ELAINE CHAO

LA28 BOARD MEMBER

“I've never seen a secretary of labor so anti-labor.”

- John Sweeney, former AFL-CIO President

As US Secretary of Labor under the Bush administration, a government investigation found that Chao’s department failed to seriously investigate wage theft and overtime complaints from low-wage workers.

Wife of U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, who voted with Trump’s priorities 96% of the time, including the “Big Beautiful Bill” last year that tripled ICE’s budget carrying out Trump’s deportation regime.

Now a board member of the Kroger supermarket chain, Kroger has faced 20 wage theft lawsuits just since 2020, and according to Good Jobs First, has owed $3.17 billion in penalties since 2000 for healthcare, safety, labor, and other offenses.

As US Secretary of Transportation during Trump’s first term,Chao was accused of using department resources for personal errands, bolstering her family’s shipping business, and steering money to her husband Mitch McConnell’s district, to help get him reelected.