George W. Bush’s selection of Linda Chavez as his choice for Secretary of Labor raises interesting questions about the ways working people will be handled in the new administration. Chavez served Mr. Bush’s father on the Civil Rights Commission, and was a vocal opponent against affirmative action. She was a candidate for Senate from Maryland, earning the scorn of liberals when she described her opponent, Senator Barbara Mikulski, as a “San Francisco Democrat”. After her failed Senate race, Chavez hit the columns and talk show circuit, earning the ire of fellow Latinos with her staunch conservatism and anti-bilingual education perspective. What can workers expect from Chavez as Secretary of Labor?

Those who represent works say they don’t expect much. According to AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney, “The tapping of Chavez sounds a noisy alarm about President -elect Bush’s intended stewardship of civil rights, women’s rights, worker’s rights and the environment.” In her role as Labor Secretary, Chavez will be in charge of a large government sponsored affirmative action program. Given her stated positions on affirmative action, one wonders if Chavez will vigorously enforce the law.

When Chavez appeared with Mr. Bush at a press conference Tuesday, she said she would enforce laws that “guarantee nondiscrimination by federal contractors.” She also said she would work with the private sector to expand economic opportunity and job growth. Chavez was also poignant in her statement to the public about the jobs her parents held. She said that her dad was a house painter, her mother a waitress “who stood on her feet long hours in restaurants and in departments stores to help support our families”.

While Chavez said she would “keep faith” with the men and women who work at jobs like those her parents held, she did not indicate how her faith would be kept. Will she ensure that women like her mother get paid a minimum wage and can work at decent working conditions? Will she facilitate the organization of painters like her dad, men who can only earn fair pay when they collectively bargain for it? Chavez leaned back on her past to proffer herself as a working class heroine. The fact is that her working class roots have been scrubbed away by her conservative ideology, and she has years of anti-regulation, anti-union commentary to prove it.

Those people who work for a living have been left at the sidelines of economic expansion, especially those who work at the bottom of the income distribution. The ten million people who earn the minimum wage get no breaks from no one, especially not at the end of this year when their raise was squashed by Republican demands that low-wage raises by accompanied by tax cuts. It has been four years since minimum wage rose.

Unemployment rates didn’t rise in those four years, despite the projections of those who said that higher wages would lead to more unemployment. Conservatives would like people to believe that unemployment rises when wages do, but at the bottom there’s just no evidence that such is the case. Instead, people at the bottom have been like children with their noses at the window of economic expansion, watching others benefit, but gaining no benefits themselves. They have been pushed to the periphery of economic expansion, and they might rightfully ask if bureaucrats like Linda Chavez would move them from margin to mainstream. Chavez talks the talk of working parents, but so walks the walk of corporate interests that Chambers of Commerce are lining up to applaud her.

As long as the name of the game is profit maximization and cost minimization, people like Linda Chavez’ parents will find their interests diametrically opposed to those of Chamber of Commerce representatives. Workers need representation to increase their wages and earn enough money to support their families. Unions improve the wages of workers by between 25 and 50 percent depending on their race and gender. Businesses resist the notion that they should pay higher wages, and it falls upon the labor department to represent workers and make sure that their concerns are heard.

But there is some evidence that Linda Chavez may listen out of only one ear. She may be more interested in corporate concerns than the concerns of working people. She may mask her interests by saying that it is the small and medium sized businesses that suffer when low wages are raised, but she knows full well that the check that comes home has to feed a full family whether it comes from IMB or SmallBusiness, Inc.

Policy makers can’t serve two masters. They can’t lean on their parent’s work histories while plotting to undermine the scant power workers have through bargaining. Linda Chavez has been selected to implement a Bush labor agenda, which isn’t likely to keep faith with her working class parents, not when she knows that their lot would have been improved had their ability to organize been facilitated.

Business and Economics 
January 3, 2001