Labor's fresh face Hilda L. Solis

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/s_605485.html

By Harold Meyerson
Sunday, January 4, 2009

When Barack Obama set out to choose his secretary of Labor, his top priority was probably not recruiting an emblematic Angeleno. But in choosing Hilda L. Solis, a Democrat who represents a portion of Southern California's San Gabriel Valley in Congress, that's just what he's done.

The daughter of Hispanic immigrants, a product and champion of the labor movement, a staunch environmentalist, an ardent feminist and one of the gutsiest U.S. elected officials, Solis personifies the best of the new Los Angeles.

In some ways, her appointment harks back to Franklin Roosevelt's selection of Frances Perkins as his Labor secretary, not least because Los Angeles today -- like Perkins' New York a century ago -- is a city defined mostly by its huge immigrant working class.

In 1911, Perkins, then a young social worker, watched in horror as the young Jewish and Italian immigrant women who worked as seamstresses for Triangle Shirtwaist Co. leaped to their deaths rather than burn in the fire consuming their factory.

A quarter-century later, as FDR's Labor secretary, Perkins helped write and steer to enactment the first federal minimum wage and worker protection laws, as well as the National Labor Relations Act, which gave legal protection to workers seeking to form unions.

The lives of the working poor have been a central concern for Solis as well. In 1996, as a first-term member of the California state Senate (and its first female Hispanic member), Solis did something elected officials just don't do: She took money out of her own campaign treasury to jump-start an initiative campaign to raise the California minimum wage.

At the time, Republicans had controlled the state's Industrial Welfare Commission for 14 straight years and the minimum wage it set was in no way a livable wage. Solis provided seed money for a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.75, and Californians passed it overwhelmingly.

FULL story at link.

[Muttocracy]

1. she sounds terrific! What do you think, Steve?nt

[Omaha Steve]

2. Well I did apply for Sec of Labor through the DU back in Nov.

I don't think PE Obama could have made a better choice.

[Muttocracy]

3. well, other than you of course - maybe you can work for her? :)