One: on: One

The New Sheriff | “Our goal is to fulfill our responsibility to the working men and women in this country,” says Solis.

Photo Credit: Luis Gómez

A Conversation with U.S. Labor Secretery Hilda L. Solis

She is the 25th United States Secretary of Labor. From 2001 to 2009, she served in the United States House of Representatives, representing the 32nd congressional district of California.

You grew up in a union family headed by immigrant parents. How did your upbringing prepare you to be U.S. Secretary of Labor?

My father, who lived in Mexico, was a member of the Teamsters Union in California. He worked at a battery recycling plant where he helped to organize better health care benefits for workers. My mother, who was from Nicaragua, worked on the assembly line of Mattel, Inc. She belonged to the United Steelworkers Union. Good union contracts meant my parents could count on fair wages, good benefits, overtime pay and a secure retirement. Growing up in a union household helped to shape my views about labor and justice. Today, I am driven to ensure that we enforce the workplace safety rules that were enacted to protect people like my father and that we respect the wage and hour standards that ensure people like my mother get the pay they deserve.

You have said that one of your top priorities will be to restore “dramatic cuts” in funding — to agencies like the Wage and Hour Division — that were made during the Bush administration. What are your other priorities? How will they differ from your predecessor’s?

Our 2010 budget begins to restore the Department of Labor’s (DOL) worker protection programs and will allow them to fulfill their mission. For 2010, the Department is requesting $1.7 billion, an increase of 10 percent above the 2009 programs budget. In a single year, the budget will return our worker protection efforts to a level not seen since President Clinton left office. This illustrates the Obama administration’s commitment to ensuring the safety, health and statutory protections for America’s workers.

My goal is to prepare our workforce for 21st century jobs and to ensure all Americans can rely on good jobs and safe pensions. We plan to create youth training opportunities and ensure veterans and people with disabilities have an opportunity to benefit from the greening of our economy. I am also pursing an aggressive regulatory agenda to undo some of the regulatory actions of the previous administration that had a detrimental impact on workers.

Can you elaborate on the Department of Labor’s role in the Obama administration’s strategy to jumpstart the economy?

Three weeks after taking office, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — a massive and unprecedented effort to jumpstart our economy, create or save millions of jobs, protect workers and lay the foundation for fair and equitable economic growth.

Everyone at DOL — every agency, career and non-career staff — is partnering to help Americans in need. And our commitment goes beyond our own programs to working in partnership with other federal agencies, and with the non-profit and private sectors, to provide seamless delivery of services and provide skills for jobs in growing sectors.

The Department is also dedicated to ensuring that workers who lose jobs are covered by our federal safety net and that they are given opportunities that will lead to a new job. We are providing billions of dollars to increase the level of unemployment benefits and extend their duration. Funds are also used to increase the opportunities for workers to receive training. Our enforcement agencies also play a critical role in ensuring that jobs created are ‘good jobs’ — safe jobs, with good wages and benefits and fair treatment.

Cuts to public services are commonplace in state budgets this year, even as demand for public services rises. How can the Department of Labor help preserve public services and the public employees who provide them?

The administration has provided unprecedented levels of direct support to state governments to support critical services and the men and women that provide those services. DOL has worked, for example, to provide administrative support for state unemployment agencies to enable states to keep up with the high levels of demand for unemployment benefits and services.

We are keenly aware that many of the important programs we administer can function successfully only if state governments make the necessary commitment to implement those programs. That’s why we are working to ensure that state governments have the resources necessary to deliver programs like unemployment insurance and job training.

Finally, we are working to dramatically increase the amount of money available for job training programs to assist those who are looking for work. We have injected a total of $3.5 billion into state worker programs and we have made training funds available to laid-off public workers, reversing the previous ruling that these workers were not eligible.

You have referred to yourself as “the new sheriff in town — the sheriff who cares about working class people.” How is the DOL of today different from the one run by Bush administration?

Fundamentally, we disagreed with some of the enforcement changes that were made in the last eight years. DOL shouldn’t be the “Department of Management.” Rather, our goal is to fulfill our responsibility to the working men and women in this country. The lack of inspectors and enforcement regulations was troubling. I felt that it was imperative to the mission of the Department to staff these agencies to the levels they were at in 2001. As I like to say, the Department of Labor is back in the enforcement business.

You have called for beefing up the Employee Benefits Securities Administration — the Department of Labor agency which oversees pension plans. In what way will that help to protect the pensions of America’s workers?

EBSA is responsible for the regulation of pension and welfare benefit plans in the workplace. Without a strong enforcement program we will continue to see violations. When it comes to ensuring that employers comply with the law, EBSA is a critically important tool.

EBSA is also a resource for workers. Our Office of Participant Assistance has benefits advisors in every region of the country who help employees understand their pension and health plans, and assist them if they believe they are not receiving the benefits they have earned. But EBSA has been underfunded in the past and doesn’t have the resources to do as good a job as it could and should. It’s time for Congress to recognize that this agency has an important role to play in assuring that pensions and other benefits are there when employees need them. On our end, we are adding 75 new staff to EBSA which will allow the agency to conduct nearly 600 criminal and civil investigations.

Some members of the business community are determined to kill the Employee Free Choice Act and deny millions of workers the right to join a union. At the same time, other parties have floated “compromise” bills that strip the initiative of its main provisions to protect workers. Your thoughts?

Now is not the time to let workers rights fall by the wayside. This administration’s stance on the Employee Free Choice Act has always been very clear: President Obama and Vice President Biden co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act as members of the Senate, and I co-sponsored it as a member of the House. We did so because we believe that the legislation is good for the economy and good for American workers.

The administration’s top priority is to grow the economy and rebuild the middle class. And we support the Employee Free Choice Act because it does just that. The bill will level the playing field and restore fairness for workers.