Pat Dollard

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WASHINGTON – Hilda Solis grew up on tales of workplace struggles from her Mexican immigrant father, a Teamsters union steward. Her mother, born in Nicaragua, worked on an assembly line.

That upbringing shaped Solis, 51, into a tenacious advocate for workers’ rights and set her on the path toward becoming President-elect Barack Obama’s labor secretary.

Her background has labor advocates cheering, while business interests are reacting warily. Solis is viewed as quite liberal and has sometimes been criticized as inflexible in advancing her causes.

“Business groups will need to be very, very well prepared when they go and see her. Because in moving forward the Obama agenda she won’t be taking any prisoners,” said Jim Brulte, former Republican leader in the California Senate.

“When she has to reach agreement she will,” Brulte said. “And if she doesn’t have to reach agreement she won’t.”

That portrait is already causing concern in a business community bracing for a fight next year against efforts to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, the top priority for labor unions. The measure is designed to boost union membership by having employees sign union cards to form unions instead of holding secret ballot elections.

Solis’ longtime support for the card-check legislation “signals that Obama’s Department of Labor will toe the line for union bosses,” said J. Justin Wilson, senior research analyst for the Washington-based Center for Union Facts, a group critical of organized labor.

Joseph McCartin, a professor of labor history at Georgetown University, said the selection shows how committed Obama is to the agenda of organized labor, which spent millions helping him win.

“The fact that she comes off of Capitol Hill puts her in a good position to lead that fight, which is going to be decided on Capitol Hill,” McCartin said.

Solis came to Congress by taking on an entrenched incumbent in a Democratic primary who had lost the support of organized labor. She’s been easily re-elected ever since.

As a Democratic congresswoman from California since 2001 and during eight years in the state’s Legislature before that, Solis wrote measures to help migrant workers, combat domestic violence and limit use of pesticides.

“She’s never forgotten her humble roots,” said Art Torres, chairman of the California Democratic Party, who served with Solis in the Legislature. “She’s very sensitive to the needs of working men and women without destroying industry. She knows how to create a balance.”

The third child of seven and the first in her family to attend college, Solis has been the only member of Congress of Central American descent. She represents a heavily Hispanic district that includes portions of eastern Los Angeles County and East L.A.

Her approach is earnest and unpretentious, but she doesn’t back down from a fight. In California, where she became the first Latina elected to the state Senate in 1994, she chaired the powerful Senate Industrial Relations Committee and led the battle to increase the state’s minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.75 an hour in 1996.

Environmentalists praise her selection, citing a $125 million measure she got through Congress to train workers for jobs in areas such as energy efficiency and “green building” construction.

Solis’ husband, Sam Sayyad, is a small business owner, and supporters say she balances small businesses’ needs with those of workers.

“While she was fighting to increase the minimum wage, she also was fighting for a fair share for small business,” said Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation.

In 2001, Solis told an interviewer from the California Journal about the influence of her father, who worked at a battery recycling plant.

“He’d come home and tell us about the problems he faced with management. He always reminded us that it was important to stand up for your rights, and regardless of who you are and where you come from, to hold your head up high with dignity and respect,” she said. “Those are really important principles that I still carry today.”