Unions backed comprehensive immigration reform bill 10 years ago … and still do

May 1, 2014 by
The Union Advocate ran this cartoon in May 1964, celebrating an agreement brokered by President Lyndon Johnson to end a four-and-a-half-year dispute between railroad companies and their unions. In an address to the nation, Johnson praised both sides, and called the agreement a victory for collective bargaining. “I tell you quite frankly there are few events that give me more faith in my country and more pride in the free, collective bargaining process,” he said.

The Union Advocate ran this cartoon in May 1964, celebrating an agreement brokered by President Lyndon Johnson to end a four-and-a-half-year dispute between railroad companies and their unions. In an address to the nation, Johnson praised both sides, and called the agreement a victory for collective bargaining. “I tell you quite frankly there are few events that give me more faith in my country and more pride in the free, collective bargaining process,” he said.

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 key part of the Alliance for Fair Federal Immigration Reform of Minnesota, and they announced their support for the “Safe, Orderly Legal Visas and Enforcement Act,” or SOLVE Act, which “focused on family reunification, earned legalization and reducing visa backlogs,” The Advocate reported.

[The Union Advocate’s “This Month in the Archives” feature offers a look back at what the newspaper was reporting from 5 to 100 years ago. Our digital archives are online, searchable and free to anyone. Click here for access.]

100 Years Ago: Call for public market in St. Paul

Farmers and consumers would benefit greatly from the establishment of a municipal marketplace in St. Paul – that was the conclusion reached in a report printed on Page 1 of The Advocate on May 29, 1914.

“Investigations in various places have shown that the cost of distributing food after it reaches the city is excessive and bears very heavily upon the consumer.”

Transportation costs – rail and shipping – were not to blame for high costs, the report determined. Rather, “the real problem is distributing the products after they reach the city. There are too many middlemen, and there is too much speculation and altogether too much waste.”

“Every large city should have a market municipally owned and operated, capable of handling train loads and equipped with adequate machinery for handling and cold storage facilities ample to care for any surplus of perishable goods. From this market produce could be sent directly to the retail stores or sold in retail market stalls directly to the consumer.

The report noted such markets were rare in the U.S., but pointed to successfully operated markets in European cities like Budapest, Brussels and London.

“We see the farmers everywhere organizing to get higher prices for their crops… The farmers are determined to take for themselves the profits that now go to the middlemen… If consumers would get their food for less cost they must organize for that purpose. Great terminal wholesale markets may furnish the machinery for serving the consumer, provided the consumer owns and operates those markets either by cooperation or municipal enterprise.”

75 Years Ago: Veterans sue governor over firings

Fifteen members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees who were war veterans sued the State of Minnesota after being discharged from state jobs without cause shortly after Gov. Harold Stassen’s inauguration in January 1939.

The union, according to a report in the May 11 edition of The Union Advocate, accused Stassen and members of his administration of “officially and personally maliciously” conspiring to remove the veterans from their positions with the Disabled War Veterans’ Relief Agency.

“On January 31, 1939, during office hours and without previous notice, moving men from the State Relief Agency came to the office where these men were employed and moved the desks, equipment, and records from under them,” The Advocate reported. “A number of the veterans, whose duties were outside of the office, came to work the next morning and found their desks, records and equipment were gone as well as their jobs.”

Other state employees were growing “panicky,” according to The Advocate, that their jobs might be lost to political patronage.

25 Years Ago: Union gives Brown & Bigelow a lift

A year after fighting off demands for major concessions, unions representing workers at Brown & Bigelow, the St. Paul printing company, announced they had helped the company bring in new equipment to increase its productivity, efficiency and bottom line.

Officers of Local 1-M of the Graphic Communications International Union called it a remarkable turn of events, considering Brown & Bigelow President William Smith, after acquiring the company a year earlier, had immediately demanded a 10 percent wage cut and told workers to “take it or leave it.”

The company, which employed about 625 people at the time, installed $60,000 worth of plate processing equipment with assistance from the union. The equipment, provided on a loan basis, included a conversion unit for developing printing plates and an oven for baking and hardening them.

“The state-of-the-art units are faster, more efficient and safer than previous methods,” The Advocate reported.

Local 1-M officer Kevin O’Keefe struck an optimistic tone. “We are anxious to turn this thing around so we can bargain wage gains,” he told The Advocate.

Filed Under: From the Archives Tagged With: , , , ,

A stinging defeat on labor relations bill 75 years ago

April 3, 2014 by
web.archives-transitstrike

Transit workers ended their 44-day strike 10 years ago this month, after 72 percent of voting ATU Local 1005 members ratified a new contract with Metro Transit. Above: 6-year-old Nicholas Wagner attended his first union rally three days before the settlement.

The Minnesota Federation of Labor held an emergency special convention for the first time in its history April 3, 1939. On the agenda? How to defeat a labor-relations bill making its way through the Legislature that winter and considered by The Advocate to be “one of the most vicious anti-Labor bills ever introduced in the middle west.”

Known as the Vance-Myre bill, the measure reclassified some unfair labor practices as “unlawful acts,” making them misdemeanors punishable by up to 90 days in jail.

The bill’s opponents, including Rep. John Barrett, a member of St. Paul Steamfitters Local 455, called it an overreaction meant to “restrict the entire Labor movement for the overt acts of a few individuals or groups within the Labor movement.”

The measure passed on the final day of the legislative session, despite opposition from unions and lawmakers like Barrett.

“We should have left out any reference to unfair practices or unlawful acts leaving those exceptional situations to be dealt with under criminal code where they belong,” Barrett said.

[The Union Advocate’s “This Month in the Archives” feature offers a look back at what the newspaper was reporting from 5 to 100 years ago. Our digital archives are online, searchable and free to anyone. Click here for access.]

50 Years Ago: Hospitals stonewalled health workers

Gov. Karl Rolvaag named an impartial arbiter in April 1964 to help settle a dispute between five St. Paul hospitals and members of Hospital Employees Local 113, a forerunner of today’s SEIU Healthcare Minnesota.

By April 1964, the hospitals had been dragging their feet in contract negotiations with the union for 13 months. State law denied hospital employees, as well as state and local government workers, the right to strike – meaning Local 113 members’ options for taking action against the hospitals were limited.

“Most unions would call a strike,” The Advocate reported in its April 9 edition, but the “poor substitute” left for hospital employees was to seek arbitration, a move they made after a meeting the month before with hospital management broke down.

R.A. Olson, president of the Minnesota Federation of Labor, said the situation revealed a need to change the state’s laws to empower hospital workers and public employees with a full complement of rights on the job.

“They are forbidden to strike and are given nothing in exchange for their loss of rights,” Olson said.

25 Years Ago: Nursing home workers aired grievances

In a meeting with two members of the Minnesota Senate Finance Committee, about 80 nursing home workers, members of United Food and Commercial Workers, warned that low pay, poor benefits and threadbare staffing were eroding the quality of care in their facilities.

The meeting was organized by the Labor-Management Coalition for Quality Health Care.

One worker told senators she quit her nursing assistant job of nine years even though it meant a $2 per hour pay cut. “I couldn’t take it any more,” she said, noting workers often were assigned 15 to 20 patients at a time.

Sen. Don Samuelson told workers he didn’t anticipate a funding increase for nursing homes during the 1989 legislative session. The Legislature provided for a one-time, 3.5 percent increase in the previous budget, hoping nursing home operators would pass on the influx to workers.

But many of the non-union nursing homes “used it for workers’ compensation premium increases,” so many workers didn’t see a penny, he said.

web.archives-cartoon

Filed Under: From the Archives Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Delegates debated beer’s ‘intoxicating effects’ 75 years ago

February 3, 2014 by

This headline from The Union Advocate’s Feb. 16, 1939 edition immediately caught our eye: “Assembly Opposed To Defining Beer As Intoxicating.”

Turns out, the headline was a bit misleading. The article reported that St. Paul’s central labor body, the Trades and Labor Assembly, passed a resolution opposing a bill before the Minnesota Legislature to define so-called “three-two beer” – beverages with 3.2 percent alcohol content or less – as intoxicating.

Unions joined the brewing industry in opposing the measure, which would have placed limits on the sale of beer “for the benefit of the hard liquor interests.” Whiskey distilleries, The Advocate reported, were not nearly as unionized as breweries, which were “practically 100 percent union throughout the nation” at the time.

“Proponents of the motion declared that such a law would drive hundreds of places out of business by reason of high license fees with consequent curtailment of employment in the brewing industry,” The Advocate reported.

We’ll drink to that.

[The Union Advocate’s “This Month in the Archives” feature offers a look back at what the newspaper was reporting from 5 to 100 years ago. Our digital archives are online, searchable and free to anyone. Click here for access.]

75 Years Ago: Café owner accused paper of libel

The Advocate’s coverage of wage theft at a St. Paul eatery drew charges of libel from the establishment’s owner in February 1939.

Workers at Gentile’s Café, a union shop on Payne Avenue, signed sworn affidavits in support of The Advocate’s reporting, the newspaper reported in its Feb. 9 edition.

The affidavits confirmed owner Charles Gentile had forced employees to endorse the backs of their paychecks without seeing the amount on the front. Gentile would then cash the checks himself and return a different amount to the employees, “holding out whatever he thought the employee would approve through fear of losing his or her job.”

The claims of libel were strange, given that Gentile had already reached a settlement with the Hotel and Restaurant Employees union, which called for the café to pay $350 in back wages to its workers.

Just because Gentile had made things right with his workers, The Advocate argued, did not change the facts of the story.

“In publishing the story … the Union Advocate followed its usual course in giving publicity to an affair of vital importance to organized Labor,” The Advocate reported. “Such publications are made for the sole purpose of serving as a deterrent to others against chiseling on union agreements.”

Charles Gray, director of the Asian-American Free Labor Institute, AFL-CIO, gave a presentation at the University of Minnesota.

Charles Gray, director of the Asian-American Free Labor Institute, AFL-CIO, gave a presentation at the University of Minnesota.

25 Years Ago: Spotlight on child labor

The Union Advocate put a spotlight on child labor in its Feb. 20, 1989 edition, reporting on a speech delivered by Charles Gray, director of the Asian-American Free Labor Institute, AFL-CIO, at the University of Minnesota.

“Kermit the Frog, Mickey Mouse and the California Raisins can bring smiles to the faces of American youngsters. But in developing countries, these toys represent misery for the young girls and boys who spend long hours toiling to produce them,” Union Advocate Editor Barb Kucera wrote.

Gray’s speech detailed long hours, low wages and sweatshop conditions endured by children working in Asia’s developing countries, particularly China, Hong Kong and Thailand.

“An average work week for a 12-year-old girl in such a factory runs from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week. The girl receives a one-hour lunch break and often sleeps right on the factory premises in makeshift dormitories housing dozens, sometimes hundreds, of children.

“During the Christmas rush to get toy orders to the United States, the young workers have been ordered to put in 24-hour shifts,” Gray said.

International political pressure, he added, would be crucial to eliminating child labor, as it can help bring about the economic change that he called “the only real solution to the problem.”

“The real solution to child labor is prosperity,” Gray said. “The key is for Mom and Dad to have a job.”

100 Years Ago: Contractors pushed for ‘open shop’

St. Paul Carpenters Union Local 87 ramped up its efforts to strike an agreement for labor peace with the city’s Master Builders association in February 1914, and The Advocate’s Feb. 27 edition documented an exchange of letters between the two sides on its front page.

Representatives of the contractors’ group, however, declined the union’s offer to meet and negotiate a new agreement, prompting charges from the union they were pushing for an “open-shop” system.

Local 87 leaders warned the contractors – and the public – that such a push would be met with stiff resistance. “It is manifest that the Carpenters’ union is opposed to any disturbance in building trades activities in St. Paul this year, and if any upheaval or unpleasantness should come the Master Builders’ association will be wholly responsible for it.”

Filed Under: From the Archives Tagged With: , , , , , ,

St. Paul unions urged public boycott of ‘Nazi-made’ goods 75 years ago

December 1, 2013 by
web.archives-cartoon

A cartoon from the Dec. 8, 1938 Advocate, entitled “Ajax defies the lightning,” reveals growing concerns about German aggression.

Three years before the attack on Pearl Harbor that drew the U.S. into World War II, American union members declared economic war on Nazi Germany.

Unions in St. Paul scrambled in December 1938 to coordinate a local boycott of German goods after American Federation of Labor President William Green, speaking to a nationwide audience on CBS Radio, called upon union members to “intensify their militant action against the Nazi dictatorship until its victimization of the Jews is terminated.”

In fact, German goods had been on the AFL’s boycott list since 1933. The Union Advocate, in its Dec. 8, 1938 issue, noted one of Hitler’s first acts after the Nazis seized power was to arrest and imprison labor leaders.

But Green’s speech on CBS ramped up efforts to build support for the boycott among the general public, and labor leaders in St. Paul heeded the call.

The St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly named a committee to formulate plans and methods to make the boycott effective locally, The Advocate reported on Dec. 15.

“The action of the Assembly grew out of a resolution offered by Max Flushman calling attention to the vicious persecutions of Jews, Catholics, Masons and trade unions in Germany and seeking the co-operation of Labor in protesting the German atrocities.”

[The Union Advocate’s “This Month in the Archives” feature offers a look back at what the newspaper was reporting from 5 to 100 years ago. Our digital archives are online, searchable and free to anyone. Click here for access.]

100 Years Ago: Streetcar company draws rebuke

Want to operate your streetcars on public streets? Then you’re going to have to respect your workers’ rights.

That’s the standard labor unions in St. Paul asked elected officials to uphold in dealings with Twin City Rapid Transit after hearing reports the company was denying its workers living wages, reasonable hours and the right to organize.

The Dec. 19, 1913 edition of The Union Advocate reported the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly passed a resolution putting the streetcar company in labor’s crosshairs.

“The cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis have from time to time granted said corporation the use of their streets free of charge,” the resolution said. “Said company has, through its policy of preventing the organization of its employees, been able to pay the very cheapest wages, work its men long hours and grant them the poorest conditions.”

Unions called on lawmakers to refuse the company “any more favors or the use of any more streets” until the streetcar company ended its campaign to prevent workers from organizing for “such conditions as will enable them to better their condition and give their families greater opportunities for advancement and the enjoyment of a few of the good things of this world.”

50 Years Ago: Skill survey controversy

Chamber of Commerce groups on both sides of the Mississippi drew ridicule from organized labor in December 1963 for their refusal to endorse participation in a Twin Cities-wide employment-skills survey being conducted by the Minnesota Department of Employment Security.

The chambers argued participating in the survey might put businesses at risk of revealing sensitive information – an argument The Advocate called “unfounded” and “bordering on the preposterous” in a scathing Dec. 26 editorial.

“There are many special occupations in which the supply of workers is far short of meeting the demand,” The Advocate editorial argued. “And it is to find the answers to the questions of what skills are needed that the Twin Cities skill survey is being made.

“One Chamber of Commerce objection was that it opposed the study because it concentrated in the area of skilled and technical jobs, rather than unskilled jobs.

Has anyone heard of a great and growing demand for UNskilled workers? Does this objection by the Chamber make sense to you?”

10 Years Ago: ‘Do you hear what I hear?’

Walker Methodist Health Care Center was the Grinch, but members of Local 34 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees weren’t about to let management steal Christmas. They caroled outside the care center in December 2003 at the start of a five-year struggle waged by about 400 workers who voted for AFSCME recognition earlier that year. Workers finally won a contract in April 2008.

Pictured below are Local 34 members Cliff Robinson and Audrey Lennox, who, The Advocate reported, “were among those singing ‘Rudolph the Union Reindeer,’ ‘We Wish You a Union Christmas’ and other cleverly modified seasonal tunes.”

Cliff Robinson and Audrey Lennox sang "cleverly modified seasonal tunes” outside Walker Methodist in 2003.

Cliff Robinson and Audrey Lennox sang “cleverly modified seasonal tunes” outside Walker Methodist in 2003.

Filed Under: From the Archives Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Labor mourned JFK’s assassination 50 years ago

November 1, 2013 by

web.archives-kennedyThe Nov. 28, 1963 edition of The Union Advocate ran three front-page tributes to the nation’s fallen president, remembered as a great friend of organized labor.

St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly President Charles Rafferty said John F. Kennedy’s assassination Nov. 22, 1963 was a great loss for workers, but he added the president would want the nation to “renew and redouble our determination to carry out in full the great program on behalf of America and the free world” that he initiated.

“We can do no less,” Rafferty added. “He never failed us; we cannot now fail him.”

Another front-page article remembered Kennedy’s final appearance before a large union crowd, which came at the AFL-CIO national convention in New York earlier that month.

“I come here today, and I express my appreciation to the AFL-CIO which, in the 1960s, is attempting to do what its fathers did in the 1930s in supporting a program of progress for this country of ours,” Kennedy told delegates to the national convention. “So we ask your help not next year, but now.”

“Between Organized Labor and Kennedy there was mutual admiration and mutual support,” The Advocate reported, adding union leaders had little doubt he would be reelected the following year, regardless of whom Republicans nominated to run against him.

[The Union Advocate’s “This Month in the Archives” feature offers a look back at what the newspaper was reporting from 5 to 100 years ago. Our digital archives are online, searchable and free to anyone. Click here for access.]

75 Years Ago: Farmer-Labor party takes a hit

Liberals who had put their hopes in the fledgling Farmer-Labor Party were licking their wounds in November 1938, as the independent liberal ticket suffered a trouncing at the hands of conservative Republicans in statewide elections Nov. 8.

Two years earlier, Gov. Elmer Benson had been “swept into office with the greatest plurality ever given a governor in the history of the state,” but he received just 25 percent in his bid for reelection.

Benson’s defeat was the beginning of the end of the Farmer-Labor Party as political force in Minnesota, although it survives nominally as part of the DFL Party.

100 Years Ago: AFL Convention considers forming Labor party

The American Federation of Labor was by 1913 the nation’s largest and most powerful union federation, and its annual convention in Seattle during November of that year drew front-page coverage in The Minnesota Union Advocate.

Among the issues delegates debated at the convention was a plan, pushed by leaders in the Pressmen’s union, to establish a national labor party.

“The plan proposes to have the Socialist party, the Women’s Suffrage League, the Farmers’ National union, the brotherhoods of railroad men not affiliated with the (AFL) and the trade union organizations combine under a working agreement for joint action in the political field,” The Advocate reported Nov. 21.

The “radically extreme proposal” failed to make it past the convention’s Committee on Resolutions. “This declaration holds substantially that the time is not ripe for the formation of a labor party, but trade unionists should look forward to increasing political activity.”

Filed Under: From the Archives Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Darrow lectured on ‘labor question’ in St. Paul 100 years ago

October 1, 2013 by

Clarence Darrow was an attorney in transition when he traveled to St. Paul 100 years ago to give a lecture arranged by St. Paul labor leaders.

Although known nationally as a labor lawyer, Darrow had by October 1913 fallen out of favor with many of the country’s unions. Bribery charges, incurred while defending a pair of brothers accused of bombing the Los Angeles Times building three years earlier, had blemished Darrow’s reputation. He had taken the case at the behest of the American Federation of Labor, and though Darrow was not convicted of bribing jurors, he did agree never to practice law in California again.

Against that backdrop, St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly President John P. Walsh introduced Darrow to a crowd of thousands gathered inside a St. Paul auditorium, a scene depicted in great detail on Page 1 of The Union Advocate’s Oct. 3, 1913 edition.

Darrow, Walsh said, had “won all his triumphs in defense of the working people” and had shared “in the bitter persecution of which they are so frequently the victims.” As working people ask only for the opportunity to work for fair wages in decent conditions, Walsh added, Darrow “asks only a square deal in the great court of public opinion, and the magnificent audience that has assembled to hear him tonight shows he can depend on getting that in St. Paul.”

Darrow’s speech addressed the “labor question,” and according to The Advocate, it reinforced his reputation as “one of the greatest forensic and platform orators of our time and country.”

Darrow touched on topics ranging from the closed shop – “the tenet of unionism most bitterly opposed by the employers because it is the one most hurtful to their selfish purposes” – to legal protections for workers’ right to strike.

“The laborer strikes not for himself, but in sympathy with other toilers, fellow workers whom he does not know. This the lawyers and judges call crime. If the strike is selfish they deem it right, but if it is generous and in response to the sentiment of brotherhood, it is criminal.”

“Could anything,” Darrow asked, “but the smoked-glass conscience of lawyers and judges see it in that light?”

Despite the warm reception in St. Paul, Darrow would turn his attention away from labor law and toward criminal law and civil liberties in the coming years. He is most famous for the so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial,” the 1925 case in which he defended a man charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution in a Tennessee public school.

[The Union Advocate’s “This Month in the Archives” feature offers a look back at what the newspaper was reporting from 5 to 100 years ago. Our digital archives are online, searchable and free to anyone. Click here for access.]

Linda Kingman (left) and Amy Zimmerman made sure they were heard during an Oct. 30, 2003 demonstration outside the University of Minnesota’s Morrill Hall. Kingman was a striking AFSCME Local 3800 worker from the dentistry school; Zimmerman was a third-year student.

Linda Kingman (left) and Amy Zimmerman made sure they were heard during an Oct. 30, 2003 demonstration outside the University of Minnesota’s Morrill Hall. Kingman was a striking AFSCME Local 3800 worker from the dentistry school; Zimmerman was a third-year student.

10 Years Ago: U of M clerical workers strike

Clerical workers at University of Minnesota campuses in the Twin Cities, Duluth, Crookston and Moorhead went on strike Oct. 21, 2003, after rejecting a contract that would have increased their health-care costs, eliminated step pay raises and gutted protections for job security.

The strike, which lasted 15 days, affected more than 2,000 workers represented by AFSCME Locals 3800 and 3801.

“Striking workers called the university’s proposal a union-busting tactic that demonstrates the well-being of workers and their families is a lower priority to university officials than new stadiums; new buildings for corporate, biotech and agribusiness needs; and new gardens and flowers,” The Advocate reported.

The tentative agreement reached with the university to end the strike did not budge the university from its health-insurance plan, but union leaders claimed significant language victories, including a guarantee that laid-off clerical workers won’t take pay cuts when rehired. Step increases, which the university wanted to eliminate, were left mostly intact. And the union won lump-sum payments each year to help workers offset higher health costs.

25 Years Ago: Jackson stumped for Dukakis, Humphrey

Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke at labor event in St. Paul in 1988.

Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke at labor event in St. Paul in 1988.

After losing his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Rev. Jesse Jackson hit the campaign trail in support of Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis in October 1988. Jackson’s tour included an Oct. 19 stop in Minneapolis, where he “gave a much-needed boost to Dukakis forces in Minnesota, who have been disheartened in recent weeks by news stories and numerous polls that say Bush has the election wrapped up,” The Union Advocate reported.

Then-Vice President George Bush was campaigning to continue the policies of the Reagan administration – policies, Jackson warned, that would take the country backward by continuing to dismantle protections for workers’ rights, civil rights and women’s rights.

“The current administration has done nothing on the critical issues of poverty, healthcare and programs for children and, most of all, it continues to lie about the economy,” The Advocate reported.

“Yes, more people are working eight years later” (after Reagan’s election), Jackson said. “But there are more working poor people eight years later.”

Jackson also took the opportunity to stump for then-Attorney General Skip Humphrey, who lost his bid to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger.

“As Hubert Humphrey stood for us in 1948 – the acorn does not fall far from the tree – we should support Skip Humphrey in 1988,” Jackson said.

50 Years Ago: Battery strike ended

A nationwide strike at Gould National Batteries ended in October 1938, and 261 St. Paul-based members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers went back to work after four months on the picket line.

About 1,600 IBEW members across the U.S. voted to approve a new 30-month contract with Gould and end the strike – as well as a consumer boycott of the company and more than two dozen other corporations selling products made with Gould batteries.

The new contract, according to the Advocate, called for “substantial wage increases and increased fringe benefits.” Gould employees at the company’s two St. Paul plants voted 133 to 11 in favor of accepting the new pact.

Filed Under: From the Archives Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Fasts renewed commitment to grape boycott in 1988

September 1, 2013 by
After Cesar Chavez protested the effects of pesticides on farm workers and consumers, Minnesota-based elected officials pledged their support of the boycott. Breaking their fast after three days were, L to R, Lynn Gordon, Charles Bendar, Terry Gips and Michelle King.

After Cesar Chavez protested the effects of pesticides on farm workers and consumers, Minnesota-based elected officials pledged their support of the boycott. Breaking their fast after three days were, L to R, Lynn Gordon, Charles Bendar, Terry Gips and Michelle King.

In 1988 Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Workers leader, protested the poisonous effects of pesticides on grape farmers and their children by staging a 36-day fast. In solidarity with Chavez and the boycott of California table grapes, Twin Cities union members and elected officials launched a series of three-day fasts that fall.

Fasters included U.S. Rep. Bruce Vento of St. Paul, as well as state lawmakers Andy Dawkins and Karen Clark and St. Paul City Council Member Bill Wilson.

At a press conference announcing the fasts, participants pointed to a study showing more than 300,000 farm workers were affected by pesticides every year.

Elected officials at the news conference pledged to take political action in addition to fasting. The Minnesota-based Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture said it would seek state legislation to require country-of-origin labeling on imported food to identify countries that allow the use of pesticides that are banned or restricted in the U.S.

Chavez had concluded his fast Aug. 21, after losing 33 pounds and growing too weak to stand. “But his effort launched a renewed commitment to the four-year old grape boycott,” according to The Advocate.

[The Union Advocate’s “This Month in the Archives” feature offers a look back at what the newspaper was reporting from 5 to 100 years ago. Our digital archives are online, searchable and free to anyone. Click here for access.]

100 Years Ago: 6,000 marched on Labor Day

The Union Advocate, in its Sept. 4, 1913 edition, breathlessly described the 1913 Labor Day parade in St. Paul. At least 6,000 “faithful and enthusiastic adherents of the trade union movement” joined the parade that “thrilled and delighted the many thousands of spectators on the sidewalks along the route.”

Participants included Gov. Adolph Eberhart, St. Paul Mayor Herbert Keller and George E. Lennon, president of the St. Paul Base Ball and Amusement club, who “properly represented the sporting element in the community.”

The Advocate painted a lush, vivid picture of solidarity:

“Bright banners in many colors and rich in decorations vied with one another in friendly rivalry for spectacular effects. Tasteful uniforms of numerous designs, intermingling light and shade in harmonious blending and striking in their significance, gave pleasing variety to the dignified procession, and great bands of music at suitable intervals made hearts quiver and pulses quicken throughout the vast multitude that was at hand to see the stern hosts of organized labor out on dress parade.”

75 Years Ago: Retail organizing

In June more than 100 workers at Walmart stores nationwide went on strike to protest the retailer’s unfair labor practices – a courageous step forward at the most notoriously anti-union workplace in the nation.

Union organizing in retail workplaces got its start in St. Paul 75 years ago, when the Retail Clerks Protective Association Local 2 signed its first closed-shop agreement. The pact with U.S. Mail Order Company covered three downtown storefronts.

The company, according to the Sept. 29, 1938 Union Advocate, sold men’s work wear, sportswear and children’s apparel to the “working classes.”

“The new pact provides substantial wage increases, a 42-hour week, vacations and sick leaves on full pay, time and a half for all overtime, 20 percent discount on all items purchased by employees, full seniority rights and recognizes six legal holidays and three religious holidays,” The Advocate reported.

50 Years Ago: McCarthy addressed labor convention

In a speech delivered at the 1963 Minnesota AFL-CIO Convention, Sen. Eugene McCarthy lauded the labor movement’s “enlightened and constructive response to stubborn public problems of concern to all citizens,” and challenged labor “to continue to respond to the new challenges of today and tomorrow.”

McCarthy, who was serving the first of two terms in the U.S. Senate, gained nationwide prominence when he challenged President Lyndon Johnson in the 1968 Democratic primary. McCarthy was a progressive and an opponent of the war in Vietnam.

In his 1963 address to state AFL-CIO delegates, McCarthy urged cooperation between labor and management to solve the issues of the day, from increased automation to public education. McCarthy called it an “accommodation of interests” between labor and management.

“The major problems which face us in the ‘sixties – unused productive capacity, structural unemployment, increasing competition from other counties of the world – are problems which don’t set Labor and management against each other, but which must be met jointly,” McCarthy said.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke at Labor Day Extravaganza 2003 in St. Paul.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke at Labor Day Extravaganza 2003 in St. Paul.

10 Years Ago: Trumka in St. Paul for Labor Day

Running unopposed for a second term as president of the nation’s largest labor federation, the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka will be in the news a lot this September.

Ten years ago, however, Trumka spent the first Monday of September in St. Paul, headlining Labor Day Extravaganza 2003. Trumka’s remarks to the 3,000 people gathered on Harriet Island focused on the need to unseat first-term President George W. Bush, The Union Advocate reported in its Sept. 11 edition.

“This is the day … when we rededicate ourselves to taking back control of our government, taking back control of our workplaces and taking back control of our country,” Trumka said, calling Bush “the most anti-union, anti-worker, anti-family president this nation has ever seen.”

Although the 2004 election was more than a year away, Trumka promised unprecedented efforts in Minnesota and 15 other states to register, educate and mobilize union members and allies.

Filed Under: From the Archives

In negotiations on first contract, North Star Steel dropped anchor

August 1, 2013 by

North Star Steel approached “a new level of absurdity” in an attempt to avoid negotiating a first contract with 30 clerical and sales employees at its Newport facility, The Advocate reported in August 1988.

The workers had voted a year earlier to join the United Steelworkers, but management refused to bargain with the union. After the National Labor Relations Board ruled the company must sit down and negotiate with workers, the company announced plans to appeal the decision.

The Advocate projected the appeal would delay the collective-bargaining process by at least six months, calling it “an example of how the system can be used to stifle the rights of the people it is supposed to protect.”

Steelworkers organizer Mike Denardo put it this way: “They’re delaying us to death.

“With the money they’ve spent on fighting these few workers they could have given them a good first contract with good wages and benefits,” he added.

Unfortunately, the delay tactic lives on among anti-union employers. Look no further than HealthEast, which has been dragging out negotiations with nurses in its Home Care division since they voted to join the Minnesota Nurses Association three years ago. (See story on Page 7.)

North Star Steel dragged its feet into 1990, when the Steelworkers announced plans to target North Star’s parent company, Cargill, with a publicity campaign.

[The Union Advocate’s “This Month in the Archives” feature offers a look back at what the newspaper was reporting from 5 to 100 years ago. Our digital archives are online, searchable and free to anyone. Click here for access.]

Demonstrators targeted Walker Methodist in August 2003.

Demonstrators targeted Walker Methodist in August 2003.

10 Years Ago: Rally for justice at Walker Methodist

Speaking of employers notorious for stalling… In August 2003, more than 400 people marched down South Bryant Avenue in Minneapolis to a rally outside Walker Methodist Health Center, which dragged out contract negotiations with about 340 AFSCME members for nearly five years.

Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the national AFL-CIO, attended the rally. “If you’re not going to live up to the principles of the Methodist Church, why are you using the Methodist name?” she asked.

It was the beginning of a long contract struggle – one workers finally won in April 2008.

50 Years Ago: Labor leaders, Twins players team to lift spirits in children’s hospitals

Project2_Layout 1

Delegates to the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly joined Twins players in cheering up patients at two Twin Cities children’s hospitals in August 1963. Together, they distributed Twins souvenirs and “Miss Union Maid” dolls (dress, decorated with union labels, included!). From left: Assembly President Charles Rafferty (left) and Secretary-Treasurer E.D. McKinnon at Gillette State Hospital; Margaret Kelly of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers at the Shriners Hospital; and Mrs. Tobey Lapakko, chair of the assembly’s Human Rights Committee, at Gillette Hospital with Twins third baseman Rich Rollins, who “was as big an attraction as the gifts,” The Advocate quipped. “Rollins was still able to hold a bat after developing writer’s cramp autographing each of the Twins yearbooks handed out.”

75 Years Ago: Minimum wage faces legal challenge

A law establishing a minimum wage for working women, passed by the 1938 Minnesota Legislature, drew a swift legal challenge from owners of two businesses, a laundry in Detroit Lakes and a café in New Ulm, who claimed the law “would in effect bankrupt them,” The Union Advocate reported.

The plaintiffs filed suit in federal court, and a three-judge panel heard arguments in August 1938.

A number of “interveners,” including the Western Union Telegraph Company, joined the suit. According to The Advocate, these companies were eager to test the validity of the minimum-wage law, which established a sliding wage scale for women workers ranging from $11 per week in rural areas to $15 per week in cities.

The plaintiffs’ suit alleged the state’s industrial commission, in enforcing a minimum wage, “unlawfully, wrongfully, illegally and arbitrarily . . . deprived the plaintiffs … of their property without due process of law,” and in doing so violated the 14th Amendment.

The Minnesota State Federation of Labor said it would intervene to help uphold the minimum-wage law. Presumably, the federation took issue with the argument that laundry and café workers be considered “property” of their employers.

The justices deferred their decision, but the lawsuit was later withdrawn.

100 Years Ago: Plumbers love a parade

As has become customary in recent years, the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation will sponsor a marching unit in the daily parade through the Minnesota State Fairgrounds on Labor Day this year.

The event draws hundreds of union members from a wide range of RLF affiliate unions, from teachers and nurses to public employees and members of the Building Trades, all marching together behind Labor’s banner.

It’s a family-friendly, positive event, and – as an added perk – it comes with a free ticket to the State Fair for anyone who marches.

One hundred years ago there were no such enticements for union members in St. Paul’s Labor Day parade. In fact, it was less carrot and much more stick.

According to the Aug. 29, 1913, edition of The Advocate, Plumbers Local 34 was so “dead earnest in its determination to make its part of the Labor Day parade a great success” that it threatened members who failed to participate with financial penalty.

“Every member who fails to appear in the line without a reason that is satisfactory to the union will have to pay a fine of $5.”

Filed Under: From the Archives Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ten years ago immigrant freedom riders planted the seeds of reform

July 1, 2013 by
Minnesotans who participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides for civil rights were on hand to kick off the 2003 Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in St. Paul. Pictured from L to R are Marv Davidov, Zev Aelony, Claire O’Connor and Bob Baum.

Minnesotans who participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides for civil rights were on hand to kick off the 2003 Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in St. Paul. Pictured from L to R are Marv Davidov, Zev Aelony, Claire O’Connor and Bob Baum.

Immigration reform is on the front burner in Congress this summer, but 10 years ago immigrant “freedom riders,” including some from Minnesota, traveled to Washington to raise awareness of the need for reform, including a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers.

The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride kicked off its Minnesota leg with an event at the Neighborhood House in St. Paul on July 15, 2003.

Among the activists in attendance were four Minnesotans who took part in the historic 1961 Freedom Rides for civil rights.

[The Union Advocate’s “This Month in the Archives” feature offers a look back at what the newspaper was reporting from 5 to 100 years ago. Our digital archives are online, searchable and free to anyone. Click here for access.]

Standing in front of a yellow school bus decorated with signs and slogans, union officers, lawmakers and other coalition leaders spoke of the difficulties new immigrants face, according to a Workday Minnesota report in The Union Advocate.

That group included Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO. Chavez-Thompson was the first woman – and the first Hispanic American – elected to serve as an officer of the national labor federation.

“If the labor movement, if the AFL-CIO, doesn’t stand up … for immigrant workers, what can other workers expect of us?” Chavez-Thompson asked.

“The biggest shame of our country is that many folks have forgotten who they are,” said state Rep. Carlos Mariani of St. Paul. “They have forgotten they were, in fact, immigrants. They have forgotten the struggle of their ancestors. In doing so, they dishonor their ancestors.”

The Freedom Ride would leave the Twin Cities Sept. 28, reaching Washington later that fall before concluding in New York.

100 Years Ago: Paper strike in Little Falls

Violence shook the town of Little Falls in July 1913, when striking paper-mill workers scuffled with strike-breakers on the picket line.

A “special correspondent” from Little Falls provided Union Advocate readers with an account of the brawl. As strikers were on the picket line, a scab struck a picketer – “a little old man,” according to the account – on the head “with a piece of round iron 18 inches long, which he had concealed in his clothes.” The blow left a gash two inches long in the man’s scalp – and sparked violent retaliation from the victim’s union brothers.

By Aug. 1, however, many of the strike-breakers had grown disillusioned with the company and walked off the job, according to The Advocate’s correspondent. “This action has greatly demoralized the force yet at the mill, and the conditions in it are worse than when the strike began,” The Advocate reported.

“The managers of the mill are manifestly disturbed by the turn affairs have taken, as they have reason to fear the dissatisfaction which culminated in the walkout will spread and deprive them of the services of numbers of their other ‘scabs.’”

Striking workers, meanwhile, benefitted from the “liberal financial assistance” of unions across the state – as well as the moral support of their Little Falls neighbors.

“The power of local public opinion is beginning to show itself,” The Advocate reported. “The disinterested people of this community are with the strikers in sympathy and encouragement and insist that they shall be justly dealt with.”

75 Years Ago: St. Paul unions oppose voting machines

The St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly, which was at the time the East Metro’s central labor federation, took a stand in July 1938 against the City of St. Paul purchasing voting machines for use in public elections.

Delegates from two unions led the charge. Printing Pressmen’s and Assistants’ Local 29 feared installation of voting machines would deprive its members of work printing ballots for elections. Machinists Local 459 argued against the voting machines because none available on the market was union made.

“Other delegates argued in favor of the motion on the grounds that it would deprive a large number of people, who usually act as judges and clerks of election, of a certain amount of employment,” The Advocate reported. “The Assembly voted its opposition to the plan to purchase any of the machines and instructed the secretary to so notify the members of the city council.”

Filed Under: From the Archives Tagged With: , , , , ,

Looking back on a century of support for buying union in St. Paul

June 3, 2013 by

archives-1989In the same spirit of The Union Advocate’s annual Buy Union edition, in which we encourage union members to support businesses that hire union workers, publishers of the Minnesota Union Advocate urged readers to “Buy Bread With the Union Label” in their June 6, 1913, edition.

archives-1913They weren’t afraid to lay it on thick 100 years ago, either:

“All residents of St. Paul who prefer clean, wholesome and well-made bakery products to those of another character; all who like to see skill properly recompensed, pluck win its contests and men get a square deal all around; and all who believe in helping those who help themselves, should patronize the Co-operative Baking Company and buy its products only.”

The baking company, owned by organized labor, was in stiff competition with corporate bakers – a “gigantic monopoly,” according to The Advocate, that threatens the existence of the Bakery Workers’ union.

“The world is largely indifferent to the struggle, and so, in order to look out for their own interests and supply here wholesome articles of food in their line, the union bakers of St. Paul have organized a co-operative baking company,” The Advocate added. “They should have all the support men in other unions and their families can possibly give them.”

At right, check out the Co-Operative Baking Company’s ad in The Union Advocate, along with some other “buy union” ads from our pages over the last 100 years.

[The Union Advocate’s “This Month in the Archives” feature offers a look back at what the newspaper was reporting from 5 to 100 years ago. Our digital archives are online, searchable and free to anyone. Click here for access.]

archives-196375 Years Ago: Labor backs Benson for re-election

In June 1938 the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly passed a resolution affirming its support for Gov. Elmer A. Benson’s re-election campaign, and as the assembly’s official publication, The Advocate laid out the case for Benson in advance of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party’s June 20 primary election.

Most notably, The Advocate commended Benson, elected governor just 18 months earlier, for “barring the Pinkerton Detective Agency from the state.” The Pinkertons were a private security firm popular among businesses looking to infiltrate unions, intimidate workers and break up strikes.

Labor’s support made a big difference in the DFL primary, in which Benson eked out a narrow victory over former Gov. Hjalmar Petersen. The Advocate offered a theory as to why Peterson drew so many votes against an incumbent DFL governor: GOP subterfuge.

“That a large number of Republicans went into the Farmer-Labor primary to support Mr. Petersen was quite evident from the number of votes cast for the Farmer-Labor candidates for governor as compared with those cast for the Farmer-Labor candidates for lieutenant governor.” .

25 Years Ago: Compensation for AmHoist workers

About 200 displaced American Hoist & Derrick workers attended a contentious meeting in June 1988. At issue: how to spend $4 million AmHoist was forced to return to the City of St. Paul after it was determined the company had illegally used a federal grant to move its crane operations from Minnesota to North Carolina two years earlier.

In a “highly charged discussion,” according to The Advocate, workers expressed frustration that many remained unemployed. “Several … said lack of health insurance, the inability to find work and family emotional and financial difficulties are serious problems.”

Later that year, the task force would roll out the AmHoist Reemployment Action Project, a partnership between unions and the City of St. Paul to find jobs for the estimated 700 to 1,200 displaced workers who remained unemployed.

Former U.S. Rep. Bruce Vento was critical in forcing AmHoist to return the federal money to St. Paul.

Workers at AmHoist were members of the International Association of Machinists.

10 Years Ago: Grand Hotel dropped from union list

Speaking of buying union, UNITE HERE Local 17 dropped a Minneapolis hotel from its list of union-represented properties in June 2003 after three years of unproductive negotiations on a new contract for 50 hotel employees.

Local 17 President Jaye Rykunyk made the decision after the Minneapolis office of the National Labor Relations Board refused to order Grand Hotel owner Jeff Wirth to sign a collective bargaining agreement, which the union claimed he had verbally agreed to sign.

“Once the board sent that message,” Rykunyk told The Advocate, “there’s no reason for the employer to bargain in good faith. We view the board as being a completely useless entity at this point. In our view, the board has wholesale abandoned its responsibility to enforce the law”

Filed Under: From the Archives Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
Next Page»