Privatization comes to the...labor department? Several leading women’s organizations, including the Coalition of Labor Union Women, are vigorously protesting the latest scheme by GOP President George W. Bush and his Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to downsize and outsource much of her department’s Women’s Bureau. In an Aug. 1 letter initiated by the National Council of Women’s Organizations and Wider Opportunities for Women, the groups call on Chao to reverse planned budget cuts at the Women’s Bureau and instead give it increased money in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. The cuts and the outsourcing will affect half of the bureau’s jobs, some 85 in total, which will be put up for bidding between the bureau’s workers and private contractors. The Women’s Bureau is one of a number of DOL agencies whose functions Chao is trying to outsource, in line with a Bush initiative — supposedly due for completion by 2010 — to transfer as many federal jobs as possible to private contractors. Weird stuff, but it's probably too early to speculate what affect privatization would have on DOL (though if I had to guess I'd say it wouldn't be pretty). Also, didn't know that there was a "Bush initiative" to privatize federal jobs, but it would help explain the mad rush to privatize the IRS. UPDATE: See here for more on IRS privatization, and here for more on the Bush initiative to privatize the federal bureaucracy.