Saturday, Dec. 20, 2008

Nominated labor secretary a friend of farmworkers

WASHINGTON -- Central Valley farmworkers gain a well-placed ally with the selection of Los Angeles-area Congresswoman Hilda Solis as the next secretary of labor.

Solis stands to become the department's first Latino chief, overseeing the most important laws regulating farm labor. She might soften or even reverse some controversial Bush administration policies, as she revealed when she denounced last-minute revisions to a foreign guest-worker program.

"There is no question that the guest-worker program needs significant overhaul, but slashing wages and reducing basic rights for the most vulnerable workers in our country, especially hardworking Latino farmworkers, is not the answer," Solis said recently.

The foreign guest-worker revisions that Solis criticized will take effect Jan. 18, two days before President-elect Barack Obama is sworn into office. Growers using the so-called H-2A program could in some cases pay lower wages and travel reimbursements for the 75,000 foreign-born farmworkers recruited each year through the program.

The guest-worker rules that consumed 154 pages in the Federal Register might take a long time to unwind because of the administrative steps required.

The rules won't be the only farmworker-related part of the Labor Department portfolio.

If confirmed, for instance, the 51-year-old Solis will be in charge of the National Farmworker Jobs Program. It offers grants to organizations like the Visalia-based Proteus, which received $3.7 million for job training this year. She will oversee funding for migrant and seasonal farmworker housing as well

"We can help strengthen one of America's greatest assets -- its labor force," Solis said at a news conference Friday, where Obama formally nominated her.

The daughter of Mexican immigrants and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, Solis said she will "work to strengthen our unions and support every American in our nation's diverse work force."

She delivered some of her remarks in Spanish.

Kids, wages in her purview

As labor secretary, Solis will oversee the protection of child workers. She will maintain the list of banned farm labor contractors, which currently includes two from Stockton, two from Fresno and one each from Madera and Visalia. She will administer the wage-and-hour laws that, by some accounts, Bush administration officials have let slide.

"From 1997 to 2007, the number of (wage and hour) enforcement actions decreased by more than a third, from approximately 47,000 in 1997 to just under 30,000 in 2007," the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office reported earlier this year.

During her eight years in the House, Solis has heeded farmworker interests substantively and symbolically.

In 2006, for instance, she signaled her sympathies by introducing a congressional resolution honoring United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta. She introduced separate legislation honoring the late UFW President César Chávez through a study of adding lands associated with Chávez's work to the National Park Service system.

President George W. Bush signed the Chávez legislation last year.

Substantively, Solis earned a 100 percent vote rating from the AFL-CIO last year. As with most other House Democrats from California, she earned a 0 vote rating from the National Council of Agricultural Employers.

Bee Washington Bureau reporter Michael Doyle can be reached at mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com or 202-383-0006.