The voice of Saint Paul's working families since 1897
Energized by the prospect of keeping a pro-labor president in the White House, union volunteers in Minnesota are hitting the streets, working the phones and planning a major presence at tonight’s precinct caucuses, one of 14 Super Tuesday nominating contests nationwide. [Click here to learn how to participate in the caucus process. Click here […]
Wayne Wittman, who served as chair of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation’s Community Services Committee for three decades, died unexpectedly Wednesday. He was 86. A passionate activist for peace and social justice, Wittman attended the labor federation’s first meeting at the new St. Paul Labor Center earlier this month. Today at the same labor […]
They may no longer be on the brink of a Supreme Court-imposed Right-to-Work rule, but Minnesota’s public-sector union members aren’t celebrating. They’re organizing. “What we got was a reprieve, not clemency – and surely not a pardon,” Education Minnesota attorney Meg Luger-Nikolai warned a standing-room-only audience of activists last night at the East Side Freedom […]
A union investment fund announced plans today to renovate an aging, eight-story office building in St. Paul’s Lowertown district. The project will create 134 market-rate multifamily housing units and an estimated 190 union construction jobs. The AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust (HIT) unveiled the $42.3 million project, dubbed “333 on the Park,” in a press release. […]
A day after union janitors walked off the job in an unfair-labor-practices strike, non-union janitors organizing with the Twin Cities-based worker center CTUL did the same, picketing early this morning outside Macy’s on the Nicollet Mall. It marked the seventh time in the last three years CTUL janitors, who clean big-box stores, car dealerships and […]
Union janitors are setting up picket lines across the Twin Cities today, raising the stakes in their fight to win a $15 minimum wage and address alarming workload issues. The one-day strike over unfair labor practices will impact nearly 200 office buildings in the area before the day is done, according to Local 26 of […]
Parents, students and community members rallied with members of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers outside school buildings across the city this morning, demanding progress in contract talks between SPFT and the St. Paul Public Schools, scheduled to resume tomorrow. Wearing hats and scarves in SPFT’s signature red, participants chanted and carried signs expressing […]
When President Obama called a Worker Voice Summit at the White House last October, he pledged his administration would hold regional summits across the country in 2016 to continue the conversation about common issues working people face on the job. The first of those summits took place in Minneapolis today – and with good […]
North Branch teachers rallied with supporters on back-to-back days this week, sending a clear message to school board members and administrators before contract negotiations resumed today. “We’re not in this alone,” industrial tech teacher Irv Geary said. “We’re all in this together. And it’s not just a teacher issue; it’s a community issue.” Geary, a […]
Most union security officers in the Twin Cities will earn at least $15 per hour – and future officers will be on track to do the same – under the terms of a tentative contract agreement struck late last night, according to union leaders. Local 26 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents more than […]
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