Peterson: Support candidates who will listen to workers, not billionaires

October 30, 2026 by Leave a Comment

St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Kera Peterson is pictured speaking at the 2022 MN AFL-CIO Convention.

Things are too expensive. That’s not breaking news to anyone who’s shopped for groceries or filled their gas tank lately. This economy is putting the squeeze on working people. Too many of us are living on the edge, working longer and harder for less in return and stressing over every bill, every purchase, every paycheck.

It shouldn’t be this way. The U.S. economy is growing. Corpo-rate earnings are up and so is the stock market. The S&P 500 hit an all-time high last month. American workers are more productive than ever, but our share in the economic growth that labor creates is at historic low point. An NBC News report found that the share of economic output going to workers’ pay and benefits has sunk to its lowest level since the Department of Labor started tracking it in 1947. The pie is getting bigger, but our slice is getting smaller.

None of this is happening by accident. It’s the direct result of policy choices – tariffs, healthcare cuts, foreign wars, attacks on collective bargaining – made by politicians who answer to billionaires and CEOs instead of working people. That’s why our federation of local unions is working to elect labor-endorsed candidates Nov. 3 who will put us first and hold corporations and billionaires accountable.

Here in Minnesota, we know firsthand what’s at stake in this election. We’re less than a year removed from the federal government’s shockingly violent and lawless occupation of our state in the name of immigration enforcement. Operation Metro Surge trampled on our rights, tore families apart and disrupted life in our neighborhoods, schools and workplaces. The occupation dealt an economic blow, too, costing our state 32,000 jobs, reducing economic activity – especially in the hospitality sector – and increasing security costs for local communities by an estimated $700 million.

The tragic failures of Metro Surge reflect a pattern that has repeated itself throughout Trump’s second administration. Bad ideas go unchecked by enfeebled congressional majorities and a compliant Supreme Court, and the American people pay the price – literally. Trump’s tariffs raised our cost of living, and his war in Iran has only made it worse. Minnesotans’ real wages, adjusted for inflation, fell 1.4% in the first seven months of this year. And as predicted, the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” has forced more Minnesotans to go without healthcare coverage and increased premiums for those who remain insured.

This election is our opportunity to begin putting an end to the chaos, and union members are, unsurprisingly, stepping up to the challenge. Internal poling by the AFL-CIO shows that 83% of union members are “extremely motivated” to vote in the midterms – a 10-point increase from 2022. In Minnesota, union volunteers are talking with their neighbors and co-workers, encouraging them to make their plan to vote. (You don’t have to wait until Nov. 3 if you vote early; go to mnvotes.org to learn how!) Others are signing up as election judges or training to serve as election protection volunteers.

If the challenges ahead feel overwhelming, I empathize. Instead of becoming demoralized, though, let’s focus on what is possible when after Election Day if we make our voices heard. Together, we can help deliver majorities for pro-worker candidates up and down the ballot who will support our right to bargain for better pay and benefits, fight for affordable healthcare and stop the squeeze on working families.

– Kera Peterson is president of the Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. 

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Union members say Ellison has stuck up for workers as Attorney General

October 28, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Attorney General Keith Ellison speaks before a door-knock with SEIU President April Verrett in Minneapolis.

Locked in a tight re-election campaign, Attorney General Keith Ellison deserves working Minnesotans’ vote because he puts the power of his office to work for them, union members and labor leaders say.

And they have the receipts to prove it.

Hospitality workers at Target Field, members of UNITE HERE Local 17, have long raised questions about nonprofits that the stadium brings in to operate concession stands, purportedly raising funds for their charitable organizations.

When union members entered contract negotiations with Target Field’s concessionaire, Delaware North, earlier this year, they proposed limits on the practice. The employer showed no interest, Local 17 President Sheigh Freeberg said.

But in July, Ellison announced that his office had reached a civil settlement to shut down one of the nonprofits operating Target Field concession stands, MN Fundraising Initiative (MNFI), after investigating allegations that it was not operated for any charitable purpose. Instead, MNFI was operating as a staffing agency to misclassify hundreds of employees as “volunteers” and deploying them to work in concession stands at venues across the Twin Cities.

Freeberg called it a validating moment for Local 17 members.

“This is a thing that workers have been talking about for years,” Freeberg said. “It’s not right that these sham charities undercut union wages, undercut union labor and take away hours from union workers. It’s hard to overstate how important this settlement was.”

It’s just one of several cases Ellison’s office has built against bad bosses in recent years, seeking justice for victims of wage theft, misclassification or predatory employment practices.

The Attorney General’s Office secured $250,000 in back pay for dairy workers, won $800,000 in restitution for delivery drivers with the gig-economy firm Shipt and, earlier this year, won an important decision that keeps alive efforts to recoup wages allegedly stolen from cleaning workers at Madison Equities’ former holdings in downtown St. Paul.

Fighting back against Trump

Union leaders also point to Ellison’s work since January 2025 to defend Minnesota against attacks from the Trump administration, filing or signing onto over 50 cases against the executive branch.

Ellison’s office filed one of those cases in July, after Trump’s Department of Education abruptly announced it would withhold funding appropriated to local school districts across the country. Minnesota districts stood to lose a combined $74 billion.

“Two months before fall classes, before school was supposed to start, school leaders all over the state scrambled to see what they would have to cut if no one stepped in for students and no one stepped up for the Constitution,” Brian McCarthy, president of the West St. Paul Federation of Teachers, said. “Fortunately, someone did.”

Trump relented, and the federal government released the funding. But McCarthy wondered whether Ellison’s opponent, corporate attorney Ron Schutz, would have sued his own party’s president.

“Lawsuits like that tell me that Keith will continue to work for our kids and our communities,” McCarthy said.

Keeping an eye out for workers

For healthcare workers and advocates, meanwhile, Ellison’s leadership in the Attorney General’s Office is critical to navigating an unprecedented period of upheaval in the sector, with three pairs of health systems seeking the office’s approval for sales or mergers in the last year.

Unions say Ellison understands the importance of maintaining their collective bargaining rights as part of that process.

North Memorial and Sanford made that guarantee as part of a binding community benefits agreement that paved the way for approval of their merger earlier this year, but advocates are still pushing Allina and California-based Sutter Health, as well as HealthPartners and Essentia, for similar agreements.

Allina hospice nurse Susie Smerz said she’s grateful for the work Ellison did to get their newly organized bargaining unit a first contract – without having to go on an open-ended strike. Representatives of the Attorney General’s Office, she said, were directly involved with last-ditch talks to avoid a strike, doing “shuttle diplomacy” to get a tentative agreement between Allina Health and her bargaining unit with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa.

“The hospice nurses began feeling like an open-ended strike had become the only tool in our tool belt,” Smerz said. “I don’t know how, but the Attorney General’s Office got wind of it and, I think, was like, ‘Oh no, Allina.’ They really got us to the finish line.

“It really seemed like they cared about us – about the little people. We’re a unit of 55 to 60 nurses, and that’s a drop in the bucket for Allina. They were willing to wear us down. But the Attorney General’s Office wanted to be sure we didn’t get left in the dust.”

UNITE HERE’s Freeberg said he tells people Minnesota has the best Attorney General for workers in the country. But that comes with a target on Ellison’s race each time he’s on the ballot.

“He didn’t have to take on cases like ours,” Freeberg said. “These sham charities exist in all 50 states. But that’s who Keith is. He’s someone that workers can always count on, and his opponent is someone that their bosses can always count on. I really don’t think the stakes could be higher than that.”

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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Labor-endorsed ballot question would deliver funding for schools without raising taxes

October 27, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Minnesota voters have an opportunity in the Nov. 3 election to send more funding to the state’s public schools – without raising taxes – by voting “yes” on a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution.

With high-profile races for governor and U.S. Senate dominating the media cycles and control of the statehouse up for grabs, the ballot question is, perhaps, flying under the radar this fall.

But its potential impact is significant, with benefits extending to every public school district in the state.

Education Minnesota, representing about 80,000 educators and school employees statewide, has endorsed a “yes” vote, as has the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

The amendment, if passed, would increase distributions from the state’s Permanent School Fund, a trust created in 1858 that pays public schools each year using revenue from timber sales, mineral leases and investment returns on public land.

Since 2010, the fund has grown from about $675 million to more than $2.3 billion, but a law passed in the 1800s still governs how the fund’s investment gains are distributed.

Last year, districts received a combined $58 million from the fund, or about 2.5% of its value. The proposed amendment would increase distributions to 4.5% of the fund’s three-year rolling average value, a rate agreed upon by a non-partisan task force of investment, trust, legal and education experts appointed by the Legislature in 2024.

The proposed rate is more in line with practices used by university endowments and charitable foundations across the country, supporters say.

The immediate impact depends on investment returns, of course, but had the amendment passed last year, school districts would have seen an increase of about $33 per pupil from the fund.

For example, in the White Bear Lake School District, it would have meant nearly $275,000 in added revenue. For Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan, it would have drawn nearly $1 million in added funds.

The change won’t impact the state’s general fund or require any new taxes.

Votes in the Legislature to put the amendment on the Nov. 3 ballot drew bipartisan support, including a 134-0 vote in the House. Sen. Mary Kunesh, a DFLer and chief author of the amendment, called it “a responsible path forward.”

“As a former public school educator and chair of the Senate Education Finance Committee, I know how vital it is to secure additional funds and support for our public schools, and this is one way to provide that support without asking taxpayers to pay one penny more,” Kunesh added.

DFL and Republican leaders have voiced support for the ballot question, but advocates remain concerned on two fronts.

First, voters need to locate the proposed amendment on their ballot – it could be on the back side – and cast a vote. Minnesota constitutional amendments require a majority of all voters to mark the “yes” box, which means leaving the question blank counts as a “no” vote.

And educators, in particular, are concerned that the presence of the amendment question, which makes clear that the outcome will not raise taxes, could hurt the chances of local school funding questions that might also appear on the ballot, like a levy or bonding request.

While increased funding from the Permanent School Fund will help schools, Education Minnesota Vice President Marty Fridgen said, it won’t solve all their financial struggles. Many districts will still need to pass levies this fall to avoid cuts.

“For some people, they’re going to be going into the booth and also have an operating levy for their district,” Fridgen said. “Thirty dollars extra from this fund is not enough for some of our school districts to alleviate the other needs they have. So we’re nervous that people will vote yes on the amendment because it’s not going to raise their taxes, but on the other question they’re going to say no.”

Public school districts received, on average, $13,333 per pupil in state funding in the 2025 fiscal year, but a report issued by the nonpartisan North Star Policy Action in August found that, when adjusted for inflation, state funding continues to lag 2003 levels.

A historic investment during the 2023 legislative session cut the per-pupil aid gap by 56%, according to researchers. But 2025 funding remained 8.6% lower than the inflation-adjusted amount from 2003, a difference of about $1,249.

Learn more about the constitutional amendment at voteyesmnstudents.org.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Politics Tagged With: , , , ,

Mobile billboard shines light on price of Trump’s deportation agenda

October 26, 2026 by 1 Comment

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham talks about a mobile billboard the labor federation is sending into communities across the state.

The cost of unleaded isn’t the only painfully high price confronting drivers in St. Paul – at least not today. That’s because the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s mobile billboard is crisscrossing the capital city, highlighting the local cost of President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

The public-awareness campaign, which arrives in St. Paul after tours through the Rochester and Mankato areas earlier this month, takes aim at $170 billion in funding for immigration enforcement in Trump’s signature tax and spending legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) of 2025.

The funding, which runs through September 2029, will build up two agencies, ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), that were heavily involved in Operation Metro Surge here last winter.

That means Minnesota is on the hook for about $4.4 billion, or $2,050 per taxpayer, to expand the campaign that brought violence and chaos to our communities.

“That’s money people could use in their pockets,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said. “Affordability is such an issue right now. People are spending more on gas, on healthcare. They are making choices about whether to get groceries or go to the doctor.”

The Minnesota AFL-CIO’s mobile billboard spotlights a new online calculator, developed by the Economic Policy Institute, to isolate the cost of mass deportations on the local level.

The calculator also shows what those funds could have meant for public education and essential services that keep people fed, healthy and safe. The roughly $385 million paid by Ramsey County taxpayers, for example, could have been used to hire 1,300 public school teachers or to keep 11,261 people on Medicaid through the rest of Trump’s term.

Burnham said the state’s largest labor federation doesn’t want voters to forget how Trump and Republicans cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, Obamacare subsidies, and food assistance in their “Big Beautiful Bill,” while handing tax breaks to large corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

“We want to have candidates who are supporting children, working people and communities,” she said. “If we continue to lose this money (to mass deportations), people are going to keep coming up short every day.”

The mass deportation calculator adds to a growing body of research about the high cost of Trump’s immigration policies and, specifically, Operation Metro Surge.

The three-month occupation cost Minnesota an estimated 32,000 jobs, according to a report released by the Minnesota Budget Project earlier this month, and reduced economic activity, especially in the hospitality sector. Meanwhile, security costs for local communities increased by an estimated $700 million in the metro area.

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Benefit concert Nov. 1 will showcase arts community’s support for strike-ready opera musicians

October 26, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Opera musicians announce their strike-authorization vote. (photo courtesy Musicians of the MN Opera Orchestra)

Orchestra musicians are tapping into solidarity from the arts community in another tough round of contract negotiations with the Minnesota Opera.

Members of Twin Cities Musicians Union–AFM Local 30-73, who voted unanimously this month to authorize a strike against the opera company, will hold a benefit concert at 7 p.m. Nov. 1 in the University of Minnesota’s Ted Mann Concert Hall to raise funds in case of a work stoppage. Tickets are not required for admission, but donations are welcome.

The Musicians of the Minnesota Opera Orchestra will be joined by vocalists from the opera chorus, esteemed soloists and Minnesota Orchestra players, all under the direction of former Minnesota Opera Music Director Michael Christie.

“It will be a glorious celebration of what we are actually able to provide and what we want to provide,” violist Susan Janda said.

The show of support, Janda and fellow members of the orchestra musicians’ bargaining team said, reflects the shared interest arts workers and patrons – and arts teachers and students – have in union contracts that respect and retain top talent.

“The patrons and supporters we talk with care about opera, they care about the artists, they care about what happens on that stage and in the orchestra pit, and they want this company to succeed,” Rebecca Arons, a cellist and member of the orchestra musicians’ bargaining committee, said. “So do we.”

Compensation has been the primary sticking point in the union’s contract negotiations with the Minnesota Opera. Orchestra players’ pay has remained flat – at $12,000 per season – since they settled their last union contract nearly four years ago.

Those negotiations stretched deep into the opera company’s season and saw union members appeal directly to patrons for solidarity. Musicians handed out leaflets before performances at the Ordway Center and targeted opera board members with an email campaign.

This time around, union members authorized a strike before rehearsals even began for the Oct. 31 season opener, hoping to sound the alarm on proposals from management that, they believe, raise concerns about the company’s artistic direction.

The opera’s representatives at the bargaining table have said the company has “no appetite for increasing the salary of the orchestra musicians,” Janda said, even after the four-year freeze. At the same time, opera staff and leadership have received 2% annual raises in recent years, and the company’s net assets have grown by $13.8 million since 2020.

Musicians have proposed a 4% increase, which would amount to about $80,000 in the first year. That’s roughly 0.5% of the Minnesota Opera’s operating budget – and likely close to what the company is paying the union-busting law firm Littler Mendelson, which also represents Starbucks, to stonewall musicians at the bargaining table.

“Management has told us they can afford our proposal,” Arons, the musicians’ lead negotiator, said. “They have also told us they simply don’t want to.”

For Janda and others, it raises the question of whether the Minnesota Opera sees a future without orchestra musicians – a question they believe patrons would like to hear answered, too.

“I don’t know about you, but when I think of an opera, you would imagine that there’s an orchestra that goes with it,” Janda said. “Not people singing over a track or a chamber music group, we’re talking a full symphonic orchestra. That’s our concern.”

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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Video game workers in Bloomington ready to strike for first contract

October 23, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Members of CWA Local 2750 held a contract rally at Activision’s Bloomington quality-assurance site in August 2026.

A week before the much-anticipated “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4” was set to launch, video game workers bargaining a first union contract with the game’s Microsoft-owned publishing company announced that they had voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike.

Activision Quality Assurance United-CWA, a bargaining unit of about 450 quality-assurance workers, including 300 based in Bloomington, has been in negotiations with Microsoft-owned Activision for over two years.

Union members are still waiting for management to get serious about the issues they brought to the table, CWA Local 7250 member Emily Danko said.

“Bargaining has been a long, exhausting process spanning over two years, with our committee making responsible moves while the company continues to stall on critical issues like wages, accommodations, and worker protections,” Danko, who works at the Bloomington site, said. “Despite our efforts to bargain in good faith, meaningful progress has been difficult, leaving key issues unresolved.”

The authorization vote, also approved by workers at Quality Assurance facilities in Texas and California, empowers Communications Workers of America President Claude Cummings Jr. to call a strike if negotiations continue to stall.

The strike vote comes at a critical time in the production and release cycle of one of Activision’s most popular – and profitable – franchises. “Call of Duty” is set to launch worldwide today.

“Our members remain united and continue to mobilize, but we are exploring every option available to secure the fair contract we deserve,” Danko said.

Quality Assurance workers won recognition of their union in March 2024 and entered bargaining that August seeking wage increases, guardrails on the company’s use of contractors and artificial intelligence, and protections around their right to seek accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Microsoft has failed to bargain in good faith on any of those issues, CWA District 7 Vice President Susie McAllister said.

“The results of the strike authorization vote send a clear message to Activision management: it is time to stop playing games because our members are united and prepared to do what it takes to win the strong contract they deserve,” McAllister said.

In Bloomington, Local 7250 members have begun ramping up the pressure on Activision to settle a fair deal. Nearly 50 members joined a midday rally in August, joining other Microsoft workers in a nationwide day of action. They rallied again the day before CWA announced results of the strike vote.

“We’re all kind of feeling that pinch,” union steward Andrew Snell said. “It’s taken two years. It’s taken a really long time. We’re fighting tooth and nail just to get this contract done, but we’re getting closer.”

Click here to contribute to Activision Quality Assurance workers’ strike fund.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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Elevator Constructors retiree recognized for a lifetime of leadership at national convention

October 22, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Terri Stave accepts the 2026 Tradeswomen Build Nations Lifetime Achievement Award in Houston. (photo courtesy NABTU)

Terri Stave almost skipped this year’s Tradeswomen Build Nations convention. Instead, she came home with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the nation’s largest annual gathering of union tradeswomen in Houston last month.

The award, presented Oct. 11 in front of about 5,000 conventiongoers, came as a surprise to Stave. The retired member of Elevator Constructors (IUEC) Local 9 said she was overwhelmed by the moment, given that her mother had died just nine days before.

But it came as no surprise to people who have worked alongside Stave in the field, at the union hall or in her advocacy efforts with Women Building Success, a labor-backed nonprofit organization that promotes Minnesota tradeswomen.

“Terri’s contributions go far beyond the work she has done as a business representative,” Local 9 Business Manager Ryan Parkos said. “She has helped shape our local union, strengthened our trade and created a legacy that will continue to influence generations of elevator constructors for years to come.”

Stave became the first woman sworn in as business agent of an IUEC local – not only Local 9, but anywhere in the U.S. and Canada – after winning an election in 2015. More recently, she became the first female member to retire out of Local 9.

Throughout her career and even into retirement, Parkos said, Stave sought opportunities to help other women thrive in the construction trades, too.

“Terri Stave’s legacy is about more than being the first,” Parkos said. “It is about what that first represents, the doors it opens, the example it sets and the opportunities it creates for those who follow. History will remember her achievement, but the true measure of its impact will be seen in the women who enter our trade, the members who step into leadership and the generations of elevator constructors who benefit from a union that continues to grow stronger and more inclusive.”

Stave, who lives in Baldwin, Wis., reflected on her career, the challenges facing women working in the trades and what the national recognition means to her in this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.

UA: How did you find out you were going to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award?

TS: I didn’t find out until there were 5,000 people sitting there. It was a big plenary in a great big room with over 5,000 women and advocates in attendance, and Sean McGarvey (president of North America’s Building Trades Unions) is the guy who gave me the award.

UA: You didn’t know you had been nominated?

TS: I did not. I wasn’t going to go this year because my mother passed away, but I didn’t get around to canceling my flight. I’d talked to my mother two weeks before, and my mother knows I’ve gone every year since 2014. I told her I was going to cancel my flight, and she told me I should go. I said, “We’ll see, mom.”

My mother took a turn pretty fast. We called hospice on Wednesday, they brought the bed Thursday and she passed away on Friday. So I talked to my siblings, and they said why don’t you just go because there’s nothing you can do here right now. And I thought it would probably be good to get away for a bit.

(photo courtesy NABTU)

UA: The emotions must have been overwhelming. Did you have to say something?

TS: It was almost like I couldn’t keep it together. They give you the podium, and I’m like, “Oh my God.” The conference center is huge – they can’t have it at a hotel any more, it’s gotten too big. I thanked NABTU, I thanked the IUEC and then I kind of broke down and told them that my mother had passed away. It was pretty emotional, pretty overwhelming, but what an honor. You have so many people who could be chosen, and they chose me.

UA: What kind of an influence was your mother on your career path?

TS: My mother had two girls that were both in the elevator trades. My older sister was also a union mechanic for 15 years. My mother was very supportive, and my father was a union carpenter. She taught me to have a great work ethic, and always wanted us to help others. And that’s what you’re doing as a business agent.

UA: Looking back, what made you want to serve your local as an agent?

TS: I had started going to meetings seven or eight years earlier, and got my start as the door warden. That’s a position nobody wants, right? I ran for door warden and got to meet people, and then it’s, “Why don’t you run for executive board?” I served two terms there and became the chair, and it was actually the business manager at the time, Dave Osrud, who said, “Why don’t you run for business rep?”

I never looked at anything with the elevator trade as being the only female. I just went and did my job. So when I ran for business rep and beat the incumbent by quite a few votes, there were some situations where I didn’t look at it that way but other people did. I didn’t know I was the first female until after I got the role. Dave Osrud is like, “I think you’re the first female. You know you’re going to go to meetings and be the only female in the room?” And I told him it’s been that way my whole career. That was nothing new to me.

UA: Were there challenges?

TS: I did have a tough time. People came out of the woodwork after I got in that role, and I heard things like, they didn’t want a woman running the local and whatever. I couldn’t fight that. I couldn’t fight being a female. And I figured that I knew how to fix elevators when I went in there, so I just went back and fixed elevators.

At the time I was very angry about it.  But you know what? I pulled up my bootstraps, and I went to Tradeswomen Build Nations the year after that just to show the young generation coming in that if you get knocked down, you just pull yourself back up and keep going. I think that was probably the most important conference that I went to.

UA: Spaces like Tradeswomen Build Nations reflect an intentional investment from Building Trades unions like yours in making their organizations more welcoming and diverse. At a time when a lot of organizations are pulling back from those investments, why does this work remain important?

TS: If you can do the job, why wouldn’t a woman want to have the great income, the great benefits? The trades give opportunities to women and men to live a great life, a comfortable life with great benefits and great pay. If you work hard and go to work every day, you can succeed. It shouldn’t matter if you’re male, female, black, white. The trades offer a career.

By having things like Tradeswomen Build Nations, you meet people who are the only woman in their local. It gives the women an avenue to communicate and ask questions and find information they might be too afraid to ask their business manager. It makes them feel like they’re not alone.

UA: When did you feel like you knew you belonged?

TS: When I started, I was 19 years old. I think it takes you a good 10 years until you go, “I think I’ve got this. I can fix an elevator.” Yes, I ran across problems being a female in the trades, but I tried to never take it home. I figured I had just as much right to be there and work hard as the next person. I don’t even know that I ever wanted to quit when I was young. I did as a business agent, though. You work all day on an elevator, and you can see what you fixed. You work all day as an agent – on the phones, answering emails – and then you go, what’d I do today? There are no thank-you’s.

UA: Colleagues say your leadership has made the craft more inclusive. How have you tried to do that, and what work remains to be done?

TS: I think just going to meetings. Just being there, that’s half the battle. But I would approach any of the apprentices – I don’t care if it’s male or females. I think people see you, and communicating with people is the best thing you can do. I want them to see that someone can start and finish and have a career in the elevator trade. I want them to think, “Well, if Terri can do it …”

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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With workers in mind, St. Paul takes step toward regulating driverless cars

October 22, 2026 by 1 Comment

Twin Cities rideshare driver Abdikani Ali warns that autonomous vehicles would undercut workers in his industry.

At the urging of workers and labor unions, the St. Paul City Council last week put the city on course to regulate autonomous vehicles before companies like Waymo and Tesla’s Robotaxi begin operating here.

The council passed a resolution Oct. 14 directing the Planning Commission to study the issue and send back recommendations for a regulatory framework that protects workers, prioritizes safety and accountability, safeguards people’s privacy and protects public transportation systems.

“We need to understand these impacts for ourselves – not take big tech’s word for it,” Council President Rebecca Noecker, who led efforts to pass the resolution, said at a press conference inside City Hall before the vote.

Already, Waymo vehicles are surveying Minneapolis and St. Paul streets, although human monitors still ride inside. The Google-owned taxi company currently operates in 15 U.S. cities. Tesla robotaxis have gone live in six urban areas.

Uber and Lyft drivers, who recently began organizing a union with Service Employees (SEIU) Local 26, have lobbied city leaders in both Minneapolis and St. Paul to act now, before autonomous vehicles begin commercial operations here, to prevent widespread job losses.

Minnesota’s rideshare industry generates over $500 million in total economic output, generating about $43 million in local and state tax revenues.

If local governments like St. Paul fail to act, Council Member Hwa Jeong Kim said, “hundreds of millions of dollars that today support working families across St. Paul would instead flow to Silicon Valley CEOs.”

Rideshare drivers like Abdikani Ali agreed. Ali supports his family by driving for Uber and Lyft, working as many as 16 hours in a day to make ends meet.

“I don’t want Waymo or Tesla to come into the St. Paul community and take away the jobs that people like me depend on,” Ali said. “I also don’t want the money and wages that we’re (earning) to leave our community and go to companies and corporations run by Elon Musk and Google.”

Council members in Minneapolis last month attempted to protect rideshare drivers’ jobs with an ordinance requiring autonomous vehicles to carry human monitors, but it failed to pass.

The resolution adopted in St. Paul, Noecker said, does not presuppose any policy outcome. Instead, the council is setting in motion a process that will seek answers from the community about what guardrails are appropriate. “The outcome of that could look a lot of different ways,” Noecker said.

The Planning Commission’s work is expected to take six months to a year.

“Our responsibility is to the people of St. Paul, not to these corporations,” Noecker added. “Depending on what our community tells us, there may be guardrails we can put in place that allow these vehicles to operate safely, but we need to do the work first. And we want to do that work now rather than wait until they are literally at our door.”

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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TSA officers’ commemoration comes with warning against privatization

September 25, 2026 by

U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum joins AFGE Local 899’s commemoration of the 9/11 attack.As Transportation Security Adminis-tration agents at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport commemorated the 25th anniversary of 9/11 last month, union leaders made a point of warning against new attempts by the Trump administration to privatize U.S. airport security.

American Federation of Government Employees Local 899 held its observance on the mezzanine level of Terminal 1, perched above the ticketing counters. Two members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation, Reps. Betty McCollum and Kelly Morrison, joined the event, as did a representative of the Metropolitan Airports Commission.

Speakers mourned the lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001, and they reflected on the role TSA workers have played in protecting the nation’s airways from other attacks since then.

Local 899 Secretary Emily Woods was a child when the attacks took place, but she now works as a transportation security officer at MSP, serving in the agency created by Congress after 9/11 to standardize passenger screenings in the nation’s commercial airports.

“I may have been too young to understand Sept. 11 as it happened, but I understand its significance today,” Woods said. “Every time I put on my TSA uniform, I carry forward the responsibility that came from that day.”

“Every day, transportation security officers carry out that important mission,” Local 899 President Sharif Mehanna said. “They identify prohibited items, they respond to evolving threats and they protect millions of passengers – often under difficult conditions and without receiving the recognition they deserve.”

Difficult conditions have been all too common for TSA workers during the second Trump administration. They were forced to work without pay during extended Department of Homeland Security shutdowns, and Trump’s DHS appointees have sought to strip TSA officers of their union contract – a move AFGE has challenged in federal court.

Now, the administration is acting on a secretly devised plan, TSA Gold+, to privatize passenger screening at some airports. The agency recently informed AFGE of its intention to launch the program, which puts private contractors in charge of passenger screening and the screening technology itself, at three airports next year: Tampa, Fla.; Charleston, S.C.; and Des Moines, Iowa.

At MSP Airport, union leaders and federal lawmakers called the privatization scheme a dangerous departure from the system that has worked to protect travelers in the 25 years since 9/11.

Morrison said she opposes any effort to “change airport security that does not include input from the real experts, TSA employees.” McCollum agreed.

“I fly in and out of a lot of airports, and every airport is different,” McCollum said. “But the one thing I know is consistent is the professionalism and the training (of TSA officers). If this starts being privatized, it’s going to be scattered all over. You can come in with the lowest contract? That’s not who I want watching out for my constituents when they fly.”

Local 899 Treasurer Neal Gosman said privatization threatens to undermine TSA officers’ healthcare and pension benefits and their wage standards. But it would also come at a price to accountability, which officers take seriously.

“It takes years to get someone trained up fully; to replace us all with a privatized workforce would be a tremendous loss to federal security,” Gosman said. “The message that we learned after 9/11 is that we aren’t just here to do airport security, we’re here to do national security. That is the oath that we take as federal employees, and we do that work every day.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Community, Politics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Resident physicians call on U of M to get serious in first-contract talks

September 25, 2026 by

Dr. Schuyler Gaillard, a resident in the U of M Medical Center’s internal medicine and dermatology programs, describes first-contract talks as “antagonistic.”

Residents at the University of Minnesota Medical Center are fed up with their employer’s “antagonistic” approach to bargaining a first union contract, and asking for public support in pressuring the U of M to settle a fair deal.

Resident physicians and fellows formed their union with the Committee of Interns and Residents, a Service Employees (SEIU) affiliate, in March 2025. The bargaining unit brings together nearly 1,000 medical-school graduates who treat patients under the supervision of a senior physician while training in specialized care.

Contract negotiations with the university began over a year ago, and union members’ demands include fair wages, better health and dental benefits, and a matching contribution to their retirement savings, as well as language that codifies protections for immigrant and LGBTQ staff members.

But during a press conference last month outside the U’s East Bank hospital, union members said the employer has failed to match their sense of urgency at the bargaining table – slow-walking the process “to the point where they have been union-busting,” CIR bargaining team member Schuyler Gaillard said.

The third-year resident, training in internal medicine and dermatology, offered several examples of bad-faith bargaining by the university, including an attempt to schedule sessions in the middle of the workday without allowing members of the bargaining team paid time off to attend.

The U also has flatly refused to discuss some union proposals, while its own have often been insulting. Supriya Reddy, a resident in the pediatrics program, recalled being among 100 CIR members who showed up to a session where university administrators made their initial wage offer.

“They sat in front of over 100 of us and offered a 1% raise, less than the cost of inflation,” Reddy said. “Moreover, they proposed broad fiscal emergency language that would allow them to get rid of the raises entirely under any circumstances they choose.”

As the university drags its feet at the bargaining table, Reddy said, she and other resident physicians continue to struggle with widespread burnout, understaffing, workweeks that sometimes exceed 80 hours and the rising cost of living – not to mention the burden of a debt load that averages $250,000 for medical school graduates.

“We are proud of the care that we provide to our patients, but it is increasingly harder to be the best version of ourselves,” Reddy said.

A first contract that improves residents’ working conditions, Gaillard added, will improve patient care, too.

“We took an oath to protect our patients, and that starts at the bargaining table,” she said. “We won’t settle for anything less than what we need to continue to provide quality care for our patients.”

Resident physicians and fellows at the U of M Medical Center are asking members of the public to sign onto their petition for a fair first contract at act.seiu.org/a/umn-cir-community-petition.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Organizing, Union Events Tagged With: , , , ,
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