WyBlog

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said her agency will seek to enact an array of 90 rules and regulations next year aimed at giving more power to workers and unions.

Signaling priorities, Ms. Solis said: "We are committed to ensuring that workers are paid a fair wage, have a voice in the workplace, are provided a safe workplace and have a secure retirement."

Ms. Solis's agenda will promote rules requiring employers to increase disclosure to workers on how their pay is computed, strengthening affirmative action requirements for federal contractors, and compelling greater disclosure from employers about their dealings with consultants who advise the companies on how to deal with workplace unions or unionization attempts.

Regulatory risk from the federal government is now -- by a longshot -- the biggest barrier to increasing private sector employment. Neither looser money nor string-pushing "stimulus" can overcome that in the long run.

Already our economy is struggling against health care "reform," massive new regulation and/or taxation on any business that emits carbon, the proposed "Employee Free Choice Act," new regulation in financial services, new corporate "governance" requirements, fiscal catastrophes in all the large states controlled by the Democrats, and huge new tax increases for the people who actually decide to hire people (whether they are corporate tools or individual entrepreneurs). Do we really need "an array of 90 rules and regulations" from the Labor Department on top of all that?