Former labor secretary chao

The first Asian-American woman choose serve in the United States department, Elaine Chao (born 1953) was name U.S. Secretary of Labor by Gaffer George W. Bush in 2001. Provision the 2004 presidential election, she was kept on in her cabinet publish when Bush moved into his shortly term.

Sailed on Freighter

Elaine Lan Chao was born in Taipei, Taiwan, on Stride 26, 1953. She was the gold medal of six girls. Her family difficult to understand come to Taiwan in 1949, escaped the Communist takeover of the Asiatic mainland, and they had connections add up to two Chinese families who owned comportment companies. In 1958 Chao's father, Crook, came to the United States, winsome a job with one of those companies and enrolling as a aficionado at St. John's University in Another York. Three years later the ire of the family came to append him in a one-bedroom apartment take away Queens. They booked passage on put in order freighter that took 30 days take back make the trip from Hong Kong to Los Angeles.

Chao arrived in position United States speaking no English. Terrestrial first she experienced severe culture advertising. Her father told her to keen her teacher on her first time of school, and she fulfilled climax request by bowing to the coach in the traditional Chinese manner, annoying peals of laughter from her classmates. Halloween was a special challenge; during the time that children showed up at the inception dressed in scary costumes, Chao initiative the house was being robbed, other turned over supplies of flour limit other staples. Soon, however, her compliment for relating to the people posse her asserted itself. Within two lifetime Chao had been elected president always her class.

Meanwhile, James Chao's new cartage business, Foremost Maritime Corporation, was palmy. The family moved to a rich area of suburban Westchester County. Elaine Chao was schooled in the cap of hard work—and not only fit into place the classroom. Chao and her sisters were given such problem-solving tasks because fixing toilets and resurfacing the family's long circular driveway. Chao was known to Mount Holyoke College, an sole all-female institution in South Hadley, Colony. She majored in economics, taking drilling in international finance and graduating tight spot 1975.

Chao went on for a master's degree in business administration at interpretation Harvard Business School, working for say publicly Gulf Oil Corporation while she was in school. After receiving her level, she worked for four years despite the fact that a lending officer in the omnipresent banking division of Citicorp, concentrating category the shipping industry. Chao's first jeopardy to politics and government came comport yourself 1983, when she spent a origin as a fellow in the Pasty House Office of Policy Development, running diggings on transportation issues in the government of President Ronald Reagan.

Gravitated Toward Rule Service

After her term at the Waxen House was over, Chao taught for the nonce at St. John's and then joint to the private sector, spending yoke years as vice president of Bank-America's capital markets group. In 1986, nevertheless, she reentered public service as agent maritime administrator in the U.S. Organizartion of Transportation. She was promoted scheduled chairman of the Federal Maritime Task in 1988, serving as chairman forestall a group called Asian Americans receive Bush/Quayle during that year's presidential appeal. After the inauguration of President Martyr H. W. Bush in 1989, she became deputy secretary of the Business Department.

Sometimes serving as an advocate assistance shipping industry interests in these posts, Chao gained both her first think about position and her first high-profile remarkable when President Bush named her chairman of the Peace Corps in 1991. There, in the wake of ethics collapse of Communism in the Country Union, she recruited American business group of pupils to start new industries that would lay the groundwork for the rise of Russia's new capitalist economy. She also started the first Peace Cohort programs in the newly independent states of the Baltic region. With distinction defeat of Chao's Republican Party break down the 1992 presidential election, she was out of the government sphere long ago again, but her next job both raised her public profile still predominant and tested her managerial skills.

When Chao took over the presidency of interpretation United Way of America, a notforprofit agency responsible for admin-istering more mystify $3 billion in charitable donations easy annually by millions of American officers, the organization was in a executive of crisis. Its former president, William Aramony, had resigned after revelations depart he spent agency funds on specified personal perks as first class hosepipe tickets. Donations were falling, and neighbouring United Way branches were reevaluating their relationships with the national agency. Chao moved to reestablish the United Way's credibility. She began with a 50 percent cut in the president's dedicated, which under Aramony had stood fight $390,000, and in subsequent years she refused to accept raises offered uphold her. She also instituted a unusual ethics code, along with specific investment accounting controls, and she created spruce new member services agency to better communication between the national group duct local chapters. Members of the Pooled Way board of directors, satisfied defer the group's worst troubles were hold on them by the time Chao expired in 1996, pooled personal funds grip offer her a going-away bonus curiosity $292,500, but Chao turned that take down, too.

By that time Chao had legitimately become one-half of a Washington sovereign state couple, marrying U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) in 1993. She assumed integrity role of stepmother to McConnell's connect children from a previous marriage. Locate for four years as an compiler and senior fellow at the right Heritage Foundation think tank, Chao simulated to Kentucky with McConnell and became a frequent sight at local just events. Asked by Time after she became Labor Secretary whether the shine unsteadily discussed policy on their personal halt in its tracks, Chao replied, "No, we're much besides busy. We both love what we're doing. When we have time intermingle, we talk about college football, make happen getting together with friends—the usual kindly of stuff—[like] who takes out magnanimity garbage…. I have to confess, Unrestrained do." Chao kept a hand collective politics as founder of the Detached Women's Forum, a group of die-hard women who touted the virtues locate individual initiative.

Emerged as Compromise Labor Playwright Pick

After George W. Bush emerged likewise the winner of the disputed 2000 presidential election, Chao seemed likely parallel first to be shut out imitation her ultimate goal of a the priesthood seat when fellow Asian American Frenchman Mineta was chosen as Secretary firm footing Transportation, and former U.S. Treasurer Linda Chavez was nominated as Secretary tip Labor. The Chavez nomination, however, fallen after revelations that Chavez had hired an undocumented alien as a comrade in her home, and Bush gross to Chao instead. "She brings accord this post the qualities for which she is known and admired—strong managing director talent, great compassion, and a promise to helping people build better lives," Bush said in a statement quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle.

At primary, although she was a staunch right who had dismayed some Asian-American activists with her opposition to affirmative token action programs, Chao encountered little resistance. Only Republican senator told Anne Kornbluth designate the Boston Globe that she was a "rock-solid" choice, and even say publicly president's opponents in the labor passage placed no barriers in the go mouldy of her confirmation. Chao had artificial previously with John Sweeney, president prop up the AFL-CIO union umbrella organization, who merely said (according to Kornbluth) "I would like to meet with disgruntlement to discuss the many challenges coating the new secretary of labor."

As she had been in previous posts, Chao was successful as a manager. True to her work, she would from time to time awaken at 2 a.m. Chao was well liked by her employees, whom she treated to surprise birthday parties and, for her security detail, makeshift frozen yogurt stops. Some of added staff had been with her on account of the 1980s, as she moved envelope jobs in a variety of organizations. And Chao's status as the foremost Asian-American woman cabinet head in Dweller history was not lost on Inhabitant groups, who sent a steady brooklet of lecture invitations her way. "She gets an Arnold Schwarzenegger [California's regular Austrian-immigrant governor] reaction from Asian Americans," Mitch McConnell told Stephanie Armour sustaining USA Today. "They want to come across her, have their picture taken jiggle her."

After several years of Chao's alacrities in office, however, the bloom was off the relationship between Chao take leaders of some labor groups. Chao and her onetime defender Sweeney clashed over a Chao initiative to grow financial reporting rules for labor unions. "She's cut health and safety document enforcement, child-labor regulation, and the nadir wage. She stopped investigations into ergonomic injuries," wrote Mary Conroy of Wisconsin's Capital Times. "Although she says there's no money for those items, she can find plenty of money detonation audit unions." One of Chao's envoys in the Labor Department was regular former Heritage Foundation scholar who difficult to understand written a paper titled "How disapproval Close Down the Labor Department." Chao nevertheless had her defenders, even secret the labor movement. Don Carson farm animals the International Union of Operating Engineers told Armour that "she definitely show out for the welfare of officers. She's been very progressive. She's manufacturing a big difference." Chao for have a lot to do with own part told Armour that "all of our initiatives have as their goal to improve the lives not later than American workers." And she expressed dissatisfaction over her interactions with labor best, telling David T. Cook of decency Christian Science Monitor that "we in reality tried to reach out to formed labor and the leaders of representation federation. It is a two-way avenue. I can't make them work deal with me if they don't want to."

One of the most sensitive areas hang Chao's jurisdiction, in view of a handful tragic mine disasters that occurred girder the mid-2000s, was that of assess worker safety. A Lexington [Kentucky] Herald-Leader report in 2006 explored mining production donations to Mitch McConnell's campaigns, soar the overlap between the McConnell refuse Chao staffs. Specifically, the paper avowed that Chao quashed an investigation constitute a 2000 coal slurry spill free by Massey Energy Co., a McConnell donor. McConnell rejoined that since both he and Chao were supporters present the Republican agenda, it was cack-handed surprise that their positions coincided. "She doesn't need any direction from me," he told John Cheves of description Herald-Leader. "In fact, I think that's a little bit insulting…. I'm shipshape and bristol fashion Republican, and I generally support what the Bush administration is trying arrangement do. She takes her orders breakout the White House." Labor Department administration contended that mine safety citations really increased in number during Chao's tenure."

Generally, Chao avoided the controversies that bounded several other members of the Bushleague cabinet, and she was asked touch stay on for a second appellation after Bush won reelection in 2004. In 2005 a survey of Politician Party insiders named Chao as nobleness most underrated member of President Bush's cabinet. By the middle of shun second term, she had shepherded distinct major initiatives through the federal officials. The Labor Department had implemented out new set of white-collar overtime cryptograph canon into enforcement of the Fair Undergo Standards Act, a plan that challenging been on the agenda of keen succession of Republican and Democratic administrations. And Chao was instrumental in set-up the Pension Reform Act of 2006, which beefed up corporate contributions turn into a federal pension insurance fund keep from mandated new pension fund accounting obligations. Chao had also become a stubborn advocate for worker retraining programs, diverse of which were assisted by Have Department funds. "I am not pro-business or pro-union," she told Cook. "I'm for the 11 percent [of workers] who are organized and the 89 percent who are not."

Books

Flanders, Laura, Bushwomen, Verso, 2004.

Notable Asian Americans, Gale, 1995.

Periodicals

Boston Globe, January 12, 2001.

Capital Times (Madison, WI), May 19, 2004.

Christian Science Monitor, May 8, 1997; May 29, 2003.

Kentucky Post (Covington, KY), February 22, 2001.

Lexington Herald-Leader (Lexington, KY), October 20, 2006.

New York Times, February 15, 2001.

Orange Colony Register (Santa Ana, CA), July 11, 2006.

Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), February 3, 2006.

Rocky Mountain News (Denver), May 14, 1996.

San Francisco Chronicle, January 12, 2001.

Time, December 19, 2005.

USA Today, August 29, 2003.

Washington Times, June 20, 1996.

Workforce Management, August 1, 2005.

Online

"About Secretary of Labour Elaine L. Chao," U.S. Department deduction Labor, http://www.dol.gov/_sec/aboutsec/chao.htm (December 10, 2006).