With the Department of Labor’s new leadership picture coming into focus, it’s clear that regulatory agencies responsible for protecting workers will undertake a more proactive agenda during the Obama administration.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story today contrasting Obama nominees with the Bush officials who preceded them. The story draws the not-so-earth-shattering conclusion that Obama-picked officials are likely to take a more worker friendly approach while Bush officials were more likely to side with business.

The change starts at the top. The article contrasts current Labor Secretary Hilda Solis with former Secretary Elaine Chao. Chao “had worked for banking giants Citicorp and BankAmerica” and “became known as an ally of businesses, saying they needed the department's help to understand what she called an 'exhaustive' list of regulations.”

President Obama’s latest nominee is Joe Main who was tapped to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Main is an independent mine safety consultant. Before that, he “spent more than 20 years at the United Mine Workers union, as a safety inspector and then as administrator of the union's occupational-health and safety department,” according to the Journal.

President Bush was forced to recess appoint his last pick to head MSHA, Richard Stickler, because of fierce opposition. Stickler worked as an executive for Bethlehem Steel, a fact that did not endear him to mine safety advocates.

The change is also noticeable at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration:

Mr. Obama named Jordan Barab as the No. 2 official at OSHA, as well as the acting agency head. Mr. Barab, who had been a safety and health advocate for the House Education and Labor Committee and the AFL-CIO, helped promulgate an ergonomics standard during an earlier stint at OSHA, and wrote a workplace-safety blog that was sometimes critical of Bush labor policies.

Edwin Foulke, the last head of OSHA in the Bush administration, had been a management-side labor lawyer. 

Hopefully, the new crop of Labor Department officials will be able to put workers back on the national agenda. Too often in the recent past, worker rights and safety issues were simply ignored. At OSHA, for example, Bush appointees created a regulatory backlog by seldom setting new exposure and safety standards.

The Wage and Hour Division – the federal agency responsible for investigating firms that employ children, fail to pay proper wages, and violate other fair labor laws – has also struggled. Obama’s nominee to lead the agency, Lorelei Boylan, has been praised by worker advocates. Boylan currently works for the government of New York “where she supervises the apparel industry/fair wages task force, a statewide unit that investigates low-wage industries,” according to the AFL-CIO. “Under her leadership, the task force has flourished into a groundbreaking investigative unit with a high rate of success in resolving wage and hour investigations.”

Image by Flickr user Rob Shenk, used under a Creative Commons license.