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U.S. Labor secretary talks about distributing money for shovel-ready projects. (2:49)
 

Full interview. (14:45)
 

Tavis: Tonight, though, I'm pleased to welcome U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis to this program. Back in February she was sworn in at her new post following her time in Congress from California. The daughter of Latin American immigrants became the first in her family to graduate from college and while still in grad school she became a White House intern during the Carter years.

In 2000 she became the first woman ever to receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award and it is nice to have her back in her home state of California this evening. Madame Secretary, nice to see you.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis: Good to see you, thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: Nice to be home for a couple days?

Solis: Yes, yes.

Tavis: Yeah? What brings you out to California?

Solis: Well, today we just unveiled a program that the president is promoting -volunteerism, Serve.gov, and we want people to come out and volunteer starting today, the first day of kind of the summer vacation approaching. For 81 days we want to roll out and excite people about getting involved in community service.

So I just came from East Los Angeles, we were just repairing a gentleman - a disabled veteran's home, we were painting. So I had actually my other clothes on and was out there painting, but it was great to be able to do it with young people and people from the trades union, that we're all together there, just helping out people in the community - something that the president has talked about during the campaign, volunteerism, and actually asking young people to get involved and everyone else of all ages.

Whether it's to tutor, to mentor, to go visit someone at a senior center, provide assistance to someone that maybe is sheltered and not able to come out of their home. To do the good acts in life that I think make us all better people.

Tavis: We'll talk more in just a second here about the situation in the labor market, or the lack thereof, for some people. But before I get into those numbers specifically help me understand or better understand what the appeal is and how people respond to being asked to volunteer at a time when everybody seems to be suffering themselves; you're asking them to give, to reach out to help somebody else.

Solis: Well, now's the time to ask because we have so many of our - for example our food banks, many of those charitable organizations have seen a drop in their funding. People aren't giving as much for people who are in need, and we're seeing more people going on public assistance. In fact, more people are getting on programs at the county and the state funds because people are losing their jobs.

And we're trying to at least make the appeal that you know, we do care and we do want to direct people to the right agencies and departments. And the Department of Labor is a big promoter of youth employment programs - we just visited one that I spoke about earlier - but also to try to get people who are dislocated workers that lost their jobs to make sure that they have opportunities for training, education, and maybe a career change.

And they can go and get a lot of these services free at what we call one-stop centers that are run throughout the state of California and throughout the United States. And it's available free and in many cases if you are eligible you may even be able to get a Pell Grant to continue your education which the president just unveiled a couple of weeks ago, which I think is great because that's how I went to school. My parents weren't wealthy but we had financial aid and thank goodness that this president understands the importance of education.

Tavis: Let's talk, then, about the numbers - the not-so-fun stuff to talk about. I was thinking before you walked into the studio tonight whether or not now is - and you'll tell me - the best time to be Labor secretary or the worst time, and I ask that because there's been so much celebration about your being the first Hispanic to serve in the Cabinet and here you are running this all-important department, the Department of Labor, and yet the timing of it could not be worse in some regards. Your assessment of the timing of your being Labor secretary?

Solis: I'm very honored that the president asked me to serve and when he nominated me I took a lot of pride in that because seeing him as the first African American president is something that I would have never realized could happen in this country. But look, he asked me, the first Hispanic woman to serve in his Cabinet, why not? Why not make that challenge and meet that challenge?

To me there's so many opportunities. Just to be able to sit here and speak to you, someone who comes from humble beginnings, a home, parents, worked really hard, all they wanted was a high school education for their kids.

But there's so much more out there and that's what the president, I think, has shared with so many young people and inspired people to get involved. Look at how many people came out to vote last year? And it keeps going. And even today, people want to volunteer.

I just left a room full of 300 people that were there because we were talking about a call-out to volunteer.

Tavis: Volunteering is a beautiful thing. I know more Americans would love to have a job. The numbers are as bad now as they've been in 25 years.

Solis: Yes, that's true. It's true. But we didn't just get here in two years. we got here over a period of time, and I think our challenge, the president's challenge and my challenge is to make sure that we not stop, that we continue to help provide assistance, whether it's education and training, whether it's job placement, learning how to get into a small business - all these tools that are available.

Just last month, believe it or not, employers hired four million people. So we hear about people not getting jobs; there's also that other story where people are finding jobs. In fact, in my department we've already issued money to put out at least the hiring for the first two or three months of summer for about 125,000 youth.

By the end of September it should be double - it should be over 300,000. And I know that there are going to be many young people that are listening to us right now that are probably thinking, gee, how do I get that job? Contact your one-stop, contact your community-based organizations and find out where those jobs are.

Tavis: What's the process for getting the money that has been approved beyond the youth program to adults, to everyday Americans who have been downsized by this economy - the money that we've been hearing so much about coming out of this stimulus package for these shovel-ready projects - all the language that we hear all the time.

Help me understand the process for when that money starts to move and everyday people can actually be employed with these jobs.

Solis: Well, a lot of that money has been earmarked or given to the states, so the different gubernatorial members, the governors, are actually going to be the ones that will sign off and then issue those through their, for example, Department of Transportation.

And then as it comes, for example, here to Los Angeles, you would go through Caltrans. And they probably even have a list now of which projects are going to be shovel-ready. And what will happen is it depends on the permitting process, right, and how far along, advanced their plans are.

So that's going to be kind of the - I guess one of the challenges that we have is to make sure that money gets out as soon as possible, and I can tell you that there are already programs in the work. And I know even here in Los Angeles as we speak we're going to be breaking ground on what we call a job corps facility that'll be located here in downtown L.A. that'll create about 300 jobs.

And what they'll do with this program, it's a residential program to help save formerly at-risk youth, people that - young people that are ages between 16 to 24 that may have not been successful in high school and dropped out to get a new job, to get a career, to go through training and go to a community college or a four-year university, and that's something that's going to happen here in L.A.

I just left the YouthBuild program. They are going to be I would say half-a-dozen or more programs that their average grant amount is about $600,000 - $122 million was just issued last week out of my department for YouthBuild, and that's just YouthBuild. That isn't the infrastructure, that doesn't account for the money that went to Department of Education to keep some of those teachers in their jobs, that doesn't account for some of the public health clinics that are still staying open because they got Medicaid money.

So there's a lot of things that have already happened. In addition the monies for Pell grants and the tax credits and incentives that were given back to people. Social Security, for example, first-time payment of $250 for people on fixed income, Social Security.

So you may not be reading about it in the newspapers or hearing about it as clearly, but people are spending that money and as a result you're seeing retail industry picking up a bit. So you see more people spending those dollars in our community, which is what we want.

But it's not enough; you're right. We have to go back and we have to make sure that we train people in good jobs like green jobs, energy efficient jobs, jobs of the future.

Tavis: That raises at least a couple questions for me, in no particular order. Question number one - I'm sitting here taking in everything you're saying and listening, as I'm sure the audience is as well, and we're talking about a few hundred jobs here, a few thousand jobs here, some job training - some summer jobs for kids over here that are jobs obviously just for the summer.

Tell me whether or not you feel that the resources are there to turn around this unemployment picture on a large scale. I hear these bits and pieces and I understand that you've got to start somewhere, but I'm still not hearing and still not seeing anywhere near the kind of solution for the massive number of people who are unemployed right now - the highest, again, unemployment numbers in 25 years.

Solis: Right. And I don't think we're shying away from that. But you have to understand the president signed that bill the latter month of February. So how many months out are we now? Four months? So give it some time. Monies have already begun to roll out. The state of California has received billions already in monies that have been already allocated, and a part of the confusion here is that it goes through a process called formula funding, so it's based on population, unemployment, and census figures.

And then it gets distributed out to the different agencies. So that's partly why you may not be seeing a tangible product in front of you right now, but you will see it. You will see these projects on infrastructure being built, you will see schools restored, you will see weatherization programs, by the way. The president has said he wants to weatherize a million homes.

And so right now we're going through our contractual guidance forms and everything to make sure that whoever gets hired has the appropriate wages and that everything is kind of set appropriately. You don't want to do things illegally; you want to make sure everything's done by the book and that it's transparent.

Tavis: This economy, of course, has affected and impacted just about everybody I know, no matter their race, color, creed or ethnic origin. And yet you understand as a person of color - I certainly do - the old adage goes that when the majority community, when White America, to be blunt, gets a cold, people of color get pneumonia.

People of color are always hit hardest by these economic downturns. That's not casting aspersion on anybody; those are just the facts. So when you start talking about greening the economy and these weatherizing opportunities, is there any formula, any way to ensure - what's being done to look out for those communities specifically that are being hardest-hit by this economy?

Solis: I'm happy you asked me that, because one of the roles that I take very, very seriously as Department of Labor secretary is that we cast the net as far as we can and we make sure that we hit those hard-pressed areas.

Communities where I grew up, the city of El Monte, East Los Angeles, where we saw two years ago rates of unemployment at 9 percent, we got the flu before the cold started nationally. And I understand that and I know that it's going to be really important to make sure that we cover every base that we can.

I know the president cares very much about that. So we're going to do our job of evaluating, making sure that we hit those hard-pressed areas, and that we're inclusive, that we invite nontraditional stakeholders to be at the table that don't normally get to be asked to sit at the table about how you distribute the monies.

So that's a message that we're trying to put out there. I've been doing as much as I can, meeting with national organizations that reflect the diversity of our country - NAACP, National Council of La Raza, all these different organizations. And Asian groups, too, and disabled, veterans, women's, to get involved in these new programs, especially in the green jobs, because that's where the future's going to be.

Tavis: How does it feel - I started by saying that you are from California; this is your home state. You served us in Congress from the state of California and now you're back in California at a time when our economy is like the worst in the nation. Everybody knows we're on the brink of whether or not we're going to turn the corner of this issue.

As Labor secretary, you're back in California. What do you make of the mess that we are in, specifically?

Solis: Well, my heart obviously is here in California and Los Angeles. I know there's some tremendous challenges, but I lived here most of my life and I've seen how Californians have a very strong, resilient background and that we make do.

When people say, "No," we say, "Show me why I can't do it," and we usually supersede and go beyond those goals. And I know that there's some good, trusted elected officials and leaders, civic leaders and people who will step up to the plate and help us out of this situation.

I know that we're doing what we can in our own way through the Department of Labor and other agencies that are focusing in on the hard-hit areas, and California is one of the largest economies - it's the seventh largest in the world. So we know whatever happens here will have reverberations throughout the country.

Tavis: Finally, in a couple of years, of course - less than a couple of years now - we're going to have midterm elections; four years from now we'll have, of course, the presidential elections. As Labor secretary, what's the benchmark? How do you want us to judge your progress, your role as Labor secretary, in four years?

Solis: I would like to be able to say that we created and enhanced the industry in renewable energy and that we got people from diverse backgrounds involved in this new technology. That we started up more small businesses in areas that were hit the hardest, that are blighted, that have high unemployment, and that we get more people in the career - in the pipeline process to get educated.

That's why we're always hardest-hit in our communities of color, because our kids do not continue in education. The dropout rate continues to be high and we have to curtail that. We have to give incentives for people to understand that there are educational opportunities, there's financial aid, but there also has to be a willingness and kind of a go-to attitude on the part of these young people and others who want to get re-trained.

Tavis: The U.S. Secretary of Labor. We take particular pride in her being here because she's from California, but she's working for all of us now back in Washington. Madame Secretary, nice to have you on the program. Good to see you.

Solis: Thank you.

Tavis: Safe travels back to D.C.