Department Of Labor U S

Her father came from Mexico and was a Teamster who worked at a battery recycling plant. Her mother is from Nicaragua and had a union job on a Mattel assembly line. Rep. Hilda Solis, the daughter of immigrants who lives in a modest home in El Monte not far from where she was raised, takes her first step to almost certain confirmation as U.S. secretary of Labor today at a Senate hearing.

U.S. Rep. Hilda L. Solis, President Obama's choice for Labor secretary, faced new obstacles after lawmakers who were expected to vote on her confirmation Thursday abruptly canceled the hearing amid reports of back taxes owed by her husband. Solis, a Democrat from El Monte, is at least the fourth Obama nominee whose confirmation has been complicated by tax troubles.

The case started with a phone call to a Spanish-speaking volunteer at a small office in San Bernardino. A Los Angeles domestic worker said her boss owed her a few hundred dollars. The U.S. Department of Labor opened an investigation and, with the help of the Mexican Consulate, discovered hundreds of workers who hadn't been paid the minimum wage or overtime for their work cleaning homes and carpets.

Federal regulators have proposed relatively minor changes to the popular Family and Medical Leave Act, a relief for advocates who had feared a sweeping rewrite that would have made it difficult for people to take advantage of it. The proposals, released this month by the Labor Department, would give employers more leeway to verify that people taking medical leave were actually sick.

Rep. Hilda L. Solis (D-El Monte), a Congressional Hispanic Caucus leader considered to be one of the most reliably pro-union voices in the House, is President-elect Barack Obama's choice to head the Labor Department, a Democratic official said Thursday. Obama is expected to announce the selection at a news conference today in Chicago. Solis, 51, would be the third Latino member of Obama's Cabinet, a measure of diversity that has garnered praise from this fast-growing slice of the electorate.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao is the only Cabinet member to serve during President Bush's entire presidency, through nearly eight years marked by terrorism, Hurricane Katrina and long-running wars, including ideological battles. But as the soft-spoken Chao's tenure winds down, she finds herself defending her legacy amid criticism from labor groups and government watchdogs who say the department has backed off of its vital regulatory functions during the Bush years.

Are stomach flu or migraine headaches serious enough illnesses to grant workers extended time off? Business groups, which say workers are gaming the landmark 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act by taking extended time off for relatively minor ailments such as a headache or a sore back, are seeking to tighten the standards in the measure. Their complaints helped prompt the Labor Department to seek public comment on the law.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that it wouldn't endorse the use of so-called stable-value funds as a default investment for 401(k) participants who don't decide how to allocate their retirement-plan portfolios. The decision is a blow to the insurance industry, which markets stable-value funds. The new rules, which go into effect at the end of December, were adopted under a 2006 pension law that Congress passed to help Americans build up retirement funds.

Federal officials proposed rules Thursday to ensure better disclosure of the fees levied to administer 401(k) retirement accounts, but critics immediately blasted the measures as inadequate. The Department of Labor said its proposal was designed to address concerns that retirement nest eggs are being eroded by obscure fees and deductions that employees may not even know they are paying.

A workers' rights group sued the Labor Department for the release of 95,000 names of private-sector employees it says are entitled to $32 million in wages. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court, alleges violations of the Freedom of Information Act and seeks the names of workers -- many of whom are low-wage earners -- whom the Labor Department has been unable to locate after they won government settlements for back pay.