Granholm, Maxwell mentioned in Secretary of Labor Sweepstakes

Seal, U.S. Department of Labor

Labor experts predict that whoever gets the labor secretary cabinet position in the Obama administration will seek to undo the legacy of “voluntary compliance” set by the current secretary, Elaine Chao, and refocus the department on promoting jobs and workers rights.

Chao, with eight years on the job, is the longest-serving cabinet member in the Bush administration. She has largely escaped the scrutiny given to other cabinet members, but critics say she diverted resources away from enforcing labor laws in favor of voluntary compliance.

“We need somebody who will really fight for working families and who will be close enough to the president and other economic advisers that his or her views will be respected,” AFL-CIO policy director Thea Lee told Michigan Messenger. “Certainly, with the economy in crisis and the middle class approaching extinction, we think it is very important that the labor secretary be someone who can engage treasury, commerce, and the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office on equal footing.”

The department, which has more than 17,000 employees (according to Wikipedia) oversees the regulatory apparatus responsible for enforcing workplace organizing, child labor, health and safety and minimum wage laws.

Mary Beth Maxwell is reportedly being considered as a potential labor secretary.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm and former Detroit-area Congressman David Bonior have been mentioned prominently in media speculation about whom President-elect Obama will pick for the post. But Bonior told the National Journal that he is not interested and thinks the job should go to Mary Beth Maxwell, executive director of American Rights at Work, a labor advocacy organization that he chairs.

Granholm and Maxwell would bring different strengths to the Obama administration. The governor, who cannot run for re-election in 2010, has a track record in “green jobs,” which the president-elect promised to create. Maxwell brings a history of the kinds of community organizing that was formative in Obama’s political ascent.

Key to the Obama economic platform has been the idea of revamping manufacturing around energy production — green jobs. During the campaign he touted a plan to spend $150 billion over 10 years to develop a clean-energy program that would address climate change, reduce dependence on foreign oil and create 5 million new green jobs.

This message resonated in Michigan where the decline of the auto industry resulted in the nation’s highest unemployment rate and a public hungry for a plan to retool the manufacturing sector and where Granholm, now a member of Obama’s economic team, has advanced a similar vision.

Granholm created the “No Worker Left Behind” program to provide tuition assistance to people who train for new jobs. More than 48,000 people have received state-funded employment training since the program began in August 2007, according to the state Department of Labor and Economic Growth. This September Granholm announced that the effort would include a special focus on promoting training for green jobs. [The program is still new -- spokeswoman Diana Carpenter told me that standards to define what constitutes a green job have not yet been developed.]

The Obama campaign specifically referenced Granholm’s job creation policies when it called for an Advanced Manufacturing Fund to be modeled on Michigan’s 21st Century Jobs Fund, which has awarded millions in grants and loans for research and business development.

She trumpeted wind turbine manufacturing as a potential source of jobs for out-of-work metal workers, and traveled to Europe and Japan to forge connections with companies involved with alternative-energy technologies. She supported tax breaks for corporations such as Hemlock Semiconductor, which produces materials used in solar panels.

In a story on the possibility of her nomination, The Washington Post described Granholm as, “a popular governor in a state hit hard by economic woes,” and reported, “As governor, she has championed infrastructure projects to put people to work and pushed new job-training initiatives to help workers in shrinking industries transition to new work.” Before taking office in 2003, Granholm was Michigan’s attorney general; before that, she worked as Wayne County corporate counsel and a federal prosecutor.

Maxwell would bring community organizing and labor credentials to the job. The group she runs, American Rights at Work, was founded to promote the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill to make it easier for workers to form unions. She has also done a stint as national field director for Jobs With Justice and held leadership positions in the pro-choice organization NARAL and the United States Students Association.

She appears a close fit with Obama’s labor agenda, which includes ensuring the freedom to unionize, fighting attacks on workers’ right to organize, protecting striking workers and raising the minimum wage. As a senator, Obama co-sponsored and voted for the Employee Free Choice Act and he has promised to sign it as president.

Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal reports that labor leaders from both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, a splinter union group that includes the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union, back Maxwell because of her work to support union organizing.

Maxwell blogs on labor issues for The Huffington Post.

“Lawmakers must look beyond CEOs for solutions to our economic woes,” she wrote in a Nov. 17 post about the need to remove obstacles to union formation. “Those solutions also need to come from the workers and their advocates who keep our country running.”