Labor Secretary’s Calendar Reveals Covid-19 Rulemaking Crunch

In Marty Walsh‘s early weeks as U.S. labor secretary, he was thrust into White House meetings over a controversial virus workplace-safety regulation and immediately began working to sell the president’s jobs agenda—all while learning a new bureaucracy via virtual staff briefings from his Boston home.

That’s the depiction of the trial-by-fire Walsh endured after he was sworn in atop the U.S. Labor Department on March 23, according to daily calendar entries from late-March through the end of July that the agency posted on its website Tuesday.

On his second full day on the job, Walsh received a briefing about ...