President's Column - Secretary Chao and "Employee Bashing"

Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao's staff does not serve her well or she doesn't have a clue as to what is the current policy of her Department. In a speech on June 14, 2002, before the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), she remarked that, "her vision for the Department was a change in culture and attitude." She went on to criticize the Department for not giving employers the tools and knowledge to comply with the regulations. Chao says she will correct this is to creating a new job description, "that would require them to help you." Secretary Chao should have checked, or had her staff check, with the Agency heads to find out that this is already a major portion of the position description of every DOL employee.

Under previous Secretaries of Labor, Reich and Herman, every agency went through an extensive reinvention and restructuring to become more "customer oriented" and the customer was the employers of America. So Chao's remarks regarding DOL employees are both disingenuous and incorrect. Each of the agency both in the national office and field offices, provides compliance assistance for every program. There are DOL employees who perform these tasks full time, by mail, phone, email and presentations to business and labor groups.

In addition, there is the Office of Small Business Programs that operates directly out of the Secretary of Labor's Office that provides specific information to small businesses. Its mission is to: "administer the Department's mandated responsibilities for ensuring that small businesses and minority institutions have fair opportunity to participate in DOL acquisition activities. Pursuant to Executive Orders, OSBP manages DOL's programs for historically Black, Hispanic and minority colleges and universities. OSBP serves as the DOL clearinghouses for compliance guides for small businesses and central referral point on DOL mall entity compliance programs, with related responsibilities regarding compliance assistance mandated by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act." This office is on the DOL webpage and provides a Small Business Handbook that provides compliance assistance for all DOL regulations.

Further on in her speech, Chao criticizes the Department for not being fair to the employers by expecting the business to know the rules and regulations without any decent help from the people who write them, promulgate them and penalize the business for not abiding by them - and that from now on, all the rulebooks will be available to the employers. If her staff had checked, they would have found that the OSHA rules books are available and have been for many years. In the real world, the NFIB, the group she was speaking to, has a full time staff that interprets the rules for its members.

What is most disingenuous is when Secretary Chao remarked that the new job descriptions for the DOL employee will 'forbid' these employees from referring you for investigation just because someone asked a question. This is blatantly untrue, and has never been a policy of any agency. No agency would do that because of the volume of questions posed. Voluntary compliance with OSHA and other agencies has been in place since the 1980s. There are not enough inspectors to go to all of the places where workplace problems exist so priority is given to the worst place on a randomly prepared list. This is a result of a court actions. So, to say that a telephone call would trigger an investigation is false and demeaning.

Secretary Chao's comments regarding phone calls did not address the fact that most agencies, except for OSHA and PWBA (and this is changing) have 800 number where questions are answered by "contractors." She should have said that the Department's efforts have come back to haunt it. These "800 number contractors" do not have the expertise to answer most questions and they if they cannot answer the question they give out wrong information.

Secretary Chao's efforts may be improved but they are not new. Under Secretaries Reich and Herman the Department of Labor, agency by agency, evolved in providing customer service The regulations and rules have been available both online and in printed format to employees and employers alike. The reason it might take weeks to get a book of regulations is because budget cuts severely curtailed or eliminated the printing of free copies available to the public.

Secretary Chao's speech was clearly "employee bashing" in the guise of how this Administration has made improvements. It is the right of the current Administration to take credit for being kinder and gentler to small business, but it should be factually correct. We, at the Department, have always been responsible and responsive in fulfilling the mission of the agency we work for and the Department on the whole. The employees have enforced the laws mandated by Congress in the manner of the Administration that is in power. The policy is set by the Administration not the employees and it is disingenuous to say otherwise. It is ironic that Secretary Chao speaks on being more responsive to business when her management officials measure performance by the number of inspections and penalties.

Secretary Chao should have a meeting with her agency heads to find out just what is being accomplished before she is sent out to speak on the "change in culture and attitude." This administration has been in power for 17 months... we can't blame it all on the Clinton team.