Unions step up to fight for Solis

Increasingly
frustrated by Senate Republicans stalling the confirmation of Rep. Hilda Solis
(D-Calif.) as Labor Secretary, unions are preparing to amp up a national
campaign for the nominee.

The
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) blasted a web video to 60,000 online
activists Friday asking them to support Solis’s confirmation. In the video,
SEIU President Andy Stern asks viewers to sign a petition to back the
California Democrat for the Labor position. 

{mosads}“Sadly,
conservative Republicans — people who blocked the minimum wage, children’s
health insurance — are now using the same old Washington tactics trying to stop
Secretary Solis from being confirmed,” said Stern. “She has every qualification
for someone we need to lead the Secretary’s role at the Department of Labor.”

The
web video is the beginning of a national push by unions for Solis as her
confirmation process stumbled since her hearing before the Senate Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions Committee last month. Such a campaign is in the
planning stages so far, according to SEIU officials.

In
the House, Solis was a champion of workers’ rights. Called by Stern “the
embodiment of the American Dream,” the congresswoman is also the daughter of
immigrants and was the first Hispanic woman elected to the California State
Senate. 

Solis
was scheduled to receive a committee vote this past Thursday to move to a full
confirmation vote on the Senate floor soon after. But it was postponed
indefinitely when concerns over recently paid tax liens on her husband’s business came to light in the press that day.

Senate
Republicans also have been questioning the congresswoman’s position on the
board of a worker advocacy group, American Rights at Work, since the
organization lobbies Congress. They have also probed her support of the
Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a bill that would help workers organize much
more easily into unions if passed. Business groups have lobbied heavily against
the bill with many Republicans opposing it.

Unions
see Republican opposition to the Solis nomination based less on those
technicalities and more on her unabashed support of the labor movement.  

“We
are going to ramp this up as much as we need to ramp this up to see Rep. Solis
confirmed,” said Ramona Oliver, SEIU’s communications director.

The
union, the nation’s largest with 2.8 million members, already has an impressive
nationwide apparatus to turn to in support of Solis.

Announced
last month, SEIU started the “Change that Works” campaign, which is pushing in
2009 for health care reform, the economic stimulus bill and the EFCA. The union
has committed 30 percent of its staff and financial resources to the
campaign, costly roughly $50 million.

“We have
a nationwide field operation. That could quite easily be tapped into for this,”
Oliver said. “We could pull anything from that toolbox.”