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Remarks Prepared for Delivery by
U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao
LULAC National Legislative Awards Gala
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Thank you, Rosa [Rosales, LULAC National President], for this award. It is a pleasure to be recognized again by LULAC.
LULAC was a co-sponsor of the fourth annual Opportunity Conference held in Philadelphia last October. Rosa, and Brent Wilkes, were conference participants.
Tonight, we see many community leaders who are not just valuable players. They are hardworking partners who promote causes vital to our community. Government cannot do it all, and that is why it forges partnerships with community organizations such as LULAC.
Workforce training is one area where the Department of Labor and the Hispanic American community have strong partnerships. Let me share a few examples of these on-going partnerships.
Small and medium size businesses employ over half of all private sector workers, and have created nearlytwo-thirds of all net new jobs over the past decade. That is why today I was pleased to announce a $3.3 million grant to the Denver-based National Business Information Clearinghouse. The organization, in partnership with Western Union, will support the startup and growth of minority-owned small businesses in select regional economies across the country.
Another key program is theDepartment’s Hispanic Worker Training Initiative. The goal is to help workers improve their English proficiency and gain the skills required in rapidly growing industries. An important collaborator in this effort is one of LULAC’s sister organizations, SER—Jobs for Progress National, Inc.
The Department also awarded two grants to partner with faith-based and community organizations to help Hispanic American youth:
- The Latino Coalition for Faith & Community Initiatives in Bakersfield, California was awarded a three-year, $10million grant to help 1,200 youth in 28 sites within Texas, Colorado, California and Arizona; and
- Esperanza USA in Philadelphia was awarded a three-year $10.5 million grant to help 2,500 troubled and at-risk youth in 16 sites across America – including many large cities.
Another 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. The fatalityrate among Hispanics has fallen by 18 percent during this same period.
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, many of whom are Hispanic. 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 also remains active in Gulf Coast recovery efforts, working with media, churches and community-based organizations to help vulnerable workers. One of the organizations in the forefront of these collaborative efforts is your very own, LULAC.
I look forward to continuing to build upon the dynamic partnerships among the Department of Labor, the Hispanic American community, and organizations such as LULAC.
Thank you for being a part of those great partnerships. And thank you as well for inviting me to be a part of your awards gala.
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