Frances Perkins: The Woman Behind the New Deal
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On March 25, the AFL-CIO will host author Kirstin Downey who will discuss her new book, The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience. The event, at 12:30 p.m., includes a light lunch. Copies of the book will be available for signing. If you’re in the area and can stop by, please RSVP to 202-637-5297. As the review below points out, Perkins’ role in the New Deal has too long been underplayed.
When Frances Perkins stepped into her office as labor secretary, the first-ever woman in a presidential Cabinet, her welcoming committee consisted of this:
A huge cockroach.
It’s a fair guess few had a rougher welcome to a high Washington position than Perkins did in 1933. In a splendid new biography of Perkins, The Woman behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience, Kirsten Downey writes:
Some male Labor Department staffers threatened to resign rather than report to a woman.
Labor Department Employees Welcome Hilda Solis
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We’ve heard tell that after eight years of the Bush administration, employees in more than one federal governmental department have welcomed the new Obama team members as though they were a liberating force.
Yesterday, the welcome was especially heartwarming when employees greeted Labor Department Secretary Hilda Solis, confirmed just two days ago.
As Chris Garlock at the Metropolitan Washington (D.C.) Council reports, sustained applause and enthusiastic cheers erupted when Solis arrived and workers crowded around as she worked her way toward the Labor Department entrance, shaking hands and embracing employees as they greeted her under a big banner proclaiming “Welcome to the Department of Labor.”
Senate Committee Approves Solis as Labor Secretary
One week after postponing a confirmation vote on Hilda Solis as secretary of labor, the Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee today approved on a voice vote President’s Obama’s choice to lead the Labor Department and sent the nomination to the full Senate for confirmation. That vote could come tomorrow.
The Solis nomination was announced in December, and her confirmation hearing took place Jan. 9. But Big Business groups and a number of Republican senators have loudly, and at times almost hysterically, complained about Solis’ long record of support for working families and unions.
Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has called Solis “a tireless champion for working families.”
Republican Double Standard for Labor Secretary
Senate Republicans are continuing the same partisan, roadblock political games that voters said they’d had enough of in November.
This time their stubborn gamesmanship threatens the working families across the country: They are trying to derail President Obama’s economic recovery plan and block his pick of Hilda Solis as secretary of labor.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says: “Enough is enough.”
We cannot continue to fiddle as the economy burns. It is urgent for the American people to have an aggressive, emergency economic recovery plan that will put people back to work and keep families in their homes, and a strong Department of Labor.
Solis Vote Postponed, But No Hold on Her Nomination
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee postponed a scheduled vote today on the nomination of Hilda Solis for secretary of labor. President Obama announced his choice of Solis in December, and the Senate committee held a hearing on her nomination Jan. 9.
Some news reports have pointed to Republican opposition to Solis over the Employee Free Choice Act—she was a co-sponsor of the bill in the U.S. House—and suggested there may have been plans to place a hold on her nomination by a Republican senator.
But in a joint statement, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the committee chairman, and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), the panel’s ranking minority member, said the vote was postponed
to allow members additional time to review the documentation submitted in support of Representative Solis’ nomination to serve in the important position of labor secretary. There are no holds on her nomination, and members on both sides of the aisle remain committed to giving her nomination the fair and thorough consideration that she deserves. We will continue to work together to move this nomination forward as soon as possible.
More Unemployed Workers, Fewer Jobs
The U.S. retail sector has been the most immune to the nation’s year-long jobs free fall, but that has changed in recent months and likely will get much worse. Today’s Commerce Department report on retail sales in December, the period when most retailers make a large chunk of their earnings, are bleak: Sales were down 9.8 percent in December from December 2007. These figures mean many stores will be closed and entire chains going bankrupt—and many more U.S. workers will lose their jobs.
Already, there now are four unemployed workers for every job opening, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The nonprofit group also reports a 90 percent growth of involuntary part-time workers over the past year, with some 8 million U.S. workers forced to settle for fewer hours. Such workers are not counted in the official monthly Labor Department unemployment data, meaning the official U.S. unemployment of 7.2 percent is more like 13.5 percent when underemployed or workers too discouraged to look for work are counted.
Rep. Ellison Joins Faith and Labor Leaders in Urging Release of Jailed Workers
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Barb Kucera, editor of Workday Minnesota, follows up on the Indian guest workers who this past spring and summer waged a hunger strike for justice. The welders and pipe fitters had been lured from their native India to the United States with promises of green cards and good jobs at Signal International’s shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss. Once there, they found themselves held in modern-day forced labor, victims of a human-trafficking scheme under the guise of the H-2B guest worker program. Now, 23 of the workers have been jailed by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Community leaders in Minnesota—including Congressman Keith Ellison and the Rev. Craig Johnson, bishop of the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—issued a call for the release of 23 workers from India held in the Fargo, N.D., jail by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Sweeney Praises Nomination of Solis
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney today praised President-elect Obama’s reported plan to appoint Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) as secretary of labor. In a statement, Sweeney says:
We’re confident that she will return to the Labor Department one of its core missions—to defend workers’ basic rights in our nation’s workplaces.
She’s proven to be a passionate leader and advocate for all working families. In fact, she’s voted with working men and women 97 percent of the time.
A member of Congress since 2001, Solis co-authored the Green Jobs Act, which later became part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The Green Jobs Act authorized $125 million for workforce training programs targeted to veterans, displaced workers, at-risk youth and individuals in families under 200 percent of the federal poverty line.
Topping Bush’s List: A Rule Making It Harder to Regulate Toxic Substances
The nation’s voters may have cast their ballots overwhelmingly for change Nov. 4, but the Bush administration’s drive to weaken worker safety laws and reward its corporate friends is far from dead.
In November, we reported on the Bush administration’s last-minute assault on the public with a slew of end-of-term, no congressional-approval-needed regulations that could roll back or weaken rules on job safety, family leave, airline safety and pollution.
