Your Calls and letters worked.

Thanks to those who wrote and called their representatives, the U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau regional offices won't be closed at this time. Bush has reversed his plans to close the regional offices.

This update from the San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 2002 edition details the reversal.

"Women's Labor Bureau Offices Won't Be Closed"

After protests by women's groups and 69 members of the House of Representatives, the proposed closure of 10 regional offices of the U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau has been shelved. "The idea of contemplating the closure of the regional offices is completely off the table," Labor Department spokeswomen Sue Hensley said yesterday. "The Secretary (of Labor Elaine Chao) did not want them to be cut."

The proposal by the Office of Management and Budget would have shaved $3.7 million from the department's $11 million budget by closing all of the 82-year-old Bureau's local offices, including one in San Francisco.

Women's groups argued that although the Washington, D.C., Bureau itself remained untouched by the proposal, its operation would have been hobbled without the regional offices, where the bulk of the Bureau's work is done."