The newly designated Secretary of Labor, Congresswoman Hilda Solis, is a terrific appointment not only for the country-but for America's workers. She's a staunch pro-union advocate, but as important, she is someone who can speak to and for the growing portion of the workforce who face daily work and life dilemmas.

My friend Harold Meyerson, who has known Solis since her earliest days in California government, wrote this about her in the LATimes. His comparison to Perkins is especially interesting. The "new New Deal" that Labor needs to create has to reach the workforce of the 21st century and Solis is someone who can also speak to younger workers, which is critical. At a time when labor union's penetration is so miniscule, fewer and fewer workers even know what a labor union is or what it can offer. Having a Sec'y who can voice the needs of workers and promote unions at the same time is a terrific plus.

Meyerson's post is here:

From the Los Angeles Times
Opinion
Labor's fresh face
Cabinet nominee Solis has made a number of gutsy political moves.
By Harold Meyerson

December 19, 2008

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

The Latina daughter of immigrants, a product and champion of the labor
movement, a staunch environmentalist, an ardent feminist and one of the
gutsiest elected officials in American politics, 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 in large
part 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 of a 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 Latina 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.

In the state senate, Solis brought her distinctly working-class perspective
to environmental issues. She focused on getting the carcinogens out of the
air in neighborhoods where refineries made breathing risky; she worked to
spruce up the L.A. and San Gabriel rivers where they ran through park-poor
communities. She also crusaded against domestic violence in communities
where it had been a taboo topic.

And in 2000, she did something else that career politicians just don't do:
She challenged an entrenched incumbent from her own party for his
congressional seat. Marty Martinez, a nine-term incumbent who thought he was
cruising to his 10th, was much more conservative than his constituents. He
had voted for NAFTA, backed the extension of the 710 Freeway through South
Pasadena and opposed abortion rights.

Against the wishes of the party's national legislative leaders, who never
like to see their members challenged, Solis ran against Martinez and, with
the assistance of the L.A. labor movement, defeated him by a stunning 69% to
31%.

Solis' victory made clear to anyone who doubted that L.A.'s labor movement
now held real power in California politics. In the late '90s, as the number
of immigrants surged, labor had been waging successful election campaigns
that turned L.A.'s suburbs from Republican to Democratic. With Solis'
victory, labor also put its stamp on the kind of Democrat who would
represent Los Angeles.

It was no coincidence that shortly after Solis dispatched Martinez,
virtually every Democratic elected official in Los Angeles marched alongside
striking union janitors. As the janitors could (and did) attest, Solis'
victory had been theirs too.

In Congress, Solis has continued to combine labor and environmental
perspectives. Last year, she coauthored the Green Jobs Act, providing
federal funds for job training in retrofitting, solar panel installation and
other environmentally friendly occupations. She also worked to recruit
Democratic congressional candidates in the Southwest and in heavily Latino
districts throughout the country, in the process forging a good relationship
with Rahm Emanuel, who will serve as Obama's chief of staff.

The primary challenge Solis would face as Labor secretary won't be all that
dissimilar from that which faced Perkins. Then, in a time of economic
devastation, Perkins guided the legislation -- Social Security, the NLRA --
which created the broadly shared prosperity of post-World War II America.
Today, Solis must not only help shepherd the bills to stimulate the economy,
she must lead the effort to enact the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that
would enable U.S. workers to join unions more easily.

And as Perkins once delivered for Roosevelt, Solis will now need to deliver
for Obama.