NO LONELINESS IN THIS ADMINISTRATION

Laboring for Overtime (Edwin J. Feulner, 8/01/03, Townhall.com)

When she left The Heritage Foundation more than two years ago, I felt certain Elaine Chao was heading off to one of the loneliest jobs in the country: Labor Secretary for a Republican president.

During her tenure, the Bush administration has reached out to labor leaders, but it’s a tough sell. Despite her overtures, the big unions remain staunch supporters of more liberal candidates, as they have been for decades.

But that hasn’t stopped Chao from trying to make life better for low-income laborers. For example, the Labor Department is trying to update the laws governing overtime—laws first written during the Great Depression. Clearly, the job market has changed since then. When’s the last time you saw a classified ad seeking a “leg man” or “straw boss,” terms that remain in the current law?

Unfortunately, labor laws haven’t kept up. Today, companies can classify employees who make just $8,061 per year as “exempt,” meaning they would be ineligible for overtime. Chao has proposed raising that threshold to $22,000, a step that would immediately make an additional 1.2 million workers eligible for time-and-a-half.

Because of the stunning contrast in the quality of their cabinet members and the ambitions of their respective administrations, the only time you ever heard about the second tier secretaries in the Clinton years was when they were indicted, while under President Bush you read about even the Secretary of Transportation or Labor or Interior making sweeping changes to programs and laws. George Bush appointed the best cabinet since Washington's because there's actually real work for them to do. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 1, 2003 9:25 AM