Supporters show their support for low-wage workers at Walmart and Target at a sendoff event for Gabe Teneyuque.

An associate from Apple Valley is among more than 100 striking Walmart workers nationwide who are protesting outside the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Bentonville, Ark., this week.

Gabriel Teneyuque, a member of the grassroots campaign OUR Walmart, joined the “Ride for Respect” to company headquarters last week. The caravan traveled through about 30 cities, picking up striking workers on its way to Bentonville.

At a send-off event for Teneyuque May 29 in Minneapolis, local activists offered their well wishes – and laid plans to echo the strikers’ protest in Bentonville with a local action June 7 in St. Paul. [Click here for details or to RSVP.]

Bernie Hesse of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1189, which represents retail workers in Duluth and the East Metro, said community support will be critical to the success of Walmart associates’ fledgling campaign for improved working conditions.

“We’re sending off workers today who are very brave,” Hesse said. “It takes a lot of guts to walk out of the biggest corporation.”

Teneyuque has more guts than most. He keeps a copy of Walmart’s employee handbook in his pocket whenever he’s on the clock, and talked about standing up to store managers to help a co-worker get the bereavement leave she was entitled to.

After getting involved in OUR Walmart last year, Teneyuque joined 500 workers nationwide in walking off the job on Black Friday, the nation’s busiest shopping day. The one-day strike led to a major victory for Walmart workers: the retailer now regularly posts associates’ scheduled hours – a major demand voiced by workers during Black Friday protests.

Teneyuque said actions this week will target the retailer’s aggressive use of intimidation and retaliation against workers looking to organize for better wages and health care benefits.

“A lot of the long-term workers at my store are still on state assistance. That bugs me really bad,” Teneyuque said. “With a successful company like Wal-Mart, that shouldn’t be the case.”

Indeed, that’s exactly the conclusion of a study released earlier this week by the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

“The price of Wal-Mart’s low wages and benefits at just one Wal-Mart store not only costs families in lost income and economic security, but it also may cost taxpayers about $1 million in higher usage of public-assistance programs by Wal-Mart employees and their dependents,” the study found.

Meanwhile, workers who clean Twin Cities-based Target stores are planning a similar action – including a caravan to the company’s shareholder meeting in Denver – if the retailer refuses to address their concerns about declining wages. Click here for more information.

The picnic is free and open to all union families. Pop, beer, hamburgers, hot dogs and chips will be provided by the assembly, and dessert donations will be welcomed.

Valley View Park is located off Osgood Avenue, south of State Highway 36.

The picnic will take place rain or shine.

For more information, contact St. Paul Regional Labor Federation organizer Kera Peterson at 651-222-3787, extension 18.

Incumbent school board member John Brodrick (right), with St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Bobby Kasper, will be among the labor candidates seeking DFL endorsement June 8.

Planning on attending the City of St. Paul DFL Endorsing Convention? Three labor-endorsed candidates are counting on union members’ support.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman is seeking re-election with labor endorsement. Two incumbent candidates for St. Paul Board of Education also have labor endorsements: John Brodrick and Jean O’Connell.

The endorsing convention will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday, June 8, at Washington Technology Magnet School, 1495 Rice Street.

For more information on St. Paul Regional Labor Federation endorsements, call 651-222-3787.

They weren’t afraid to lay it on thick 100 years ago, either:

“All residents of St. Paul who prefer clean, wholesome and well-made bakery products to those of another character; all who like to see skill properly recompensed, pluck win its contests and men get a square deal all around; and all who believe in helping those who help themselves, should patronize the Co-operative Baking Company and buy its products only.”

The baking company, owned by organized labor, was in stiff competition with corporate bakers – a “gigantic monopoly,” according to The Advocate, that threatens the existence of the Bakery Workers’ union.

“The world is largely indifferent to the struggle, and so, in order to look out for their own interests and supply here wholesome articles of food in their line, the union bakers of St. Paul have organized a co-operative baking company,” The Advocate added. “They should have all the support men in other unions and their families can possibly give them.”

At right, check out the Co-Operative Baking Company’s ad in The Union Advocate, along with some other “buy union” ads from our pages over the last 100 years.

[The Union Advocate's "This Month in the Archives" feature offers a look back at what the newspaper was reporting from 5 to 100 years ago. Our digital archives are online, searchable and free to anyone. Click here for access.]

75 Years Ago: Labor backs Benson for re-election

In June 1938 the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly passed a resolution affirming its support for Gov. Elmer A. Benson’s re-election campaign, and as the assembly’s official publication, The Advocate laid out the case for Benson in advance of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party’s June 20 primary election.

Most notably, The Advocate commended Benson, elected governor just 18 months earlier, for “barring the Pinkerton Detective Agency from the state.” The Pinkertons were a private security firm popular among businesses looking to infiltrate unions, intimidate workers and break up strikes.

Labor’s support made a big difference in the DFL primary, in which Benson eked out a narrow victory over former Gov. Hjalmar Petersen. The Advocate offered a theory as to why Peterson drew so many votes against an incumbent DFL governor: GOP subterfuge.

“That a large number of Republicans went into the Farmer-Labor primary to support Mr. Petersen was quite evident from the number of votes cast for the Farmer-Labor candidates for governor as compared with those cast for the Farmer-Labor candidates for lieutenant governor.” .

25 Years Ago: Compensation for AmHoist workers

About 200 displaced American Hoist & Derrick workers attended a contentious meeting in June 1988. At issue: how to spend $4 million AmHoist was forced to return to the City of St. Paul after it was determined the company had illegally used a federal grant to move its crane operations from Minnesota to North Carolina two years earlier.

In a “highly charged discussion,” according to The Advocate, workers expressed frustration that many remained unemployed. “Several … said lack of health insurance, the inability to find work and family emotional and financial difficulties are serious problems.”

Later that year, the task force would roll out the AmHoist Reemployment Action Project, a partnership between unions and the City of St. Paul to find jobs for the estimated 700 to 1,200 displaced workers who remained unemployed.

Former U.S. Rep. Bruce Vento was critical in forcing AmHoist to return the federal money to St. Paul.

Workers at AmHoist were members of the International Association of Machinists.

10 Years Ago: Grand Hotel dropped from union list

Speaking of buying union, UNITE HERE Local 17 dropped a Minneapolis hotel from its list of union-represented properties in June 2003 after three years of unproductive negotiations on a new contract for 50 hotel employees.

Local 17 President Jaye Rykunyk made the decision after the Minneapolis office of the National Labor Relations Board refused to order Grand Hotel owner Jeff Wirth to sign a collective bargaining agreement, which the union claimed he had verbally agreed to sign.

“Once the board sent that message,” Rykunyk told The Advocate, “there’s no reason for the employer to bargain in good faith. We view the board as being a completely useless entity at this point. In our view, the board has wholesale abandoned its responsibility to enforce the law”

Jason Metsa shops for groceries on a minimum-wage budget.

A story in the May Union Advocate (“A constant juggling act”) about state Rep. Jason Metsa of Virginia trying to live for a week on a minimun-wage budget brings to mind a quote from the famous novel “To Kill a Mocking-bird,” in which lawyer Atticus Finch tells his young daughter, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Well, I think a lot more politicans and business leaders need to walk around in the skin of workers and experience the hardships and frustrations of raising families and trying to make ends meet on low wages.

– Louis DiSanto, St. Paul, Former member of AFSCME Council 5

*****

Session was pro-jobs

The 2013 session was a pro-jobs session. The cuts in property taxes for homeowners and renters will put more money in the pockets of the middle class. That will mean higher receipts for Minnesota’s small businesses. Freezing tuition also helps family budgets.

The one huge negative was the House Republicans’ voting down the bonding bill. The House GOP’s action costs the state several thousands of desperately needed construction jobs. The Republicans claimed they opposed bonding because it was the “off-year.” Wrong. House Republicans have objected to bonding three of the last four years. During Gov. Pawlenty’s last year, a “bonding year,” the GOP House caucus urged Pawlenty to veto three-fourths of the bonding proposals. In 2011 the GOP majority passed no bonding bill, but agreed to accept a modest amount after the government shutdown. Last year, they passed a modest amount – in an election year.

Shifting taxes from the middle class to those with highest incomes will help the economy. Gov. Mark Dayton and the DFL Legislature are on the side of the economic angels. Restoration of aids to schools and local governments will also slow down rises in property taxes. The improvements in education are designed to increase business productivity.

– Wayne Cox, executive director of Minnesota Citizens for Tax Justice

Service Employees International Union members and staff join a rally for marriage equality at the Capitol. Unions were a big part of the successful push to legalize same-sex marriage.

Legislative leaders called 2013 the “education session” for the new investments in E-12 students, and a bill to extend union rights to 21,000 child-care providers and home health care workers grabbed headlines as Republicans tried to filibuster it to death.

But the 2013 legislative session yielded many other victories for union members and middle class families. Here’s a look at some of the less-publicized measures passed by labor-endorsed majorities in the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Mark Dayton.

Musicians locked out by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra perform an impromptu concert in the hall outside a Minnesota House committee hearing on lockouts.

• Protections for locked-out workers. Included in the jobs bill is a 26-week extension of unemployment-insurance benefits for any worker whose employer locks them out.

Lockouts have gained popularity among Minnesota employers looking to flex their muscles in contract negotiations with union workers. Minnesota Orchestra musicians remain locked out of their jobs, while St. Paul Chamber Orchestra musicians and workers at American Crystal Sugar in the Red River Valley recently struck deals to return to work.

Lawmakers viewed the extension of unemployment benefits as a way to mitigate the negative impact lockouts have had on families, communities and businesses.

• Marriage equality. Thousands gathered outside the Minnesota State Capitol on May 14 to watch Dayton sign legislation granting same-sex couples the right to marry. Several Minnesota unions supported the legislation as an issue important to their members and as an advance in equal rights for all.

Eliot Seide, executive director of AFSCME Council 5, explained the union’s decision to endorse marriage equality: “Same-sex couples pay taxes in Minnesota. They vote here, run businesses here, and serve in our military. They work hard and contribute to our communities, and they have children who deserve to grow up in stable families with married parents.

“Everyone should be able to marry the person they love. No one should be singled out and denied the economic protections and cultural privileges associated with matrimony.”

• Fair trade advisory council. The jobs bill also included reauthorization of the Trade Policy Advisory Council, which saw its authority “sunset” in 2012, but in a new form – one more inclusive of the groups with a stake in international trade policy. The TPAC is required to meet at least once a year and report back to the governor and Legislature about potential U.S. trade agreements and their impact on the state’s economy. The council also may offer draft legislation to implement the recommendations.

Click here to read more about the reauthorized Trade Policy Advisory Council.

• Construction jobs. The Legislature did not pass a large bonding bill, but it did approve much-needed repairs to the Capitol building. Lawmakers also made investments in job creation tools and key construction projects like the Mall of America expansion.

Bobby Kasper

We here at the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation entered this session with high hopes. Having claimed the state-government trifecta – pro-worker majorities the House and Senate, as well as a pro-labor governor – for the first time in more than two decades, we believed that with some hard work lobbying and some help from our endorsed legislators, we could make great strides for our unions and for all Minnesotans. Ultimately, our high hopes were not dashed and, though suffering some disappointments, we finished strong and accomplished many of the extraordinary goals we originally put forth in January.

We in labor laid out the successes we reached this session, including historic investments in E-12 education, a two-year tuition freeze at public colleges and universities, tax reform that ensures the richest Minnesotans pay their fair share, property-tax relief for middle-class homeowners, job-creating investments in construction projects like the Mall of America expansion, and an opportunity for child-care providers and home health care workers to vote on whether to form a union. And none of it would have been possible without Gov. Mark Dayton’s courageous leadership on the state budget.

With all those successes, of course, some legislation was apt to be left for next session. The AFL-CIO’s minimum wage push to between $9 and $9.50 per hour, while adjusting for inflation every year, was dropped late in the session. We will make this a priority when lawmakers return next year. Additionally, the metro-wide sales tax, which would have funded the creation of a modern mass transit system in the Twin Cities, was put aside a later time. And the infrastructure-jobs bill – the bonding bill – was a rather small sum of $156 million, a disappointing number for our Building Trades brothers and sisters who would like nothing more than to be put to work helping sustain critical infrastructure projects statewide.

Disappointments will come with every session, of course. But the historic investments in our state made by this pro-worker Legislature far outweigh the inaction on those bills left on the table. Next legislative session our unions and the people of Minnesota have plenty more to fight for and, as this year, we will do so tooth-and-nail. And of course, it all starts with electing friends to the Legislature. We have to acknowledge that in the end it is up to every one of us to keep fighting and get involved with our future elections – work that will begin, believe it or not, this summer! Click here to find out how you can get involved.

We have good reason to celebrate our victories. We won better schools and safer workplaces, new rights for child-care providers and home health care workers, and much-needed progress toward tax fairness. We should all be proud of both the hard work we put into helping elect these legislators and our governor, but also in the countless hours we all put into lobbying at the Capitol. Together, we helped ensure that the promise of a better tomorrow – and a better Minnesota – would be fulfilled.

– Bobby Kasper is president of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, and a member of Laborers Local 132.

The Jobs and Economic Development bill signed into law by Gov. Mark Dayton this week included reauthorization of the Trade Policy Advisory Council, which saw its authority “sunset” in 2012, but in a new form – one more inclusive of the groups with a stake in international trade policy.

While previous trade advisory groups have been populated mostly with state agency heads and elected officials, the new council will include appointees from the business community, organized labor, environmental groups and family farmers, as well as a bipartisan collection of legislators.

The Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, an issue-based umbrella organization of more than 40 labor, family farm, environmental, faith and social justice groups statewide, praised the reauthorization in a statement released today.

“International trade negotiations are occurring constantly, and they have a huge effect on Minnesota’s economy and quality of life,” said Josh Wise, director of the fair trade coalition. “It is important that we analyze how these talks will affect us here in Minnesota, and make our voice, as a state, heard in the negotiations.”

[Click here to read more on the impact free trade agreements have had on Minnesota's economy.]

The TPAC is required to meet at least once a year and report back to the governor and Legislature about potential U.S. trade agreements and their impact on the state’s economy. The council also may offer draft legislation to implement the recommendations.

Kera Peterson, chair of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition and an organizer for the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, called the council “a real opportunity for Minnesotans to understand how they are being affected by globalization, and how we can create our place in the global economy.

“Trade Agreements like NAFTA and the Korea FTA have proved not to be in best interest of Minnesotans. It’s important that we make our voice heard on pending deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and any agreement with the European Union. Minnesota has a nation leading quality of life, and its important that that not be undermined by unfair trade practices.”

The Minnesota AFL-CIO called the session, which adjourned May 20, “one of the most productive legislative sessions for working Minnesotans in a generation,” pointing to a laundry list of bills passed by DFL majorities – with the support of DFL Gov. Mark Dayton – “that will help countless numbers of working people in Minnesota.”

State lawmakers made their biggest investment in public education, reversing a decade-long trend of underfunding by adding about $235 million to the general education funding formula over the next two years.

“The leaders of the House and Senate said education would be a priority this session, and they delivered,” said Tom Dooher, president of Education Minnesota, the statewide educators’ union.

Lawmakers also expanded access to all-day kindergarten – a proven strategy for raising students’ academic achievement – to students statewide beginning in 2014, and they boosted support for special education by about $40 million.

“Our schools won’t recover from a decade of underfunding in a single session, but the new investments in the basic formula, special education and all-day kindergarten put us on the road to recovery,” Dooher said.

To pay for new investments in education, lawmakers raised $2 billion in revenue by closing tax loopholes exploited by corporations, raising taxes on the richest 2 percent and increasing the tax on cigarettes – a strategy Carol Nieters, executive director of SEIU Local 284, called “a much better investment for Minnesota’s future.”

“Finally, Minnesota is closing corporate tax loopholes instead of schools,” said Nieters, who represents more than 8,000 public school paraprofessionals, clerical staff, bus drivers, custodians and food service workers. “After years of gimmicks and borrowing billions from schools, we have a historic investment in education.”

New revenues also will underwrite property-tax relief for homeowners – a critical step toward fixing a tax system that hits middle-income families harder than their wealthy counterparts. A January 2013 report by the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that Minnesota’s top 1 percent of earners pay just 6.2 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while the middle 20 percent of the state’s earners pay 9.6 percent.

Raising income taxes on the highest earners and providing property-tax relief for homeowners will “make taxes fairer for middle-class Minnesotans,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Shar Knutson said. “Minnesota won’t turn around overnight, but the 2013 session was an enormous step forward.”

While tax reform and education funding were two labor priorities that passed during the 2013 session, one top priority – a minimum-wage hike – failed to win legislative approval.

Although minimum wage bills passed both the House and Senate, legislative leaders could not reconcile differences between the two bills.

The House bill, supported by a coalition of labor, faith and community organizations, called for raising the minimum wage to $9.50 over three years and adjusting the rate annually for inflation. The Senate passed a much smaller increase.

With an eye on the 2014 legislative session, Knutson said the issue will remain a priority for the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

“Hundreds of thousands of low-wage working Minnesotans and their families who deserve a pay raise are extremely disappointed in the Senate’s failure to agree to a meaningful minimum wage increase,” Knutson said.

“Between now and the 2014 session, our coalition will be having conversations with lawmakers and their constituents about why a significant minimum wage increase is good for workers, small businesses, and our entire state.”