State Sen. Erin Murphy accepts an Infrastructure Champion award from LIUNA Local 563 Business Manager Joe Fowler (L) and LIUNA Minnesota and North Dakota President Joel Smith.
Advocates for public infrastructure gathered Oct. 10 at the Minnesota Laborers’ Training Center in Lino Lakes to take stock of the state’s investment needs and celebrate recent legislative gains.
The 2025 LIUNA Infrastructure Summit and Open House, sponsored by LIUNA Minnesota and North Dakota, brought together over 100 representatives of unions, contractors, state agencies and other infrastructure-minded groups.
The half-day event covered topics like water and energy infrastructure, incentives for high-road housing development, workforce development and initiatives within the industry to increase workers’ access to mental-health resources.
Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan addressed the summit, and LIUNA officers presented awards recognizing lawmakers and the union’s lobbying partners for their work to strengthen and expand prevailing wage and secure new investments in transportation, water, energy and other infrastructure needs statewide.
Walz noted that the awards recognized both Democrats and Republicans. He called it a testament to LIUNA’s ability to work “bipartisanly” in support of public investments and standards like prevailing wage, ensuring infrastructure jobs go to safe, highly trained and fairly compensated tradespeople.
“It’s a really difficult job right now to try to find common lines, and LIUNA and the Building Trades have been doing it year after year,” Walz said.
Earlier this year, Walz signed a $700 million infrastructure jobs bill into law. It will chip away at a backlog of requests from communities and agencies across the state that has surpassed $7 billion.
The governor struck a hopeful note that lawmakers will continue to invest.
“I think we have set a precedence with this leadership that’s here at the Legislature that it just makes good sense to continue to pass robust bonding bills every year to make sure that we’re staying ahead of what needs to be done,” he said.
In anticipation of that work, LIUNA Minnesota and North Dakota, which represents about 14,000 workers, will expand its apprenticeship and training programs to include a second campus in North Branch, where the union recently acquired 96 acres.
The Lino Lakes facility already operates Minnesota’s largest registered apprenticeship program. The site delivers about 150,000 training hours each year, LIUNA Minnesota and North Dakota President Joel Smith said, at no cost to taxpayers.
“This campus represents our commitment to connecting Minnesotans, including more women, people of color and veterans, to lifelong careers with family-sustaining wages, excellent benefits and dignified retirement,” Smith said.
Recipients of LIUNA’s 2025 Infrastructure Champion awards included two state lawmakers, Sen. Judy Seeberger (D-Afton) and Rep. Nathan Nelson (R-Hinckley), who authored legislation that appropriates $1 million to promote mental-health initiatives in the construction industry, where suicide rates are over three times higher than the U.S. average.
State Reps. Kaela Berg (D-Burnsville) and Mary Franson (R-Alexandria), Sens. Jen McEwan (D-Duluth), Rob Kupec (D-Moorhead), Grant Hauschild (D-Hermantown) and Erin Murphy (D-St. Paul), and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith also received awards.
– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor
Union Advocate 