"Labor Leaders Hail Obama's Pick For Labor Secretary" and "HILDA SOLIS IS GREAT"

Labor Leaders Hail Obama's Pick For Labor Secretary

By Greg Sargent - December 18, 2008, 3:11PM

Obama's choice of California Rep. Hilda Solis as labor secretary, which was confirmed to us by a Democratic official, is thrilling labor officials, and more than compensates for unease about Obama's economic picks and his initial delay in picking someone for the key labor post.

"It's extraordinary," SEIU president Andy Stern said in an interview with us a few moments ago. "On every issue that's important to us, she has stood up for an America where everyone's hard work is valued and rewarded."

Some labor officials had initially thought that an elder statesman type with stature would be best in the gig. But Stern said he thinks the choice of Solis by Obama, who has a keen appreciation of the power of biography, wanted someone with a bio steeped in labor, someone who has the kind of built in dedication and passion that could make her a kind of labor star in a cabinet that is stocked with a fair amount of star power already.

"As opposed to some candidate this would have been just a job, for Hilda Solis it's the fulfillment of a life-long dream," Stern said, adding that that Solis was one of the names that labor officials had privately communicated as acceptable to them in talks with the transition. "Her father was a teamster. She is the American dream."

Although there's a proud tradition of interest groups rushing to praise officials once they're appointed, Stern outdid that with some truly extraordinary praise: "She probably will be the labor secretary that has been on more picket lines and rallied more in support of workers rights than potentially anyone in American history." Stern added that she'd been on the forefront of battles on behalf of farm workers and hiking the minimum wage.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/12/andy_stern_on_obamas_labor_sec.php

HILDA SOLIS IS GREAT.

What does Rep. Hilda Solis, Barack Obama’s selection for secretary of labor, bring to the job? Only a record of passionate commitment to working people, a high level of political smarts, and some genuine displays of raw guts that could make her a star of American liberalism.

In 1996, when she was a back-bencher (and the first Latina) in the California State Senate, Hilda Solis did something that no other political figure I known of had done before, or has done since: She took money out of her own political account to fund a social justice campaign. Under California law, the state minimum wage is set by the gubernatorially-appointed Industrial Welfare Commission, and California’s governors for the preceding 14 years, Republicans George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, hadn’t exactly appointed members inclined to raise that wage. So Solis dipped into her own campaign treasury and came up with the money to fund the signature-gatherers to put a minimum wage hike initiative on the California ballot. The signature gatherers gathered the signatures, the measure was placed on the ballot, it passed handily in the next election, and California’s low-wage janitors and gardeners and fry and taco cooks, and millions like them, got a significant raise.

While in the legislature, Solis also became the chief proponent in state government for the environmental justice movement that was bubbling up in various working-class communities around the state, steering to passage bills that reduced airborne carcinogens in industrial areas and that created parkland alongside the rivers that run through some of Los Angeles’ poorest neighborhoods. She took a leading role in promoting domestic violence awareness in the state’s communities of color.

And in 2000, she did something liberals always talk about doing and almost never do: she challenged an incumbent Democratic congressman with a piss-poor record in that Spring’s Democratic primary, and defeated him soundly. Marty Martinez, a 9-term incumbent seeking his 10th, had voted for NAFTA, opposed gun controls and abortion rights, and backed the extension of a freeway into a residential area -- managing to estrange labor, enviros, feminists and liberals of all descriptions. Still, Democrats virtually never run against incumbents, from the left or from anyplace. But Solis, with the encouragement of L.A. County AFL-CIO chieftain Miguel Contreras, did just that. She not only won, but defeated Matinez by a whopping 69 percent to 31 percent margin.

In the House, Solis has continued to champion labor causes, immigrants' rights, women’s health and environmental protections. She also worked closely with Rahm Emanuel in recruiting Democratic House candidates from the Southwest and Latino-dominated districts, so she brings to her new job a strong relationship with Obama’s incoming chief-of-staff. Now, she’s in the key position to promote the Employee Free Choice Act, which seems likely to be the most contentious issue on Obama’s agenda. But Solis has never been deterred by controversy.

--Harold Meyerson


http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=12&year=2008&base_name=hilda_solis_is_great#111685