Obama team likely to show liberal lean on labor issues

[Omaha Steve]

This is a conservative press article. Slanted a bit.

http://newsok.com/obama-team-likely-to-show-liberal-lean-on-labor-issues-second-in-a-series/article/3333653

Second in a series: The new administration
The Oklahoman Editorial
Published: December 29, 2008

OF all the Cabinet selections announced by President-elect Barack Obama, none probably was more pleasing to liberal Democrats than U.S. Rep. Hilda Solis to be the next secretary of labor.

Solis, a five-term congresswoman from California, is an enthusiastic union supporter and is widely expected to be Big Labor’s champion in the Obama administration. Today we weigh Solis’ potential effect on the American workplace.

Little known outside her state, Solis has a solid pro-union voting record in Congress, earning a 97 percent rating from the AFL-CIO. She also is a proponent of creating so-called green jobs, authoring a 2007 bill providing up to $125 million for national and state programs to train workers in green technologies, such as installing solar panels. It was folded into energy legislation signed by President George W. Bush last December.

Even with those credentials, Solis wasn’t the unions’ first choice at Labor, The Wall Street Journal reports. The unions preferred someone with a larger national profile who could compete with heavyweights in Obama’s inner circle.

Still, Solis says her mission as secretary will be to strengthen unions, which today represent about 12 percent of the country’s wage and salaried employees, according to government statistics.

FULL story at link.

[David__77]

1. There are tremendous organizing opportunities.

Unions could really rebound, and link up with immigrant and other progressive movements.

[demosincebirth]

2. She's great for labor. But to tell you the truth, any democrat would have been better

than what we've had the past eight years