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Guest Article
Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao
August 6, 2001
Thank you, Mark, for your kind introduction--and for your work over the last three decades in labor and employment law. It is a pleasure to be here with you today.
I want to tell you, first of all, how exciting it is to be part of a new Administration that is bringing positive change to Washington. In just the first six months of his tenure, President George W. Bush secured passage of a major tax cut, moved landmark education reforms through the House and Senate, forged a compromise on the Patient's Bill of Rights, and achieved immense progress in giving America the serious energy policy that it needs.
In the time I've spent with our President, I have discovered two secrets to his remarkable success: first, President Bush doesn't sit around thinking about his "legacy"--instead, he thinks about the American people, what their concerns are, and how to address them. Second, President Bush really is committed to "changing the tone" in Washington. For years, ingrained partisanship has been an obstacle to common-sense changes that most Americans support.
This President is proving that you can get results by respecting the other side. As he puts it, you can disagree without being disagreeable. And you can achieve progress if you're willing to put politics aside sometimes.
That's also the reason for the effectiveness of the Labor and Employment Section of the American Bar Association. While others pursued a more politicized agenda, this group has always stood for reasoned, balanced policy-making--where differences of opinion are respected in an atmosphere of collegiality.
So I am glad to be here with you today, and look forward to accomplishing great things--with your advice and counsel--for America's working men and women.
As I'm sure all of you know, the New Economy is changing how Americans work, where they work, what they expect from work, and what they want when they retire. The only thing that hasn't changed very much is how the federal government protects and empowers workers in this dramatically new environment. Let me outline some of the changes affecting our workforce, and how Washington needs to respond to make a positive difference for the workforce of the 21st century.
It used to be that the number-one labor problem in America was unemployment. Even now, of course, we are worried about people who are unemployed, and we have a number of programs designed to help those who have lost their jobs find new ones. But the most difficult problem facing our workforce today is not unemployment per se, but the skills gap that exists between new jobs that are being created and the skill level of many job seekers.
The largest single budget item at the Department of Labor is for the workforce training programs of the Employment Training Administration: $10.496 billion--not that I'm counting or anything.
It's my responsibility as Secretary of Labor to make sure those funds are spent effectively to bridge the skills gap: helping workers make the transition into the New Economy, and providing skilled workers who can continue the growth and increased productivity that have benefited this country.
But that still won't solve the other challenge I mentioned: a demographic destiny that will leave us with a ballooning class of retirees--all relying on costly entitlement programs--and a shrinking class of active workers who are paying the taxes to fund those programs.
One answer to this challenge is to expand our workforce by reaching out to those who have been left on the sidelines: older workers, disabled Americans, and the economically disadvantaged. Opening the doors of opportunity to all used to be a moral imperative, but it is fast becoming an economic one as well.
Some businesses are already responding. Nearly 2,500 companies are working to bring assistive technologies to Americans with disabilities. These businesses recognize that disabled workers can become some of the one and a half million Internet technology professionals needed in the next five years.
At the Department, we recognize such foresight with something we call the EVE award--the Exemplary Volunteer Efforts award. Each year, we present this award to contractors who have demonstrated outstanding efforts to increase the employment opportunities of those traditionally left out of America's workforce.
If we are going to prepare and protect our workers for the challenges of the 21st century, I believe we need to foster more of the vision and leadership exemplified by the EVE awards.
Traditional, command-and-control government action is becoming less relevant in an era where the number of adults who work entirely from their homes has grown by a third in the last ten years.
Consider the challenge of workplace regulation when the workplace of today may be nothing more than a laptop, a Blackberry, and an airline seat.
And just in case in case anybody's wondering, we're not sending OSHA in to inspect your home offices.
Instead, we need to promote leadership and responsibility, showing people why we set certain standards, what those standards are, and how they can live up to them.
Some people have suggested that we are "easing" enforcement "in favor" of compliance. They are dead wrong. Instead, we recognize a critical fact of the 21st century economy: that compliance assistance is a tool in the toolbox of enforcement strategy.
In other words, compliance assistance isn't an alternative to enforcement; it is a means toward more effective enforcement.
In an age of rapid economic change and highly technical government regulation, workers and employers alike need clear information on how to comply with our laws.
Government should offer a helping hand to those who want to do the right thing, not just a heavy hand that distrusts the basically good intentions of most people.
Moreover, government simply doesn't have the resources to ensure safe, healthy, and fair workplaces on its own. At current funding levels, the federal government can inspect each workplace only once every 167 years.
Even if we did have the resources, we still couldn't enforce every rule and regulation on the books. And that presumes, of course, that government has all the answers, at a time when increasing complexity and continuous change make all of us wrong at some point.
Especially those of us who bought high-tech stocks a year ago.
That's the reason for our compliance initiative--to work with employers and employees; to gain their perspectives on how to achieve the goals we have set.
We all know what we want: safer, healthier workplaces. Equal access and promotional opportunities for all. An honest day's pay for an honest day's work. Financially sound retirement plans.
But rather than march in and dictate how these goals will be met, we need to take a cue from the private sector and "listen to our customers."
That's why I decided to begin our re-evaluation of the ergonomics issue with a series of three information-gathering forums, spread across the country.
At those forums, we heard from representatives of organized labor, business, the non-profit sector, social service entities, and the medical community. Unions in particular made up over a third of the total witnesses who participated.
The reason for having these forums was that I sincerely wanted to know what workers and employers and medical experts and service providers all thought about ergonomics problems and the appropriate solutions.
I received the presentations with an open mind, and as a result, I found the exercise to be absolutely invaluable.
What amazed me, however, was that some people were offended, and even outraged, that we held these forums outside of Washington--where the fount of all wisdom resides.
They were also extremely agitated that we would want to hear from the very people who would have to comply with whatever approach we adopted.
Yet isn't that exactly what we should be doing?
Too often, government regulations are a complex maze that frustrates compliance instead of encouraging it. In some cases, one agency's standards and definitions may completely contradict those used by another regulatory agency.
In such cases, the onus should be on the government to make its expectations clear before taking punitive action.
It's an ancient principle of jurisprudence that "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." But that was before the Federal Register filled up entire libraries, and before most regulations required a J.D. degree and expertise in the Administrative Procedures Act to figure out.
When we go after employers for violating regulations they never knew existed, especially when those regulations don't serve an obvious purpose, then the failure is on our end, not on the employer's.
But let me be clear about what I am saying here: the necessity to inform and educate and encourage compliance is not our duty to employers--it's our duty to the workers we are supposed to protect.
If we fail to educate employers as a predicate to enforcement, it's the workers who suffer--because we'll never catch every labor law violation.
If we don't work with employers to help them achieve compliance on the front end, it's the workers who will pay the price.
That's why I'm directing my senior staff to develop a more effective compliance strategy for our Department, agency by agency.
We need to take the best of what OSHA and OFCCP and Wage and Hour have done with compliance assistance, and apply it across the board.
Instead of loading up employers with endless surveys and record-keeping requirements, we need to use the medium of the Internet to offer directed compliance courses to help employers make their workplaces safe and fair.
Another area of concern that urgently needs compliance assistance is pension security. I inherited a number of cases where union members aren't going to get the full retirement benefits they were promised, because of financial mismanagement by their own trustees.
In many cases, we will never make these pensioners completely whole again. But at least we can prevent such financial disasters from happening in the future, through compliance assistance and better oversight.
Compliance assistance is also an important tool in setting enforcement priorities.
Just last month, we pulled back a Wage and Hour enforcement initiative against teenage volunteers serving in a non-profit hospital. The concern our investigators had raised was child labor regulations. That's fair enough: but we would have done the hospital and the teenagers a true public service if we had come in and helped them identify the real issues of concern--especially safety--instead of running down our checklist of regulations and arguing over technical violations.
That's what compliance assistance is all about: helping people. Helping employers live up to common-sense standards of safety and fairness. Helping workers know what their rights are, as employees and members of unions. Helping companies as well as unions maintain their pension funds in good financial order.
If people refuse to comply with our laws and regulations, then we need to enforce them aggressively. If we have reason to believe that a particular industry is abusing its workers through willful non-compliance, then we need to go after them with targeted enforcement initiatives.
But we need to do our part first, to make sure our laws and regulations are clear and well understood by the regulated community. We need to give employers, workers and unions a compliance roadmap that is easy to understand, easy to measure, and as easy as possible to implement.
As we pursue these goals, I welcome the input of professionals like you, who have years of experience in deciphering our regulations and explaining them to your clients. One thing that impresses me about the membership of the Labor and Employment Section is that you have chosen this particular field because you care about the issues involved.
It's not just about protecting your clients--it's about making work a better place for all Americans. I know that many of you have ideas on how we can achieve that objective in ways that make sense for everyone involved.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today, and for the good work of the Labor and Employment Section in helping America's 21st Century Workforce.
Thank you.
BenefitsLink is an independent national employee benefits information provider, not formally affiliated with the firms and companies who kindly provide much of the content and advertisements published on this Web site, including the article shown above.