The voice of Saint Paul's working families since 1897
After waging a public campaign to gain parity with nurses at other Allina Health facilities in the Twin Cities, members of the Minnesota Nurses Association at Regina Medical Center in Hastings voted May 1 to accept a contract that comes up short in the areas of pension and health insurance – with a vow to […]
Cantaré Davunt nodded her head as Anne Winkler-Morey talked about struggling to make ends meet as an adjunct professor. To Davunt, the challenges adjunct faculty face – low wages, unreliable hours, few opportunities for advancement – sounded all too familiar to her experience as an associate at Walmart. Davunt and Winkler-Morey joined a panel discussion […]
No matter where you live, you can help members of the National Association of Letter Carriers “stamp out hunger” during the union’s 22nd annual food drive May 10. It’s easy to contribute to the nation’s largest one-day food drive. Just leave a bag – or two! – of non-perishable food at your mailbox May 10. […]
Untold Stories, the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library’s annual labor-history series, continues in May with its lineup of events focused on the struggles facing workers in the past and how they influence the issues of today. The free, public programs began last month and will wrap up May 14. A full programming guide […]
It’s hard to believe it’s been two decades since NAFTA went into effect – 20 years since I walked among abandoned factories in El Paso, Texas, and cement and tarpaper shacks in Anapra, a shantytown on the edge of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. In November 1993, as editor of The Union Advocate, I took part in […]
Democrats in Congress introduced legislation to provide a pathway to “legal residency” for an estimated 9 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. a decade ago. The measure drew support from unions, religious groups and immigrant organizations. Ten years later, of course, the fight for immigration reform continues. Unions 10 years ago made up a […]
In the early 1990s, Doug Williams was serving as president of Local 1140 of the International Union of Electrical Workers, an industrial union that has since folded into the Communications Workers. Williams and other union activists, particularly in the industrial sector, were in full campaign mode at the time, handing out fliers during shift changes, […]
U.S. Postal Service employees from the Twin Cities rallied with supporters April 24 outside a Staples store in Roseville, part of a nationwide day of action opposing plans to put USPS service counters inside Staples locations across the country. Already, 82 Staples stores in Georgia, California, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts house USPS service counters, and postal […]
The 40th anniversary of iconic civil rights leader Martin Luther King’s assassination April 4 was marked with vigils locally and across the country in support of the most pressing civil rights issue of today, immigration reform. The MLK vigils and the “Two Million Too Many National Day of Action” a day later drew support from […]
Work should be less dangerous. Fewer people should die or be injured at work. That’s why Canadian labor unions started the first Workers Memorial Day in 1985. They picked April 28 because it was the date Canada’s first workers’ compensation law was passed in 1914. Recognizing the significance of what the Canadians had begun, U.S. […]
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