The voice of Saint Paul's working families since 1897
Pushing back against an upswing in reports of Minnesota workers struggling to meet their employers’ increasingly irregular scheduling demands, a coalition of worker-advocacy groups today unveiled legislation to bring fairness to the state’s workplace scheduling laws. The House bill, authored by DFL Rep. Rena Moran of St. Paul, would require employers to provide hourly employees with […]
More than 100 activists gathered in a Minneapolis union hall last night to begin the work of raising the minimum wage within city limits to $15 per hour. Lest anyone suggest tempering expectations, 15 Now organizers invited Kshama Sawant, the city council member who spearheaded Seattle’s successful fight for $15 just over a year ago, […]
After another third-grade teacher at the Community School of Excellence in St. Paul “got fed up with some of the disrespect” and resigned last October, Eric Johnson saw the number of students in his classroom swell from 22 to 31. “The third-grade teachers, we agreed we’d absorb the kids,” Johnson said. “It’s better than the […]
Low-wage workers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport now have a voice on the airport’s governing body, thanks to Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton. Last week Dayton filled two vacancies on the Metropolitan Airports Commission, which owns MSP and six smaller airports in the Metro. One of Dayton’s appointees, Ibrahim Mohamed, works as a cart driver for […]
After receiving a petition signed by 225 employees based at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, managers at Airserv agreed last month to provide its workers with paper copies of their paycheck stubs. It was a small victory, but another step forward for a growing number of workers joining together to improve wages and working conditions at […]
The Communications Workers of America is rallying support for two members of the union who face criminal charges resulting from their participation in the massive protest against police brutality and racism at Mall of America in December. Todd Dahlstrom and Kandace Montgomery, members of the Minnesota Newspaper and Communications Guild, TNG-CWA Local 37002, are among […]
The East Side Freedom Library will mark Black History Month with a series of free, public programs at 1105 Greenbrier Street, St. Paul. “Brooklyn Castles” (flier). St. Paul Federation of Teachers Local 28 will co-sonsor a screening and discussion of the film, which follows students at an impoverished school who win national championships in chess, […]
The 2015 legislative session is nearly one month old, and Minnesotans are presented with a very different situation than we were in 2013 and 2014. While Gov. Dayton was reelected and a DFL majority remains in the Senate, Republicans now control the Minnesota House. With a DFL-controlled state government, Minnesota’s labor movement successfully advocated for […]
As debate swirled at the State Capitol in recent years over whether – and how much – to raise Minnesota’s minimum wage, lawmakers found themselves confronted with a question their own experts could not easily answer. How much do workers need to earn to meet their most basic costs? To zero in on an answer, […]
Lynn Barten stood up in a conference room Sunday morning in St. Paul and gave a stump speech for a campaign she isn’t running – not yet, anyway – before a roomful of people who couldn’t vote for her anyway. Barten, an AFSCME member from Alexandria, was one of more than 70 people who enrolled […]
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