Big Labor Gets Big Time Payoff With Obama Appointment

Or is it really that big of a payoff?

Of course, the big picture is that Solis will be a lightweight in this Administration, stuck overseeing the DOL bureaucracy while the big guns like Summers, Volker and Geithner continue the crushing restructuring that is killing the once proud American worker and their labor movement.

But what I find most shocking about Ms. Solis is her apparently contradictory views to the union mantra of higher wages. Or maybe the message is higher wages for some but not for others.

Solis’ real claim to fame probably lies in her interest in immigration issues and that’s likely why she and Andy Stern of SEIU are so cozy. SEIU has used a low wage immigrant organizing strategy over the last two decades.

As detailed at some interesting posts at GangBox, a rank and file website run by a construction worker, SEIU was unable or unwilling to stop the shift in their industry from highly skilled service workers at apartment and office buildings when those buildings put in place modern HVAC equipment and displaced largely African American union members. This was part of the battle to defeat construction workers, too.

Instead they began to orient towards much lower paid hispanic, largely immigrant janitors who were brought in to replace those displaced black workers through outsourcing and SEIU was willing to offer cut rate contracts to secure employer contracts for them.

Read the whole piece here.

Not surprisingly, Ms. Solis subscribes to the ideology of the most militant in the Labor Movement. In 1999 Assemblywoman Solis defended AB 1268—Condoning Violence in Labor Disputes (yes I'm serious - click the link).

A non-union Construction contractor pointed out that current law was well-balanced and AB 1268 would encourage more violence. Committee Chairwoman Hilda Solis responded, “Well, I don’t agree with what you say.”

Representatives of the California Chamber of Commerce, California Manufacturers Association, and Associated General Contractors all spoke against the bill.

The bill passed the committee 4-2 on a party-line vote. Democrats support; Republicans oppose.

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