Speeches by Secretary Elaine L. Chao

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Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao
SBA Small Business Week
May 7, 2002

Thank you, Hector, for that kind introduction.

It’s a pleasure to be with all of you to celebrate Small Business week.

I especially want to congratulate all of the award winners… especially the one from my home state of Kentucky, Darrell Maynard!Darryl, you have done a great job building SouthEast Telephone in our state – congratulations.

I was also delighted to hear that the Small Business Owner of the Year was an immigrant to Hawaii named Thanh Lam, owner and operator of Ba-Le, Incorporated.

As an immigrant myself, I can personally relate to Thanh Lam’s story of arriving in this country without knowing the language or the culture – and the years of hard work that it takes to put down roots and achieve success.

I came to America when I was eight years old… in a cargo ship from Taiwan.After we arrived here, my sisters and I had to learn English from scratch, while my father worked multiple jobs to keep his young family going.After a while, he was able to start his own business, which he continues to work at today.

My family knows – just as Thanh Lam does – that self-owned small businesses are often the key that unlocks the American Dream for countless immigrants.

When other pathways of opportunity are blocked or restricted, small business is a door that is always open to anyone willing to work hard and take risks.

It’s a door that was open to my family.

It’s a door that was open to Thanh Lam – and Thanh, I want to congratulate you for all the work, the saving, the planning, the sleepless nights and the uncertain days, that went into your winning this award today.You deserve it.

It’s also important to note that all three of the runners-up for this award are women: Mary Jurmain from Wisconsin, Belinda Guadarrama from California and Mildred Council from North Carolina.

More and more, every day, small business entrepreneurship is opening doors for working women.Where women have experienced restricted opportunities or limited flexibility in working for others, they have discovered new empowerment as small business owners.

Today, women are the fastest-growing segment of all American businesses – and I don’t know about you, but I think that’s an exciting trend!

Two months ago, my Department teamed up with the Small Business Administration to host a Summit on Women Entrepreneurship.The response was so strong that we packed out our venue and still had to turn people away!

It was such a dynamic event, Hector, I think we should do it again next year!

The women business owners who attended the conference were interesting, energetic and passionate about what they did.

But that didn’t surprise me in the least – because I see women entrepreneurs as a truly historic group of leaders… and they are leading a silent – but very powerful – revolution for American women.

The truth is, however, that all business owners are inherently gutsy. You are all change-leaders.

As deTocqueville noted, entrepreneurship is uniquely American. Back in 1840, after traveling here and studying this great country, he wrote: “What most astonished me in the United States is not so much the grandeur of some undertakings as the innumerable multitude of small ones.”

All of you are living the American Dream, and you are sharing it with your employees, your children and your communities… giving it a new vibrancy every single day.

It’s your courage and initiative that makes things happen in your businesses, and what you do has a ripple effect throughout our whole economy.

Too often, public perception is that “business” always means “big business” and the small-business contribution to our economy is often overlooked.

And yet small business employs over half of the private-sector workforce in America and produces about half of its Gross Domestic Product. No big company can say that.

You have generated two-thirds of the net new jobs since 1970. The Fortune 500 can’t say that.

You created life-changing and life-saving innovations from the personal computer to the pacemaker to overnight mail delivery.

Employment. Job Creation. Innovation. That’s the value of small business to our country.

And as an immigrant, as a business-person and as Secretary of Labor, I am profoundly aware of these truths.

Another simple truth that I am mindful of is this: sometimes the government does things that are well-intentioned but put an enormous burden on your businesses… and therefore on your ability to create new jobs and products.

And I know that the Department of Labor oversees some laws and regulations that have the potential to fit into that category.

So I want you to know that we are keeping small business in mind every step of the way, in every thing that we do.

We also know that you are not only the CEOs of your companies, you are often the CFO, the COO, the Director of Human Resources and the Vice President of Worker Safety! You can’t afford extra staff to carry out some of these functions… you do it yourself. And you don’t have time to read and study every regulation on the books.

That’s why we are increasing our emphasis at the Department of Labor on compliance assistance. We want to get helpful information out to you to make it easier for you to comply with these regulations. We want to make sure the Department of Labor staff is there to help you, not just to fine and punish you, should you make an inadvertent mistake.

Let me offer you one example of how our approach is changing.

I imagine that some of you followed the debate here in Washington about ergonomics. The previous administration developed a regulation that was so massive and burdensome that both Democrats and Republicans in Congress voted to invalidate it.

We decided to take a different approach to ergonomics that would, first and foremost, help workers quickly. The plan we released in April doesn’t just order small businesses like yours what to do; it proposes safety guidelines that will be worked out cooperatively with businesses and workers.

And now we are working on a Memorandum of Understanding with the SBA that would dedicate the combined efforts of OSHA and the SBA office of Advocacy to provide helpful information to small businesses about worker safety – with a particular emphasis on ergonomics.

I’m really looking forward to signing that directive. Because at the Department of Labor, we know that small-business owners wear a lot of hats, one of which is director of your business’s worker safety program. And we want to help you with that job.

It’s good for business, and it’s good for workers.

In closing I’d like to say once again how much I appreciate the contributions that all of you make to our economy and our American way of life.

Please know that the Department of Labor’s doors are open to you. We need your input and ideas as we seek to achieve the best possible workplace for all Americans.

Congratulations again to all of the award-recipients, and thank you so much for sharing your celebration with me.

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