to reduce workplace toxin regulations, The New York Times today slammed the Department of Labor over its latest move to screw workers from workplace safety and protection:

As time runs out on a do-nothing agency, the proposal is now listed as the department’s top priority, hurriedly leapfrogging ahead of such earlier concerns as workplace risks from silica, beryllium and other dangerous substances, and the growing problem of construction crane accidents.

It’s pathetic to discover President Bush’s team investing its closing months on one more sop to industry. It signals that the regulatory mess facing the next president continues to grow, since the stealth games at Labor are likely being duplicated in other agencies.

Perhaps if Elaine and her minions had to work jobs where they were exposed to toxins that can have permanent debilitating effects on one’s health, they would have a change of heart and stand up to their big industry cronies.

One wonders how they sleep at night.