(PAI) - Labor Secretary Elaine Chao thought she had "an open and honest session" with the nation's union leaders on Feb. 26. Putting it mildly, they disagreed.

After the closed-door meeting the conservative GOP Labor Secretary held with the AFL-CIO Executive Council in Hollywood, Fla., federation President John J. Sweeney followed her to the press conference podium and called it "unbelievable."

That was one of the milder comments Sweeney made. And he wasn't alone.

Chao, Sweeney said, was "a Secretary of Labor who sounded like a Secretary of Commerce." And he told reporters that "what we saw from her was a secretary who was contentious...angry and insulting at points. In all my years in the labor movement, I have never seen a Secretary of Labor who was so anti-labor."

Chao saw it differently. "I want to work with organized labor," she said. Her spokeswoman, Kathleen Harrington, succeeded her boss at the podium and called Chao's session with the council "an open and honest exchange."

That's diplomatic Washington-speak for bitter disagreement. Chao advanced positions that organized labor did not like, including:

• Raising the minimum wage, "but with the flexibility to have some discretion for regional differences." Bush has long backed letting states opt out of the federal minimum wage law, which would set off yet another economic "race to the bottom."
• Pushing rules to force more than 5,000 local unions, plus all national unions, to spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours a year filling out forms disclosing every bit of spending from either $2,000 or $5,000 on everything from pencils on up to salaries. She claimed it would give more "transparency." 
  
  Corporations do not have to file such detailed disclosures, AFL-CIO associate general counsel Damon Silvers said. 
  
  And when Machinists President Thomas Buffenbarger challenged her on that point in the meeting, Chao flourished a list she claimed had the names of all local IAM officials who have been indicted, convicted or served prison time for financially hurting their members. Chao had similar lists for each union.
• Defending Bush's decision to ban unions for homeland security workers, both in the new department and among airport screeners, among others. Challenged to name one incident where unionization threatened national security, Chao answered: "The increased flexibility he (Bush) has requested" to ban unions "is so we can better protect Americans." She stopped there.
  
  Chao angered other leaders. One state federation leader who attended the session called her comments "obnoxious."