Labor Post to Go to Elizabeth Dole : Choice of Ex-Reagan Official Fulfills Bush Pledge to Put Woman in Cabinet

President-elect George Bush named his first--and probably only--female Cabinet secretary on Saturday, tapping Elizabeth Hanford Dole, a former Reagan Administration transportation secretary, to serve as his secretary of labor.

Her appointment quickly drew approving comments from labor union officials. AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland described Dole as “a person of proven stature” whom he “looks forward to working with.”

The choice of Dole, 52, a lawyer with a variety of other prior government posts, is likely to bring several political benefits to Bush, in addition to cementing his relations with organized labor.

It fulfills a publicly stated desire to name a woman as a Cabinet secretary and does so with a person who has extensive government experience. Dole is a good campaigner who can be counted upon as an effective spokeswoman for Administration views.

Link to Senator

Perhaps equally important, as a senior member of the Administration Dole will be in a position to mediate between Bush and her husband, Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas, a bitter rival of Bush’s for this year’s Republican presidential nomination whose help the President-elect will need as he seeks to get his legislative programs through Congress.

“I think she is the best one to do this job,” Bush said as he announced his choice. “ . . . But a harmonious relationship with the leader in the Senate is very important to me. If there’s a dividend in there, I’d accept it.”

Neither Bush nor Dole would say anything specific about what policies the Bush Administration’s Labor Department might pursue. Bush talked of changes in the work force that “are coming, and there is no getting around it.” Dole pledged to work toward helping find jobs for all who want them.

In the one specific policy state ment of the day, Bush appeared to back off his campaign pledge to support an increase in the minimum wage. Bush said he still favored an increase but would not commit himself to push for one during his first year in office.

“I want to get good strong opinions out of our new team before I commit to its timing,” he said. He also said he was “not sure” what position he would take on proposals to require businesses to offer parental leave to workers.

Final Choice Difficult

With Saturday’s appointment, Bush has named all but one member of his Cabinet. The final selection, for energy secretary, apparently has been one of the more difficult, and Bush said Saturday that he would not announce that decision until after the new year.

Similarly, he said, the appointment of a Cabinet-level “drug czar” will “come probably after the first of the year.”

So far, with 13 of the 14 Cabinet members named, Bush noted that he has met his pledge of naming women and minority group members to the Cabinet. Besides Dole, he has chosen Latinos to head the Education and Interior departments and a black to head the Health and Human Services Department. In addition, Carla Anderson Hills, his choice to be U.S. trade representative, will hold Cabinet status, although she will not be the head of a Cabinet department.

While the most senior Administration posts, including the secretaries of state, defense and Treasury, the attorney general, the White House chief of staff, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the national security adviser, have all been given to white males, Bush rejected the suggestion that he had set up a “two-tier” Administration with women and minorities solely in the lower rank.

“I think that’s crazy, absolutely absurd,” he said, adding that the suggestion was “denigrating” to the national problems that departments such as labor, education and health and human services will have to handle.

To Shift Focus

He also said that once the remaining two Cabinet-level posts were filled he hoped to “get a little less actively involved in the personnel business” and begin “focusing on the first hundred days” of his new Administration.

Before he can do that, however, Bush and his aides will have to resolve a continuing disagreement among his advisers over whether the top person in the Energy Department should have a background in the oil and gas industry or be someone with experience to handle the problems of the nation’s trouble-plagued military and civilian nuclear power industry.

Earlier in the week, Bush indicated in a press conference that he was leaning toward nuclear experience. On Saturday, however, he voiced a different view.

Texas Priorities

“If you can find a guy from Texas who will tell you that he doesn’t think hydrocarbons are important, why, send him in for a little psychiatric work,” joked Bush, who moved to Texas and went into the oil business after completing his military service in World War II.

“The nuclear problems are front and center in the Department of Energy,” he said. “But you’re talking to one that understands the domestic oil and gas business, understands its importance to the national security of this country.”

Advisers Offer Names

Transition aides will “continue to work on this problem” while he vacations this week in Texas and Alabama, Bush added. Oil and gas industry figures have been pushing for former Rep. W. Henson Moore (R-La.), but other Bush advisers have advanced additional candidates who are less closely tied to the industry.

Bush had hoped to announce Dole’s appointment Friday, he said, but fog stranded her on a visit home to North Carolina, preventing her from flying to Washington. The two had discussed possible posts in the Administration in a meeting several weeks ago, Bush noted, but, he said, he had not asked her about the Labor Department post until a telephone call Thursday morning.

Because of the delay, Bush made the announcement at his Washington residence rather than at the White House. Decked out in a green-and-red striped Christmas tie, he stood next to Dole, who also wore green and red, at the front porch of the house and answered reporters’ questions as the family spaniel, Millie, played around his feet.

Afterward, he joked about his plans to go hunting during his vacation, telling reporters in mock seriousness that “there’s some ferocious, aggressive birds there” and that if “they’re not, as we call (it), harvested . . . why then there’s an oversupply that results in terrible famine and imbalance in nature.”

In any case, he said, “the way I shoot, it’s very humane.”