Labor Secretary Solis on jump-starting the economy: 'We have a lot of ideas'

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I first met Hilda Solis when she was President Obama’s nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Labor, and I was communications director for Sen. Ted Kennedy and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, which would have to approve the nomination.

Sen. Kennedy had come to admire Solis in 2000 when she received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for her dogged efforts to end environmental injustice. As a California state senator and Member of Congress, Solis had earned the reputation as a work horse – more concerned about getting a job done than she was with seeing her name in the paper. Solis’s nomination was voted out of the HELP Committee and soon the full Senate. She would become the first Hispanic woman to serve as a Cabinet Secretary.

And now, as the secretary of labor in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Solis has one of the toughest jobs in Washington. I caught up with her just after the new employment numbers were released.

In an effort to cut through the noise of the current political environment, following is a bit of my conversation with the secretary, in her own words:

The August jobs report was released and while the unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 9.6 percent, the private sector added some 67,000 new jobs. What do you make of these new numbers? Was the report better than you expected?

Secretary Solis: Yes, the report was better than I expected but it is still isn’t where we need to be. The president underscored that today when we were at the White House. What we need to continue to do is focus in on tax relief on small business because that’s where the engine of growth is going to occur. The federal government doesn’t create jobs, we help bring partnerships together.

My role as Labor Secretary is to help people find employment but also find opportunities for training in new jobs.

I talk a lot about investments in green job training and also opportunities for health care information technology, and broadband. And really helping to get people in the heavy trades and construction industry to also think about advancing their training so they can get into, say, the retooling of our commercial buildings or development of our new electrical grid systems. Also getting autoworkers involved in development of hybrid vehicles and lithium batteries. Things that you would think may sound far away but really aren’t because the tools are there. We just have to get people into these training programs and get them to understand that this will of course help our economy and our future.

WATCH SECRETARY SOLIS INTERVIEWED ON MSNBC:
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Since you’ve been Labor Secretary how many people have gone through your retraining programs?

About 39 million have received training and employment services. And the rates of placement are pretty high. It’s anywhere from 75 to 80 percent or higher. So it’s not bad but people have to make an investment in time. They may choose to only go thru a six-week program, a six-month program, a 12-month program or maybe decide to go a community college, which will take two years or more. Those are choices the individual will have to make after they go through kind of an assessment and figure out what they’re skill sets are and where they want to go. I’ve seen in the short time that I’ve been Secretary of Labor that people have begun to make that transition even as early as last year.

The administration gets credit for fighting for and securing extended unemployment benefits for millions of Americans. However, there has been an avalanche of criticism recently on the slow pace of the recovery. Is that criticism warranted?

No, and part of it is that there has been a dramatic restructuring of our workforce. And part of it is because many businesses have closed, many have gone offshore. So people who have lost their jobs may not find that same job here any longer.

There are a lot of things that obviously we inherited. But we know that we have to do everything we can now to help people retool.

And understand that unemployment insurance and the extension is a way of helping people to continue that job search. They are still required to look for a job. So it’s nonsense when some say these individuals are just sitting at home. And in addition, the one dollar of federal money that they receive from that check will help generate another $1.60 that goes back in the community; it gets spent at the local market, spent on utilities or puts gas in a gas tank so that individual can go look for work.

There are hundreds of thousands of unemployed and underemployed Americans, many in African-American and Latino communities. As you know, African-American unemployment rose to 16.3 percent last month. Unemployment among African-American teenagers was 45 percent. When you meet these individuals, what is your message to them? What should they be doing as the economy recovers?

My message is that they need to contact the nearest YouthBuild or job corps program. We have over 123 job corps programs around the country. And these are programs that give young people, anywhere from 16 to 24 years of age, a second chance. These are folks who maybe didn’t complete a high school degree that can now get a GE degree. That can learn construction skills. That can learn, perhaps, coaching into getting into a new job, and more importantly getting certified in a specific trade. Or build up their skills so they can begin to go into say a higher technical field, if they so choose.

I would also tell you that one of my priorities has also been to set aside, for the first time, $120 million for what we call “Pathways out of Poverty.” We targeted deliberately high unemployment areas above 15 percent. We used that as a marker to say this is where money needs to go.

I wish we had more funding to support the demand for this program. We had so many applications. That tells me that the creativity to do these things, to come together as partners, is there. But there has to be a political will to help provide support and provide sufficient funds. The Congressional Black Caucus has been so supportive. And Barbara Lee through her chairmanship has just been tremendous in helping us get this word out to the community.

Also, on Labor Day we will launch a new website, MySkillsMyFuture.org. It is a new initiative that will allow a dislocated worker or someone who is underemployed find a new job.

For instance, if a construction worker wants to get into renewable energy or solar installation, he will be able to go online, see what the skill set would have to be for the new job, find the job training program nearest to him, and also get information on where those jobs are.

The president urged lawmakers to approve a new small business jobs bill pending before Congress. Why is this important and what’s the hold-up?

The engine of growth is really the small business entrepreneurs. This bill will help to create jobs and make available billions of dollars in capital and funds for small business owners through community banks. And will also provide tax incentives so people can begin to hire more people and purchase more goods.

The president is right on about it. It’s not a new initiative in that Republicans and Democrats have been talking about it. It’s been stuck in the Senate.

Reports suggest the administration is planning more initiatives to jump start the economy. Any insight on when that will happen?

The president at his press conference [Friday] talked about in a few days announcing what some of those priorities will be. We’re spending every minute of the day thinking about what will work best and obviously what can get done in such a short span of time and in getting the support of the Senate and the House. That’s going to be critical. We’re very creative. We have a lot of ideas. I’m very optimistic.