President-Elect Obama Announces Final Cabinet Picks

If jobs and incomes are our yardstick, then the success of the American worker is key to the success of the American economy. For the past eight years, the Department of Labor has not lived up to its role either as an advocate for hard-working families or as an arbiter of fairness in relations between labor and management.

That will change when Hilda Solis is secretary of labor. Under her leadership, I am confident that the Department of Labor will once again stand up for working families.

I'm confident about that because Hilda has always been an advocate for everyday people. When she received an award several years ago, she said, "Fighting for what is just is not always popular, but it is necessary."

OBAMA: And that's exactly what she's done throughout her career, blazing new trails every step of the way.

Whether it's creating green jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced or expanding access to affordable health care or raising the minimum wage in California, Hilda has been a champion of our middle class.

And I know that Hilda will show the same kind of leadership and vision as secretary of labor that she showed in California and on the Education and Labor Committee by protecting workers' rights, from organizing to collective bargaining, from keeping our workplaces safe to making our unions strong.

Standing up for our workers means putting them back to work and fueling economic growth. Our economy boomed in the 20th century when President Eisenhower remade the American landscape by building the interstate highway system.