Elaine Chao was deputy secretary of transportation in the administration of George H.W. Bush and she headed the Labor Department under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. She is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican.
Excerpts from ”Transport pick Chao gets conservatives’ praise, labor criticism” in Bloomberg:
President-elect Donald Trump has selected Elaine Chao, a former U.S. labor secretary who antagonized unions and cheered conservatives, to lead the government’s transportation policy.
“She was not only hostile to unions, she was hostile to all workers,” said David Madland, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive policy group. “The only thing they really did was promulgate new rules to make it much harder for unions to operate.”