Confirmation Hearings Today on Solis for Labor Secretary

by Mike Hall, Jan 9, 2009

As Congress holds confirmation hearings on the nomination of Hilda Solis as secretary of labor this morning, we will get our first extended look at how she plans to return the U.S. Department of Labor to its primary mission of protecting the lives, wages and rights of working people.

Solis, a four-term U.S. House member from California’s 32nd District, was tapped last month by President-elect Barack Obama to be his secretary of labor. As today’s hearings before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee get under way, we will bring you updates.

As Obama said repeatedly throughout the campaign, the Bush administration and outgoing Labor Secretary Elaine Chao spent eight years attacking workers’ rights, strong workplace health and safety rules and unions while they carried the water for Big Business. Obama summed up the Chao regime this way:

Remember, this is supposed to be the Department Labor, not the Department of Management.

When her nomination was announced, Solis told reporters:

We can help strengthen one of America’s greatest assets, its labor force….I will work to strengthen our unions and support every American in our nation’s diverse workforce.

We also must enforce federal labor laws and strengthen regulations to protect our nation’s workers, such as wage and hour laws, and rules regarding overtime pay and pay discrimination.

Yesterday, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said Solis is the “right person” to be the standard-bearer for America’s workers.

And after eight years of woeful mismanagement at the Labor Department, Solis will bring energy, experience and dedication to help lead working families back to prosperity.

She comes to her understanding of unions and working people naturally—she is the daughter of immigrant working class, union member parents. Her dad was a Teamsters member and shop steward and her mom an assembly line worker at a Southern California Mattel toy factory and member of the United Rubber Workers (since merged into the United Steelworkers, [USW]).

Before her election to Congress in 2000, she served in the California legislature, first in the Assembly and, in 1994, as the first Latina elected to the state Senate. Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, says Solis focused on labor issues, especially on protecting easily exploited, low-wage workers through enforcement of labor laws during her time in the legislature.

The unique experiences she gained in California will now benefit the nation. Her first job [in Washington] will be to fix the neglect. There are lots of regulations that protect the worforce that the Bush administration weakened or refused to enforce.

In the U.S. House, Solis earned a 97 percent AFL-CIO working family voting record. She co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act, raising the minimum wage, protecting the wages of construction workers, strengthening fair and equal pay laws for women, backing tough workplace safety standards, bolstering the rights of federal workers and more issues that should top the Labor Department’s mission statement. But that wasn’t the case during Chao’s eight year tenure.

Time for a change.

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