Hilda Solis - U.S. Secretary of Labor

U.S. Secretary of Labor

On December 18, 2008, sources close to the Obama transition team identified Solis as the President-elect's choice for U.S. Secretary of Labor, the last cabinet position yet to be filled. The selection earned praise from the AFL-CIO and other labor organizations, but was not well received by business groups and the anti-union group Center for Union Facts. The official announcement was made by Obama on December 19. Solis's successor was chosen in a special election in California's 32nd congressional district; she declined to endorse a candidate in the primary (from which her past mentee Judy Chu emerged on top and eventually won the general election).

Solis's confirmation hearings were held on January 9, 2009, before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Committee chair Ted Kennedy repeatedly praised her, while, despite examination by Republican members, Solis declined to discuss specific policy issues, including the Employee Free Choice Act. Several days later, Senate Republicans said they might try to put a procedural hold on her nomination because of her unwillingness to answer questions in detail in the hearings. By January 23, a secret hold was placed on the nomination by an anonymous Republican. A series of written questions and responses between Republican members and Solis followed, during which she was more forthcoming. Republican Mike Enzi pressed her on whether her unpaid high-level positions at American Rights at Work constituted prohibited lobbying activity; Solis denied violation of rules of conduct and stated she had not helped lobbying. Solis did acknowledge that she had failed to report those positions on her annual House financial disclosure forms at the time, which a White House spokesperson argued was an unintentional oversight. On February 2, Obama appointed veteran Labor Department official Edward C. Hugler as Acting Secretary. The prolonged process was considered by some Republican aides to be a preview of future battles on labor issues between the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress.

A vote on Solis's committee confirmation was set on February 5, but postponed after news that Solis's husband Sam Sayyad had just paid $6,400 in outstanding state and local tax liens dating back to 1993 for his auto repair business. Sayyad had filed a separate tax return from Solis, and intended to contest the lien as they were for business taxes he believed to have already paid. A White House spokesperson stated Solis should not be penalized for any mistakes that her husband may have made. The revelations came in the wake of several other Obama nominations troubled or derailed due to tax issues. Committee Republicans subsequently indicated they would not blame Solis, but were still concerned about her ties to American Rights at Work. On February 11, 2009, the committee approved her nomination by voice vote with two votes opposed. After still further delays, Republicans agreed not to subject her nomination to a filibuster and on February 24, 2009, Solis was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 80–17. She resigned from the House and was sworn into her new position that evening. (A ceremonial swearing in featuring Vice President Joe Biden was later held on March 13.)

Solis became the first Hispanic woman to serve as a regular U.S. cabinet secretary and the first cabinet secretary with Central American descent. She also became the first Hispanic Secretary of Labor. Solis felt that under the George W. Bush administration, the department had become unimportant and lacking in power, and that its actions reflected a pro-business agenda. Accordingly, she hoped to reinvigorate it.

In her first days as secretary, Solis affirmed an extension to unemployment benefits specified by the 2009 Obama stimulus package, and joined Vice President Biden's Middle Class Task Force. In her first major speech as secretary, Solis pleased community forum attendees at Miami's Greater Bethel AME Church by vowing more aggressive enforcement of workplace protection laws, saying "You can rest assured that there is a new sheriff in town." In late March 2009, Solis vowed to add 250 investigators to the department's Wage and Hour Division after a Government Accountability Office report showed the division's enforcement of wage laws was quite inadequate; the staffing up was completed by the end of the year. In late May 2009, Solis suspended immigrant guest worker regulations related to H‑2A visas adopted in the final days of the Bush administration; the move earned plaudits from the United Farm Workers. In October 2009, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration levied the largest fine in its history on BP plc for failing to fix safety problems following the 2005 Texas City Refinery disaster. Business groups such as the National Federation of Independent Business complained that Solis was forging a less cooperative relationship, one that departed from the Bush administration's "compliance assistance" approach; the Labor Department said that compliance assistance was still an important part of the new strategy.

For 2010, Solis's agenda was to enact some ninety new rules and regulations intended to grant more power to unions and to workers. Whether Solis would try to revive Clinton administration ergonomics rules that had been discarded in the early days of the Bush administration, and that business groups continued to oppose, was unclear. In the wake of the April 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in West Virginia, the worst in the U.S. in forty years, Solis announced that the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration would conduct an internal review of its enforcement of the Massey Energy mine prior to the accident. She also requested that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health provide an independent analysis of that review. Later that month, Solis and the department hosted the first-ever meeting of the G-20 labor ministers; they discussed how to accelerate job creation in their respective countries. Solis also faced disgruntlement from a local of the American Federation of Government Employees representing her own employees, who were unhappy that a longstanding flextime program reduced under the George W. Bush administration had not been restored. The department said the program was modern and fair and that it was part of ongoing contract negotiations with the local. The year also saw the department trying to crack down on firms that illegally use summer internships for free labor, by clarifying what may constitute an unpaid academic internship; the move brought resistance from universities.

In February 2011, as protests continued over Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's proposal to limit that state's public employee unions' collective bargaining rights, and similar proposals were made in other states, Solis spoke out strongly and emotionally against such moves, saying " aren't just asking workers to tighten their belts, they're demanding they give up their uniquely American rights as workers".

In October 2012, Solis defended the work of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after the Current Population Survey it puts out monthly reported that unemployment in the United States had fallen below eight percent for this first time since Obama took office. Some critics, including former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, charged that the number had been tampered with in order to benefit Obama one month before the U.S. presidential election. Solis said, "I'm insulted when I hear that because we have a very professional, civil service organization where you have top, top economists that work at the BLS. They've been doing these calculations. These are our best trained and best-skilled individuals working in the BLS, and it's really ludicrous to hear that kind of statement."