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Pro-Worker California Congresswoman Obama’s
Pick for Labor Secretary

December 22, 2008

The IBEW praises President-elect Barack Obama’s selection of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) as U.S. secretary of labor, as reported by news outlets on December 18.

“As a child of union parents, Rep. Solis knows first hand how important unions are to opening the road to the middle class for millions of hard-working Americans,” said International President Edwin D. Hill.

Solis, who has represented California’s 32nd District – which covers East Los Angeles and the surrounding area – since 2000, is the daughter of immigrant parents. Her father, a Teamster shop steward from Mexico, and her mother, an assembly line worker and member of the United Rubber Workers, taught her at an early age the importance of unions.

“Without the help and protection we received (from the union) I know myself and my seven siblings wouldn’t be where we are today,” she said on floor of Congress last year during the debate on the Employee Free Choice Act.

She received a master’s of public administration from the University of Southern California and won her first elected position in 1984, a seat on the Rio Hondo Community College Board of Trustees.

Elected to the state assembly in 1992, two years later she became the first Latina state senator. While state senator, she served as chair of the labor committee, where she became known as a strong defender of workers’ rights.

In 2000, with the help of organized labor she challenged nine-term incumbent Rep. Matthew Martinez in the Democratic primary. Martinez was a supporter of free trade deals that killed good-paying jobs in the district, with his support for opening permanent trade relations with China, being the final straw for labor.

“This is a very blue-collar, union district,” said Los Angeles County Federation of Labor Executive-Treasurer Miguel Contreras. “We ought to be sending warriors from this district.”

Working families in the district got their warrior when Solis defeated Martinez and went on to win in the general election.

The AFL-CIO has given Solis a nearly 100 percent voting record on working family issues and she has taken the lead on vital legislation like the Employee Free Choice Act.

“When union people get paid good wages, that money stays in the community, it helps provide for a vibrant economy,” Solis said in support of the law.

“It helps to send their children – like me, a child of immigrants and union members – to college and to eventually even run for office.”

“It’s good to know that we will finally get a labor secretary who understands that it’s the Department of Labor, not the Department of big business and whose whole career has been about standing up for working Americans,” Hill said.