Tomorrow is a big day for organized labor.
The confirmation vote for Hilda Solis to become the next secretary of the Department of Labor is scheduled to take place in the Senate. Unions have pulled out all the stops to ensure that she gets through the confirmation process. The business community, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has been clear that it doesn’t like her nomination but at this point it appears their dogged attempts to derail her confirmation has run out of steam. But as we’ve learned lately with Obama’s other nominees, anything can still happen.
After weeks of delay tactics and unfounded accusations by corporate interests, Representative Solis from California is expected to finally get her confirmation vote. However, there is still a chance that anti-worker senators will try more nonsense to block her appointment as they have already been successful in postponing the vote once. To protect against this occurring again, the AFL-CIO has been busy urging voters over the past couple days to contact their senators to urge them to vote in support of Solis’ nomination.
Earlier in the month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (who is married to former Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao) threatened to filibuster any of President Obama’s cabinet and judicial nominees unless they meet a brand new set of conditions that McConnell laid out in a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Union advocates appear excited about the prospect of getting someone into the top post at the DOL who actually supports the rights of workers to bargain collectively and join unions. As the child of working class immigrants who both were members of labor unions in California, Hilda Solis is uniquely positioned to hear the needs of rank-and-file workers during this current economic crisis.
With hundreds of thousands of jobs being lost every week and millions of Americans struggling to make their mortgage payments and put food on the table, unions and social justice groups will be expecting Solis to act as an advocate in their fight for America’s workers. Her service will signify a sharp break from her recent predecessors who were inclined to protect the interests of CEOs over that of American workers. As the secretary of labor, Solis will be responsible for an agency that is supposed to ensure that workers have safe jobs and freedom from employment discrimination. The DOL also enforces penalties against companies who violate labor laws.
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