Regulator Is Named Labor Chief of Calif.

Veteran workplace regulator Jose Millan was appointed late Tuesday to be California’s new labor commissioner--the first Latino to hold the key enforcement post in more than 50 years.

Millan, in accepting the $88,700-a-year job, is rejoining the state agency where he spent 10 years and worked his way up through the ranks before leaving last August to work as a consultant.

During his previous stint in the labor commissioner’s office, he was best known for helping to launch a state-federal program to intensify the fight against labor law abuses in the garment manufacturing and agriculture businesses. Millan said he now hopes to expand the effort, which is known as the Targeted Industries Partnership Program, or TIPP.

Gov. Pete Wilson, whose term runs until January 1999, is seeking to install the 42-year-old Millan for the remainder of the administration. With some support in both the employer and labor camps, Millan is regarded as having a solid chance to win confirmation in the state Senate, an achievement that has eluded other key Wilson nominees in recent years.

Even if Millan fails to win confirmation, he would be able to serve in the post for up to a year.

He is expected to be a popular choice among the ranks of the labor commissioner’s office, which has more than 300 employees. Millan previously served as assistant labor commissioner and, for four months in late 1995 through early 1996, as acting labor commissioner.

Over the years, he has sometimes angered his counterparts at the U.S. Department of Labor, the state’s partner in the TIPP campaign. Millan criticized the federal agency for what he regarded as an over-reliance on self-regulatory monitoring programs to police working conditions in the garment manufacturing industry.

But Millan, who played a key role in the 1995 raid that led to the discovery of more than 70 Thai workers held in near-slavery in El Monte, pledges to work with federal officials to maintain the state-federal enforcement program in the garment industry. He said he also wants to step up employer education programs in the garment business, and that he might try to shift some of the TIPP resources now used in agriculture to another, still-undetermined industry.

Among Millan’s backers is Joseph Rodriguez, executive director of the Garment Contractors Assn. of Southern California. During Millan’s previous roles as acting labor commissioner and assistant labor commissioner, Rodriguez said, “We worked closely with him, and we thought he was knowledgeable, fair and open-minded.”

Another advantage Millan brings the job, Rodriguez said, is that given his experience, “He’ll hit the street running.”

Steve Nutter, Western regional director of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, or UNITE, also said Millan’s experience will be valuable.

But Nutter said his union will “have to take a look at his overall job performance” before deciding whether to support Senate confirmation of Millan’s appointment.

Raised in East Los Angeles, Millan attended Woodrow Wilson High School and earned a law degree at the University of Houston.

Millan suffered a major career disappointment when he was passed over for the labor commissioner’s job in February 1996. The official who landed the appointment at the time, Roberta E. Mendonca, left the post early this year after failing to win confirmation.

Since then, the agency has been run on an interim basis by John C. Duncan, who remains acting director of the Department of Industrial Relations and, as such, would be Millan’s immediate boss.

State officials said Millan would be the first Latino to hold the duties of labor commissioner since Herbert C. Carrasco, who served in an equivalent post from 1939 to 1940. The job was then known as chief of the division of labor statistics and law enforcement.

As labor commissioner, Millan would be responsible for, among other things, enforcing state labor laws and resolving wage disputes between workers and employers.