Labor Pick Chavez a Foe of Race-Based Policies

For two decades, Linda Chavez has enraged labor and minority groups with her strong attacks on affirmative action at schools, bilingual education and government policies based on race or ethnicity. That the criticisms came from someone with a Latino surname--and a former labor union official at that--only piqued those groups all the more.

In nominating Chavez, 53, on Tuesday to be secretary of Labor, President-elect George W. Bush called her “smart and capable” as well as a “staunch advocate of civil rights for everybody.”

Business groups greeted the nomination warmly, but others were quick to criticize Chavez. They worried that Chavez, a staunch believer that federal policies should be colorblind, will not vigorously enforce one of the federal government’s most significant affirmative action programs. The Labor Department is charged with making sure that thousands of federal contractors, who employ more than 20 million employees, follow affirmative action policies in hiring and promotions.

“We just really question what kinds of efforts she is going to put into enforcing the affirmative action laws,” said Marisa Demeo of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Washington.

John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, said the union is “extremely disappointed and disturbed” by the Chavez nomination. “She has been a vociferous and aggressive opponent of the federal minimum wage. And she is a strenuous foe of antidiscrimination measures.”

Chavez pledged to “vigorously enforce the department’s regulations to guarantee nondiscrimination by federal contractors.”

Business groups hope the Labor Department under Bush reverses a variety of Clinton administration initiatives. Among them are new rules on ergonomics, which aim to ease the physical strain of performing work, and rules that allow states to tap their unemployment insurance funds to support those who take leaves from work to care for newborns or other family members.

“She’ll give a fair hearing to both sides of an issue, but I suspect the business community will get a fairer hearing from her than we ever got under the Clinton administration,” said Randel Johnson, vice president for labor at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The National Assn. of Manufacturers called Chavez “a solid choice.”

Chavez galls her political opponents in part because she was once a Democrat and labor official.

Born to a working-class family in New Mexico, she was an acolyte of Albert Shanker, the legendary head of the American Federation of Teachers.

Later, her writing on traditional values helped win her the job of staff director to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under Ronald Reagan in 1983. In that job, Chavez drew attention for speaking out forcefully against hiring quotas as a tool to help minorities and for urging the reversal of several civil rights policies.

She founded a Washington-based think tank, the Center for Equal Opportunity, that issues policy papers regarding bilingual education, affirmative action, immigration and other topics.

Chavez is the daughter of an English Irish mother, whom she has described as blue-eyed and blond, and a Mexican American father, now deceased, whose family traces its roots to Spain.

Chavez remembered her parents as hard-working and inspirational people. Her mother stood on her feet for long hours while working in restaurants and department stores, she said, and her father was a house painter. “He taught me the dignity of manual labor. As someone whose own childhood poverty cut short his education in the ninth grade, he nonetheless introduced me to the world of books and ideas. And those are what enabled me to take a path that was easier than his own,” she said.

Chavez and her husband, Christopher Gertsen, have three sons and live near Washington.

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Profile:

Linda Chavez

* Born: June 17, 1947

* Education: Undergraduate degree, University of Colorado, 1970

* Career highlights: Nationally syndicated political columnist; president and founder, Center for Equal Opportunity, since 1995; White House director of public liaison, 1985-86; staff director, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1983-85; editor, “American Educator,” 1977-83; counselor, civil rights section, OMB, 1977

* Family: Husband Christopher; three children, two grandchildren

Source: Associated Press