Remarks Prepared for Delivery by U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao Entrepreneurship Week

Remarks Prepared for Delivery by U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao Entrepreneurship Week

Thank you, Deborah [Deborah Wince-Smith]. Congratulations to the sponsors for your ambitious week of activities.

Today I would like to describe briefly foundations of prosperity and how the Department of Labor is working to enhance them and thereby the entrepreneurial spirit. This is clear from the Department's commitment to job training programs and sensible regulatory reform.

First, let us share with you some observations on the strengths of our economy and some of the challenges our economy faces.

Today, the U.S. economy is one of the fastest growing and robust among large industrialized nations, with GDP growth over three percent in 2006. The national unemployment rate remains low at 4.6 percent. That's more than a full percentage point lower than the 5.7 percent unemployment rate of the 1990s. You can contrast this with Europe, where two countries — France and Germany — have unemployment rates near nine percent. And long term unemployment in France is three times higher than the United States.

Our economy has created 7.4 million new jobs since August 2003. That's more jobs than the entire European Union and Japan combined have created. In fact, the last Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report shows one million more jobs were created in the past two years than had previously been reported.

America's workers are the most productive of any major industrialized economy. And strong productivity translates into higher wages and higher standards of living. Real wages for workers increased 2.1 percent over the past 12 months. That's an extra $1,244 of new purchasing power for the typical family of four with two wage earners.

Many factors contribute to this vitality, including this Administration's policies on taxes and development of an ownership society. But a dynamic economy owes the most to an entrepreneurial culture. Which government can foster of diminish. Entrepreneurs can be famous scientists, inventors, or investors, but entrepreneurs are just as well the ordinary Americans who work for their families.

Whatever their prominence, entrepreneurs spot opportunities and take risks.

By doing so, they provide goods and services that are needed and create jobs. Over 170 years ago, a visitor from France, Alexis de Tocqueville, captured this characteristic. He noted that "For an American, one's entire life is spent as a game of chance, a time of revolution, a day of battle." "Above all" the American is "an innovator."

The entrepreneurial Americans Tocqueville saw back then are very much alive today.

From all our measurements of a dynamic economy, one fact speaks volumes of the spirit of American entrepreneurship: Close to two-thirds of the net job growth in this country in the last decade have been in small- and medium-sized businesses. In fact, in 2005, over 99 percent of U.S. firms have fewer than 500 employees. And over half of all private sector jobs are in these small and medium firms. They are the foundation of our country's future economic growth. Their success reflects the realized dreams of individuals.

Today, the strength and flexibility of the U.S. economy have made it the envy of the world. Our free society rewards hard work, individual initiative, and risk-taking. People can be confident that they have a fair chance to be successful.

Americans are increasingly aware that we need to be competitive in a global economy. As our country grows, it is transitioning to a knowledge-based economy. Two-thirds of all the new jobs being created require higher skills and more education. By definition, they pay above average wages. But more workers nowadays need postsecondary education to access these opportunities.

This means that workers with higher skills and educational levels are more in demand. Therefore the wages of these higher skilled workers have risen much more quickly than those of lower-skilled and less educated workers.

So, more than ever before, education, training and retraining are the keys to future earnings. And we need to emphasize to young people that it's important to stay in school.

Here are just a few examples of the link between education, earnings and employment:

* Workers who drop out of high school average $494 per week and have unemployment rates of about 6.8 percent.
* Workers with a high school degree average $726 weekly and have a 4.2 percent unemployment rate.
* Workers with an associate's degree average $826 per week, and have an unemployment rate of 3.8 percent.
* Workers with a bachelor's degree or higher average $1,344 per week for full-time work, and have a 2.1 percent unemployment rate.

So higher education really pays off!

America's workforce is characterized by our flexibility and mobility. Nearly 40 percent of America's jobs change hands every year, in large part because workers seek and find better opportunities. In fact, the average American worker has held over ten jobs by the age of 40.

America offers workers a different kind of security, that of a dynamic economy and new opportunities. Workers in the U.S. can have confidence that there is always another, usually better job out there, if they further their education and gain the necessary skills these new jobs require.

Each year, the federal government invests nearly $15 billion on worker training and employment services. The Labor Department administers nearly $10 billion of this amount. And the private sector spends much more.

The entrepreneurial spirit can be stifled by excessive taxation, over-regulation and needless lawsuits. These and other barriers to growth need to be reduced or eliminated. At the Labor Department, we understand this connection to job growth and have worked to update and modernize our regulations that govern business and the workplace. And these reforms have led to better working conditions for the men and women in the U.S. workforce.

A key mission of the Labor Department is to ensure that workers are safe on the job and fully and fairly compensated. Since 2001, OSHA has implemented a balanced approach consisting of aggressive enforcement, cooperative programs, outreach, and compliance assistance which has yielded a 7 percent reduction in the occupational fatality rate.

This Administration has also made a special effort to target enforcement of our nation's wage and hour laws on industries that employ large numbers of vulnerable workers. As a result, the Department has recovered record back wages for workers in low-wage industries. In 2006, the Department recovered nearly $172 million for over 246,000 employees who did not receive the wages they were due. This represents a 30 percent increase since 2001.

The Department's reforms and initiatives reinforce the American entrepreneurial spirit and foster the development of an environment for job creation!

Our top priority at the Labor Department is to promote and protect the rights of workers. So in closing, let me mention a proposal that has recently surfaced, which would harm workers' rights.

This Thursday, the House of Representatives will be voting on a bill called the "Employee Free Choice Act." For such a benevolent title, this bill would do the opposite. It would take away worker choice by doing away with a worker's right to a private ballot.

Here's how the new bill would impact union organizing. Currently, unions organize a work site by collecting the dated signatures of at least 30 percent of the workers to demonstrate interest in union representation. Once these cards are collected, the petition is filed, the signatures are verified, the NLRB comes on site and conducts a federally supervised election under formal and solemn conditions in which every worker is given the right and opportunity to vote by private ballot.

Under the new bill, unions would be able to organize by merely distributing cards to workers at a worksite. If a simple majority of workers — 50 percent plus one worker — sign and return these cards — instead of indicating interest in union representation, the union is automatically certified.

Interestingly enough, decertification of the union can only occur, in this bill, by a private ballot.

The right of a worker to a secret, private ballot is an intrinsic right of our democracy. It is a workers right that should not be negotiated away by neither Management nor Labor. Nor should this right be legislated away at the behest of special interest groups.

This card check bill will likely pass the House, please keep track of the bill as it goes to the Senate. If it passes there we already said that we will recommend the President veto it.

Our economy is strong and growing. We are the beacon of opportunity and hope throughout the world. It is up to us to maintain and protect the entrepreneurial spirit which provides the tremendous economic force that allows us to continue to offer opportunity and an increasingly higher standard of living for our citizens and the rest of the world.

http://www.dol.gov/_sec/media/speeches/20070226_EWeek.htm