Staffers' Good-Riddance Party for Chao a Labor of Love

Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao is being criticized by union members for favoring business over regulating the safety of U.S. workers. (By Joe Marquette -- Bloomberg News)

Chao's PR doesn't persuade union leaders.

"I don't buy it," John Gage, AFGE national president, said in an interview yesterday. "She has deliberately walked away from regulation after regulation that was put there to look out for the safety of workers."

Putting a historical spin on it, Bastani said, "we all thought Raymond Donovan [President Ronald Reagan's labor secretary] was the worst secretary of labor ever," but "Elaine Chao blew him out of the water."

The union is glad to see her go because its members say she favored business so much that it has been difficult for them to carry out Labor's mission. The mission statement says in part that the agency "fosters and promotes the welfare of the job seekers, wage earners, and retirees of the United States by improving their working conditions."

But that hasn't been the case under Chao, the labor leaders complained. Lauderdale cited the case of Ira Wainless, a senior industrial hygienist at the department. In 2002, he drafted a bulletin warning auto mechanics that brake linings were "a substantial source of exposure" to asbestos, a carcinogen.

The warning was finally published four years later, after Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) pushed for it, but not before the document was watered down -- the "substantial source of exposure" had become "potential exposure" to asbestos. Wainless was threatened with suspension because his bulletin did not mention an industry-financed study, but his boss relented when an account of his travails appeared in the Baltimore Sun.

Because of situations like that, Mark Roth, AFGE's general counsel, said the department has been a terrible place to work for the career workforce that has believed in the mission and carrying out the policies in a neutral manner."

Contact Joe Davidson at federaldiary@washpost.com