As Secretary of Labor, Perez would have full discretion to regulate the hiring practices of virtually all employers who have federal contracts. This means companies as large as Lockheed Martin and as small as a Denver cheese maker—which are in every congressional district in the country. Note the prominent businesses among the top 200 contractors of well over 141,000, divvying up over $533 billion in federal contracts.[ii] The struggle over the Perez nomination is not only about how civil rights enforcement is to proceed but about our general attitude toward bureaucratic government. Should the laudable goal of civil rights be enforced by a despotic bureaucracy?
It is becoming distressingly clear that Perez would apply the Chicago-style politics of President Obama to not only the regulatory but the social agenda as well. Perez would achieve these radical aims through the obscure Office of Federal Contract Compliance and Programs (OFCCP), headed by a deputy assistant secretary-level Director who does not require Senate confirmation. [iii] The new Secretary of Labor will shape policy directly, as the OFCCP as of November 2009 now reports directly to his Office.
More on the OFCCP:
Unfortunately, we already know what a willful OFCCP can do. In a July 1996 article for theAmerican Spectator, “Here Comes the Goon Squad,” James Bovard provided an appalling picture of how a small federal agency abuses its powers in order to “intimidate and browbeat businesses.” The OFCCP, he declares, “is now symbolic of the corruption and deception at the heart of affirmative action.” Compliance officers’ vices range from incompetence and illiteracy to dishonesty and deception about what the laws require. Their agenda is a socialist or redistributionist of corporate money to pay people for work they never did.
This doesn't look good.
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