Washington, D.C.
Four-term U.S. House of Representatives member Hilda Solis (D-CA) has been chosen by President-elect Obama as the next Secretary of Labor. What do we know about Representative Solis? And what do we know about the direction in which she's likely to take the Labor Department? Let's start with a look at her background and her record in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Hilda Solis comes from a blue-collar union family. She currently lives in El Monte, California, where she represents the 32nd Congressional District. After college she began her public career with a brief job in the Carter White House, and then on the staff of the Office of Mangement and Budget, Civil Rights Division. At the end of the Carter administration she returned to California and was elected to the Rio Hondo Community College Board of Trustees in 1985. She ran successfully for a seat in the California State Assembely in 1992, and then to the California Senate in 1994. She was elected chair of the California Senate Industrial Relations Committee, and led the 1996 battle to increase California's minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.75 an hour. She also built a substantial movement to improve legal protections for victims of domestic violence, leading the effort that led to passage of seventeen bills to accomplish this.
Solis won her seat in the U.S. House in 2000. In the UE Congressional Scorecards (2001-2007, available in full on this web site at the bottom of the Political Action page) she earned an average 91 percent pro-worker ranking, and scored 100 percent in four different years. Rep. Solis has been a vigorous and outspoken supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), the crucial "card check" legislation so urgently needed to restore the right to organize. She has been a co-sponsor of EFCA from the start, and voted for it in the 2007 session. Her committment to sweeping healthcare reform has been demonstrated by her co-sponsorship of H.R. 676, the single-payer Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act. Solis stood firm in opposition to a host of job-killing trade deals, including CAFTA as well as the corrupt "fast track" tool used increasingly to rush pro-corporate trade deals through Congress with no debate or amendments. Her votes also include opposition to the harmful "Pension Protection" bill, and opposition to Republican-led attempts to repeal overtime pay. In what was likely the most important vote she faced early in her Congressional career, Solis opposed the disastrous "Use of Force" bill which gave President Bush the green light to invade Iraq and sink our country into the deadly and costly morass.
During the recent 110th Congress, Solis was Vice Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, now the largest congressional caucus. She also is a member of the Out of Iraq caucus, and an active member of several healthcare reform caucuses. Solis has worked to build the the "green jobs" movement, beginning long before the current recession. Organizations who approve of Solis' performance include the AFL-CIO, who ranked her voting record as a 100 percent for 2007, and the National Education Association (NEA) gave her Congressional performance an "A" for 2007. Public Citizen's Congress Watch -- always a solid and reliable measure of a member of Congress and their support for working people and the public interest -- gave her a 94 percent ranking for her votes in 2005-06. Not surpisingly, her rankings by pathalogically anti-worker and anti-union corporate groups were all extremely low. These include the National Association of Manufacturers (5 percent approval ranking for 2005-06), the so-called National Taxpayers Union (an "F" grade for 2007), the Club for Growth (2 percent for 2007), and the National Restaurant Association (10 precent for 2005-06). These low scores from anti-labor groups are, as far as we're concerned, a strong endorsement of Solis as an advocate for workers.
Commenting on the nomination of Rep. Solis to head the Labor Department, UE General Secretary-Treasurer Bruce Klipple said that, "We are hopeful that this is the beginning of the repair job that is needed so desperately at the Labor Department. Several decades of neglect and deliberately destructive policies have left this key department battered, demoralized, and adrift. UE urges Labor Secretary-nominee Solis to move swiftly and boldly to put the Labor Department back on course to defending and advancing the interests of working people. She will need to remove the remaining Bush forces in the Department, close the door to the corporate crowd, and set in motion a vigorous program of restoring the right to organize into unions, providing support for workers and their unions in bargaining contracts, and supporting workers who are forced to strike, if necessary. It has been many decades since the Labor Department took its pro-worker mission seriously. We urge the new secretary to take the Labor Department on the road to visit workplaces, unemployment offices, and communities where workers are suffering the daily attacks of greedy and corrupt employers. We fully expect that she will support working people as they resist the corporate attack by deeds, not merely words.
Klipple added, "We have confidence from her own record that Rep. Solis is capable of this kind of leadership; we are not yet convinced, however, that the Obama-Biden administration will be fully behind her in this. It is disappointing that this important Labor Department nomination was left until virtually last, almost as an afterthought to the rest of the Cabinet. Major battles loom for working people as Corporate America gathers its forces for massive assaults on working people in the workplaces and on Capitol Hill, and it appears unfortunately that the Obama-Biden adminstration may have to re-learn some difficult lessons. The primary lesson being that big business misconduct, much of it criminal, has driven our economy into the ditch. These forces need to be prosecuted, regulated, and reined in, not catered to. Excessive corporate power is the problem; more of it is not the solution. It is time for working people to find, in their government and especially the Labor Department, a friend and ally, not just an ineffective referee in a lopsided battle against company lawbreaking. In such a situation Labor Secretary Hilda Solis may be forced to grapple with those who appointed her if she is to get the job done, and we stand ready to support her fully if that becomes necessary."