With talks stuck in low gear, Metro Transit workers seek public support

December 17, 2020 by

Members of ATU Local 1005 demonstrated outside as their bargaining team met with Metro Transit in October. The action succeeded in pushing the agency off its demand for a one-year contract with no wage increases. (ATU photo)

Members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 have authorized a strike, held informational picketing and, most recently, petitioned the governor – all in an effort to shift their contract talks with Metro Transit into higher gear.

The union of 2,350 transit operators and mechanics entered bargaining this summer looking to address health and safety concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those discussions have yet to take place, Local 1005 President Ryan Timlin said, despite the union’s pressure campaign.

“The actions we’ve done have had an effect,” Timlin said. “We’ve seen a little bit of movement, but not nearly enough, in our opinion. The Met Council and Metro Transit are still dragging their feet.”

It’s not unusual for contract talks at Metro Transit – or any public agency – to progress at a deliberate pace. But Local 1005 members say this round of talks warrants greater urgency.

Transit workers are seeking clear language ensuring access to personal protective equipment and hand sanitizer at Metro Transit facilities. They want language ensuring paid leave for workers who come into contact with the coronavirus on the job.

Union members want hazard pay, too.

In a letter to Gov. Tim Walz sent Dec. 7, Timlin called transit operators “Minnesota’s forgotten front-line workers,” even though many essential workers rely on public transit to get to and from their jobs.

Between boarding stops, Timlin said, the air inside Metro Transit buses is trapped and recirculated from the back of the bus to the front. Light-rail trains have slightly better airflow.

Sharing confined, modular spaces with the public has almost certainly put transit operators at high risk for contracting the coronavirus.

“We’ve had quite a few of our members get COVID,” Timlin said. “We haven’t had a death yet. We’ve been lucky. But I use the word ‘yet’ because I fear it’s going to happen down the road with how susceptible the workforce is.”

ATU members voted overwhelmingly in September to authorize their bargaining team to call a strike. At that time, Metro Transit was demanding a one-year contract with no wage increases or hazard pay, rather than the normal two- or three-year deal.

While the pandemic has reduced fare revenue, Metro Transit is partially funded by a tax on new car sales, which have increased during the pandemic. The Met Council, which oversees the agency, also has had access to pandemic-relief funds through the CARES Act.

Metro Transit management changed its tune Oct. 26 and agreed to discuss a longer-term contract, after transit workers and their supporters rallied outside the Bureau of Mediation Services offices in St. Paul, where representatives of the two sides were meeting.

Since then, the union has been ramping up public pressure on Metro Transit’s general manager, Wes Kooistra, as well as members of the Met Council. The union says it has delivered over 10,000 emails to Met Council members and 500 phone calls. (Click here to send an email supporting Metro Transit workers.)

But their concerns have fallen on deaf ears.

“We are not eager to strike, but we are preparing for that eventuality, in the name of safety and justice,” Timlin wrote in his letter seeking Walz’s help. “We need someone to intervene, to compel Metropolitan Council members to do their jobs with the same vigor we do our own.”

The governor’s office acknowledged the letter, Timlin said, and was working to set up a meeting.

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Smith earned labor endorsement in Senate race with hard work

October 28, 2020 by

Terry Nelson (L), Painters and Allied Trades District Council 82’s business manager, leads Sen. Tina Smith and Susan Kent, the Minnesota Senate’s minority leader, on a tour of the union’s apprenticeship center in Little Canada.

During Tina Smith’s first week as a U.S. senator, after Gov. Mark Dayton appointed her to the seat in December 2017, Smith traveled to Duluth, where she met with workers and retirees fighting to save their pension fund.

The Central States Pension Fund, with some 400,000 participants, had recently announced it would run out of money in the next 10 years, putting at risk the earned benefits of 273,000 retirees, mostly former Teamsters.

Smith remembers meeting one union member at the event who said she didn’t think she could afford to retire without her pension. “I don’t have a Plan B,” she told Smith. “That’s my only plan for making sure I can stay in my house, that I can pay my bills.”

Smith was officially sworn into office a month later. Since then she has made pension reform one of her top priorities, signing on as a supporter of the union-backed Butch Lewis Act. And from her seat on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Smith has raised awareness of the looming crisis Central States and other funds face without federal action.

But the encounter in Duluth stuck with Smith, she said, both as an example of the “deep economic inequity” plaguing our country and as a reminder of what the junior senator from Minnesota tries to prioritize in Washington, D.C.

“It was so motivating to me,” Smith said. “Here are people who did everything they were supposed to do. They paid into the pension, and their employers did, too. And yet there were members of Congress … trying to shirk the responsibility we have to protect people’s pensions.”

Smith has been on working people’s side throughout her career in politics, and working people are on her side as she seeks re-election – with the labor endorsement – to her first full term in the Senate.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy said Smith shares union values, like “dignity, justice and freedom for working people.” Jessica Looman, executive director of the Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council, called Smith an ally of union tradespeople and all working people.

“As the former lieutenant governor of Minnesota, she understands what the workers in our state need, and has been an effective voice for Minnesota in Washington,” Looman added.

Being on labor’s side is “everything to me,” Smith said.

Sticking up for workers

Growing up in a politically active family, Smith said, she developed an early respect for the powerful role unions play in advocating for all working people. And after graduating from high school, she learned firsthand the benefits of carrying a union card.

Smith worked that summer as a bull cook on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Crews had to be flown into Prudhoe Bay, where they worked 12-hour days for six weeks straight before getting two weeks off.

“That was how the contract was negotiated,” Smith said. “Everybody wanted to go up there and just work like hell and then come home again. But because of that experience, because of being a member of a labor union, I was able to help put myself through college.”

Smith hasn’t stopped working hard since entering politics. As former Gov. Dayton’s chief of staff and, later, lieutenant governor, Smith has focused on leveling the playing field for working people – the same way unions do, she said.

“Certainly, labor unions stick up for their members, as well they should. But they stick up for regular folks doing jobs that are not organized too,” Smith said. “It’s that advocacy for a higher minimum wage, for paid family leave, for health care people can count on.”

Tina Smith meets with postal employees outside the Eagan distribution center.

A record of trust

Union leaders are quick to point out highlights of Smith’s work since Minnesotans voted to keep her in office two years ago.

• Weeks after that election, the federal government shut down. When it reopened in January 2019, following the longest shutdown in history, lawmakers agreed to repay federal employees for their lost wages.

But they left out federal contract workers, including many people in low-wage jobs like food service, custodial and security work. Smith authored a bill to make those forgotten workers whole, but the Republican majority refused to take it up.

• Later in 2019, Smith introduced the 21st Century Workforce Partnerships Act, which would encourage relationships between businesses and high schools to provide students the skills they need to find good-paying jobs and careers, including work in the union construction trades.

• This summer, when members of postal unions approached Smith with concerns that President Trump’s new postmaster general was making drastic changes that slowed down mail delivery, Smith used her position to sound the alarm. She and other elected officials questioned the postmaster about the impact his moves would have on election integrity. And it helped generate enough public outcry to get the administration to back off on further reforms for now.

More challenges await

But Smith wants to see Congress do more for working families, particularly with no end to the COVID-19 pandemic in sight. “We still have work to do,” she said, to keep workers, businesses, schools and local governments afloat.

After hearing from working parents and employers in Minnesota that a shortage of child care has only gotten worse during the pandemic, Smith teamed up with Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to write a bill that would invest $50 billion in expanding access nationwide.

“Child care is like the infrastructure we need in our communities for families to really be able to function,” Smith said, noting that the measure would also boost pay for child-care providers. “These are predominantly women, often women of color, and they often are making barely $20,000 a year. That’s not even enough to take care of their own families.”

Smith also believes Congress should craft an “industrial and manufacturing strategy” that puts the nation in a position to address the climate crisis – and, in the process, create jobs that are “clean and green and strong.”

And to make sure those jobs guarantee workers the right to join together, Smith supports the union-backed PRO Act, which would add teeth to nation’s outdated labor laws.

In it for the long haul

That’s a long to-do list, but union members who have worked closely with Smith don’t see her backing down.

Just ask members of Teamsters Local 120 who worked at Lakeville Motor Express. When the local trucking company closed abruptly in 2016, stiffing workers out of two weeks’ worth of wages, Smith, lieutenant governor at the time, blasted the company publicly and helped launch an official investigation.

“In my experience if Tina Smith does not say, ‘This is just like stealing from these workers, and I am paying attention to what is happening here,’ then Lakeville may have succeeded,” Local 120’s Paul Slattery said.

It took two and a half years, but Lakeville Motor Express agreed last year to a $1.25 million settlement that provided lost compensation to its former workers.

“Sometimes you have to be in the fight for a long time,” Smith said. “You don’t get immediate gratification, but you have to keep on fighting.”

And Smith said she is still fighting for that pensioner she met three years ago in Duluth, doing it the only way she knows how.

“I put my head down, I get the work done and I get results,” she said.

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

Labor values are lived, not learned for union members on the 2020 ballot

October 28, 2020 by

Members of labor unions make the best labor-endorsed candidates. Fortunately for working families, several union members are running for office this year with the Labor 2020 endorsement.

“We know that when union members hold public office, they champion our values and work hard to shift the balance of power for working people,” said Bill McCarthy, president of the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

A power shift is exactly what Josiah Hill, an English teacher in the Stillwater school system, has in mind with his campaign to represent Senate District 39, which straddles the St. Croix River in Washington County.

Republicans hold a narrow, three-seat majority in the Senate, and they have used it to thwart progress on “environmental protection, public-school funding and expanding access to affordable health care coverage,” Hill said. Unseating his incumbent opponent would be a step toward a labor majority in the chamber.

Hill has served six terms as president of his union, the St. Croix Education Association. It’s an experience he considers the “perfect training exercise” for the Legislature because it involved reaching compromise, not scoring political points.

“I’m solutions focused,” Hill said. “I’m not interested in short-term wins. The work I’ve had to engage in makes it necessary to listen deeply to all parties and to find solutions that allow us to move forward with the resources available.”

Like Hill, Erin Preese is a union educator vying to unseat an incumbent. Preese’s work teaching English-language learners in the Lakeville schools has informed the type of legislator she hopes to be for the residents of House District 58A.

In fact, it’s why she’s running in the first place. Two years ago, as a member of the Lakeville Education Association’s committee on government relations, Preese paid a visit to her House representative – now her opponent – to advocate for fair funding of public schools.

“It was frustrating,” Preese remembered. “Our current representative, he has two daughters in private school, and sometimes it’s hard to understand life experiences that are not your own.”

Preese said she plans to continue teaching in Lakeville if she wins Nov. 3, with a leave of absence during the legislative session.

“The decisions made at the Capitol have real effects on people here at our school, on their everyday lives,” she said. “Working will help me stay grounded. I think maybe if you’re at the Capitol too much you can get caught up in the politics.”

Jim Swenson makes a point of keeping politics out of the City of North Branch’s business. A member of Local 110 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Swenson is seeking reelection this fall to a second two-year term as the Chisago County community’s mayor.

North Branch is growing, and Swenson’s focus has been on making that growth sustainable for everyone. Building permits are up over 250% this year, and the city has seen 96 new homes built already in 2020. A 48-unit, income-based housing development has opened, and last year the city added a 20-unit apartment complex for people struggling with mental-health issues and homelessness.

In August, Gov. Tim Walz visited North Branch to present the city with a “Telecommuter Forward!” award for its efforts to expand broadband internet access citywide – something of critical importance to workers during the pandemic. During the ceremony, Swenson said, he pulled Walz aside and touted the nonpartisan, community effort that led to North Branch’s success.

“This is the way government needs to work, with two people from totally separate parties working together,” Swenson told Walz. “Can you believe that? It’s the way government should work – for the people.”

Bringing people together is, of course, what unions do. So it should come as no surprise Swenson and other candidates with union backgrounds are good at it. As a member of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) for the last six years, House District 58B candidate Sara Wolf has seen firsthand the power of collective voice.

“It’s telling that when the topic of health insurance comes up and someone says, ‘I’m union,’ everybody knows that it means they have good insurance!” Wolf laughed.

Kaela Berg, a flight attendant seeking office in House District 56B, remembered how she felt upon joining her union, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, 17 years ago. It was “a spark that was ignited that became a fire in my belly for fighting for working families,” she said.

Since signing that union card, Berg has taken an active role in local movements for economic and environmental justice, serving a stint as director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition. Now she’s ready to go to work in the Legislature, fighting to advance the priorities she and all labor-endorsed candidates share, like accessible health care, fully funded schools and economic opportunity for everyone.

“They aren’t just legislative talking points to me,” Berg said. “They are my lived experience. I’m passionate about a Minnesota that works for working families.”

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

Walz signs historic infrastructure bill from Ironworkers’ training floor

October 21, 2020 by

Gov. Walz signs a $1.88 package of infrastructure investments into law.

In a ceremony held on the floor of Ironworkers Local 512’s apprenticeship training center today, Gov. Tim Walz signed into law a $1.88 billion package of infrastructure investments that will create thousands of jobs for union tradespeople across Minnesota.

The bill also keeps open the Willow River and Togo correctional facilities, a top priority of the state’s largest public service union, AFSCME Council 5. And it provides a long-sought emergency rate increase for the state’s home care workers, members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota.

The measure passed both chambers of the Legislature during a special session last week, drawing bipartisan support.

The largest bonding bill in state history will fund local projects in both the metro and greater Minnesota, including transportation infrastructure, affordable housing and water-treatment and higher-education facilities.

Walz likened the projects to the property improvements homeowners might make, but on a much larger scale. “It’s the most important investment you make,” he said. “You don’t let it run down.”

The governor also thanked the Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council and its member unions for convincing enough legislators to support such a robust bonding package.

“They did the hard work of getting this thing across the finish line,” Walz said. “And now they’ll do the actual work” of building and repairing the state’s buildings, roads, bridges, water systems and more.

Local 512 apprentice Travis Strugis gives Gov. Tim Walz a demonstration on the union’s training floor.
Walz and Local 512 Apprenticeship Coordinator Josh Kalina celebrate the largest bonding bill in state history.
“Today, when Gov. Walz signs this bill, we really, truly are one Minnesota,” Ironworkers Local 512 Business Manager Barry Davies says.

Bonding is traditionally a legislative priority in even-numbered years, and lawmakers were progressing steadily toward a bill during the regular session – until the COVID-19 pandemic derailed their progress.

Since the regular session adjourned in May, Walz has called lawmakers into special session each month. But until last week members of the House Republican caucus withheld their support for the jobs-creating infrastructure bill, hoping to pressure Walz into giving up his emergency powers during the pandemic.

Barry Davies, Local 512’s business manager, noted that tradespeople would still be waiting for an infrastructure investment had 25 House Republicans not broke with their caucus’ leadership to support the bill last week.

“Today, when Gov. Walz signs this bill, we really, truly are one Minnesota,” Davies said.

Bonding bills sustain jobs in the construction industry, added Operating Engineers Local 49 Business Manager Jason George.

“We needed this bill,” George said. “The global pandemic has created economic uncertainty for next year, and this bill eliminates a lot of that uncertainty for our work in Minnesota.”

“This bonding investment is necessary for our communities, workers and our economy,” said Jessica Looman, executive director of the Minnesota Building Trades Council. “Construction workers across the state are breathing a little easier today, knowing that there will be jobs coming so they can keep working to provide for themselves and their families.”

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The emergency rate increase for home care, meanwhile, came after home care clients and workers, members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, staged rallies in the streets outside the Capitol in the days leading up to the special session.

The rate increase rewards workers on the front lines of the pandemic response, providing care that helps tens of thousands of Minnesota seniors and people with disabilities live safely in their homes.

The home health industry suffers from a critical shortage of workers, and SEIU members and their clients have been campaigning for years to improve pay and benefits to make the job more attractive.

Robin Pikala, a home care worker and SEIU member from Fridley, called the bipartisan vote “an important step,” toward the respect workers and clients deserve.

“But this temporary support during the peacetime emergency is just a stopgap,” Pikala added. “We have so much work left to do.”

The special session wrapped up Oct. 15, less than a month before Election Day. Every seat in the Legislature is up for election in 2020.

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President Trump is taking aim at Social Security

September 29, 2020 by

By Buddy Robinson, special to The Union Advocate

You wouldn’t know it from watching the news, but Social Security’s future is on the ballot in 2020. If President Trump is re-elected, it’s clear that he will try to greatly weaken and even eliminate Social Security. That’s despite his repeated – but hollow – claims to protect it.

This should not come as a surprise. When he first ran for president, as a Reform Party candidate in 2000, Trump said he wanted to privatize Social Security, calling it a “Ponzi scheme.” He wanted to eliminate guaranteed benefits and have people gamble on the stock market instead. He also promoted raising the age requirement for full benefits up to 70.

After starting to serve as president in 2017, Trump’s budget proposals each year have sought large cuts in funding for Social Security disability. His latest one, for fiscal year 2021, seeks to cut $75 billion over 10 years from programs that benefit people with disabilities (over half of whom are 55 or older). This includes $10 billion in Social Security Disability cuts, plus plans to reduce the number of people enrolled by about 5 percent. That would be accomplished with harsher work rules that determine who can qualify. Another cut is to lower the initial retroactive benefit that people get when they first go on Social Security Disability. It currently is 12 months retroactive, but Trump wants to reduce it to six months.

His budgets have also included cuts for Social Security’s administrative expenses. That translates into fewer offices, shorter hours, fewer staff and longer times to process applications to get on Social Security, or even to get answers to simple questions.

Don’t be fooled by Trump’s focus on Social Security just for people with disabilities. People on regular retirement Social Security better worry, too. Trump’s 2021 budget proposal talks about a need to “reduce the rate of increase” in Social Security payments. That sounds like code words for reducing the annual Cost Of Living Adjustment, increasing the age to start getting benefits, reducing the initial benefit formula – or maybe all of the above.

When you think about the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic effect on families and workers, the importance of Social Security becomes all the more apparent. The recession that accompanies our pandemic in the U.S., worsened by Trump’s botched response, will depress future Social Security benefits for an estimated 4 million Americans who become eligible in 2022, because of the severe drop in average wages nationally. According to a study by the Center for American Progress, their benefits will be about $1,428 per year lower than if the pandemic had never happened.

Trump has done something with Social Security in light of the pandemic: He is allowing businesses to forego collecting their employees’ Social Security payroll taxes from September through December. After that, those missing taxes would have to be collected and paid. Not surprisingly, few businesses are choosing to follow this option. To get a four-month vacation from the payroll taxes, only to have to pay them back, doesn’t make any sense.

Trump has said that, if re-elected, he will consider doing away with the payroll tax altogether. If that were to occur, and no other revenue source were found to replace it, then we already know the result. Social Security’s chief actuary has testified that if this happens, all Social Security disability benefits will cease in mid-2021, and all Social Security retirement benefits will cease in mid-2023.

What was he thinking? Despite his coyness, we can see what Trump really wants: his long-held dream of destroying the current Social Security system and turning it into a privatized gamble. Andrew Biggs, who helped write President George W. Bush’s ill-fated privatization proposal, explained recently that Trump’s ideas can lead to changing Social Security into two parts: a small, income-tax-funded benefit for only the poorest, and private investment accounts for everyone else. So, Trump really looks at the pandemic as a way to further his goal of wrecking and privatizing Social Security. We all need to be seriously concerned – and vote accordingly this November.

– Buddy Robinson is former staff director of the Minnesota Citizens Federation Northeast. In recent years, he has worked with the Minnesota State Council of Retirees, AFL-CIO, on Social Security and other issues.

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

As new school year draws near, unions push districts for answers

August 24, 2020 by

Members of the White Bear Lake Area Educators rally before a school board meeting, urging the district to delay its plan to return to in-person classes.

As school districts across Minnesota prepare for a school year unlike any other, the union members who work in public education are pushing for a voice in decisions impacting their health – and the health of their communities.

State guidelines announced by Gov. Tim Walz in July set the ground rules for reopening public school buildings during the COVID-19 pandemic, but allow districts leeway to craft their own protocols.

What should not be optional, unions say, is collaboration and communication with their employees. But in several districts across the metro, union members are calling out administrators for looking past workers’ concerns as they push forward with plans to reopen.

“The communication that is received by staff and families is vague at best and non-existent at worst,” said Karin Hogan, an educator in the White Bear Lake Area Schools, where union members rallied before the school board tonight.

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“Educators are feeling extremely wary, scared and nervous about going back to school because of all of our unanswered questions surrounding safety, consistency, and educational quality,” Hogan said.

Until they get specific answers to those questions, union members want administrators to pump the brakes on in-person learning, set to begin Sept. 8 with a hybrid approach that combines in-person and at-home learning. In a survey of union members, 74% said they prefer distance learning to start the year.

“Our union is appreciative of the cooperation that the administration is currently showing with our negotiations committee. It is more than many other districts,” Hogan said. “However, it is not enough to address and alay our concerns.”

Unions representing school employees initially praised the governor’s reopening guidelines as data-driven and based in science.

But Denise Specht, president of Education Minnesota, stressed that readying school buildings would take a “tremendous amount of work,” and she cautioned local districts against settling for “safe enough” to meet arbitrary deadlines for starting classes.

“We know we have a lot of work to do before school can start this fall,” Kelly Gibbons, president of SEIU Local 284, added. “We are committed to doing everything in our power to make sure every district in the state, no matter what their plan may be, is putting the health and safety of students, staff and our communities before everything else.”

Already, local unions are reporting problems.

A White Bear Lake school board member listens as one of the district’s educators explains her concerns about plans to reopen school buildings.

Under Walz’s executive order, districts are required to accommodate staff members with health conditions that put them at elevated risk to COVID-19.

But Specht has said she is “deeply troubled” that educators’ requests for accommodation haven’t always been taken seriously. In a public statement, she listed several examples of complaints – some “plainly illegal” – Education Minnesota has heard from its members.

“We can and must do better,” Specht said. “Education Minnesota calls on school districts in this state to be model employers.”

The American Federation of Teachers has authorized educators to go on “safety strikes” during the pandemic as a last resort in efforts to secure certain protections on the job. But some metro districts are doing better by their employees without large-scale worker mobilizations.

In St. Paul, where the coronavirus cut short a contentious educator strike in March, administrators not only invited members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators to join work groups charged with planning for the fall semester, but took their input seriously, SPFE President Nick Faber said.

“Most of the discussion was around hybrid and returning to classrooms, what it would look like to go back,” Faber said. “It seemed like every time we answered a question or concern, it just opened up 50 more. It was just not logistically possible to do it safely.”

Tiffany Dittrich, president of the White Bear Lake Area Educators, speaks at the rally.

The St. Paul Public Schools will begin the school year with remote learning for all students, a move Faber characterized as the least-bad option on the table for SPFE members.

“Our members aren’t crazy about having to go back to teaching over a computer screen, often while their own kids are in the house somewhere,” he said. “But they know this is the safest way.”

Other metro-area school districts, including Roseville and Bloomington, have recently come to similar conclusions, postponing their initial plans for in-person classes due to safety concerns.

Tiffany Dittrich, president of the White Bear Lake educators union, hopes her district will do the same. Two weeks ago, she presented administrators with a list of over 100 questions about the safety and quality of instruction under the district’s back-to-school plan. Most remain unanswered, Dittrich said.

“I’m proud of the tireless work of our district leaders and teacher leaders throughout the entire summer to set the stage for our return this fall,” she said. “Yet there is much work that must still be done … and time is running far too short.”

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

In meeting with Smith, postal employees pledge to ‘go the extra mile’ to ensure mail-in ballots count

August 18, 2020 by

Tina Smith meets with postal employees outside the Eagan distribution center.

As U.S. Sen. Tina Smith met with postal workers, letter carriers and reporters outside the sprawling mail distribution center in Eagan today, a pickup truck exiting the facility slowed to a stop near the crowd. The driver lowered her window and barked out a brief message for Smith before speeding away.

“Thank you, senator!” she yelled. “Give him hell.”

That’s exactly the treatment new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has received from Smith and other Minnesota DFLers over the last month, as structural changes at the USPS have slowed down mail delivery in many parts of the country and, just 11 weeks from Election Day, cast doubt on the agency’s ability to accommodate a vote-by-mail surge during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I have been hearing from many, many of my constituents about mail that is late, that is unreliable,” Smith said after an inspection of changes at the Eagan facility. “And that’s not the fault of the people who work so hard inside that building. That is the fault of the chaotic approach and rapid-fire change we’ve been seeing at the federal level.”

In response to criticism from both Democrats and Republicans, DeJoy issued a statement shortly before Smith’s scheduled tour, announcing that the Postal Service would put further restructuring plans on hold through Election Day.

“That doesn’t give me any great confidence,” Smith said, adding that she worries DeJoy shares President Donald Trump’s “politicized” view of the Postal Service. “It makes me wonder what their true intentions are.”

The USPS Board of Governors, stacked with six Trump appointees, tapped DeJoy to serve as postmaster general May 6, and he took office in June.

For DeJoy, who has contributed millions to Republican candidates and over $1.2 million to the Trump Victory Fund, it was his first job with the public Postal Service after a 35-year career in the private shipping industry. He and his wife recently held investments of between $30 and $75 million in companies that compete directly with USPS – a blatant, but not illegal conflict of interest.

Union leaders warned DeJoy’s appointment was like putting a fox in charge of the hen house, and he has done little in the last two months to prove otherwise.

In July, DeJoy announced processing facilities like the one in Eagan would hold onto mail not sorted in time to meet strict distribution schedules, a move he described as necessary to curb overtime pay. Previously, drivers and postal workers would work in tandem to move as much of the day’s mail off the shop floor before closing the truck gate, ensuring timely, dependable delivery.

Todd Elkerton, president of the APWU’s St. Paul branch, speaks during a press conference outside the Eagan facility.

“We were taught if that mail doesn’t go out the next day, we were going to get in trouble,” said Todd Elkerton, president of the American Postal Workers Union in St. Paul. “Now we’re seeing it happen. It’s being directed from above. And we’re really having a hard time dealing with it.”

Meanwhile, the Postal Service has removed 671 sorting machines from stations across the country, leading to further delays. And photos of mailboxes ripped off the streets in several communities spread widely on social media last week, prompting more public outrage.

The Eagan facility has lost seven sorting machines since the restructuring began, Elkerton said. It’s not the first time he has seen machines “tarped” – or taken out of service – during periods of low mail flow, but it is more than Elkerton has ever seen at once.

So far, postal workers in Eagan have been able to keep disruptions in mail service to a minimum. But the facility was understaffed before the restructuring, and the sorting machines Eagan lost were capable of processing nearly 5 million pieces of mail per day. Elkerton and Joe Malkush, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers in St. Paul, said that doesn’t bode well for the inevitable increase in mail volume.

Smith and other federal lawmakers from Minnesota have demanded DeJoy reverse the changes, alarmed by reports from constituents whose medications have been slow to arrive by mail.

Rep. Angie Craig, a DFLer who represents Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District, sent a letter to DeJoy and Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie, Jr., earlier this month, noting that the VA fills nearly 80% of veterans’ prescriptions by mail.

Joe Malkush, president of the St. Paul letter carriers union, say if his members can deliver the mail on time for the holidays, “we can do it during the election.”

“I will not stand by and watch these recent attempts to politicize, dismantle and delay postal services, which put the lives of more than 330,000 veterans every day at unnecessary risk,” Craig said. “The politicization of the Postal Service is a grave disservice to the hardworking employees of the Postal Service and puts American veterans in harm’s way.”

In May, Craig and 4th District Rep. Betty McCollum voted with other House Democrats to keep the agency afloat during the pandemic with $25 billion in emergency funding, part of the HEROES Act. Trump and Senate Republicans have balked at the amount.

The president has acknowledged the emergency funding would improve the agency’s ability to handle mail-in voting, which he opposes. “They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business.

Further stoking election-related fears, the Postal Service sent letters to 46 states warning that mail-in ballots may not be delivered in time to be counted. But local postal employees said they remain confident every ballot cast through the mail here will be delivered to election officials on time – “even if we have to go the extra mile,” Elkerton said.

Delivering the mail, Smith quipped to reporters, is embedded in postal employees’ DNA.

“We do it during Christmas,” Malkush added. “We can do it during the election.”

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

Senate GOP ousts MN labor commissioner, plays politics with worker health, safety

August 13, 2020 by

In a surprise move yesterday that troubled Minnesota’s union leaders and outraged the DFL minority, Senate Republicans voted to oust the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry’s acting commissioner, Nancy Leppink.

Her removal threatens to undermine ongoing efforts, led by Leppink in collaboration with labor and industry leaders, to keep workers safe and healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic, union leaders warned.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy, the state’s highest-ranking union officer, called the party-line vote a “slap in the face to working Minnesotans.” Joel Smith, president of LIUNA Minnesota and North Dakota, said the firing “will make workers less safe.”

Gov. Tim Walz appointed Leppink to serve as labor commissioner after taking office in January 2019, but she, like several members of Walz’s cabinet, had not been confirmed via floor vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Majority Leader Paul Gazelka (R-Nisswa) stunned DFLers by putting Leppink’s confirmation on the Senate agenda yesterday, as lawmakers held a special session required to extend Walz’s state of emergency during the pandemic.

Minority Leader Susan Kent (D-Woodbury) said both she and the governor’s office learned of Republicans’ plan to vote not to confirm Leppink in a text message Gazelka sent just minutes before bringing her appointment to the floor. The ambush effectively prevented Leppink’s supporters preparing arguments in her defense.

“None of us in the minority had any expectation that this was going to be an issue in today’s session,” Sen. Dick Cohen (D-St. Paul) said, adding that the surprise confirmation vote was “in contrast to how we’ve handled things” since he joined the Senate in 1987.

Others from Cohen’s caucus were less diplomatic.

Sen. Jason Isaacson (D-Shoreview) called the move “bush league.” He questioned whether Senate Republicans, who have voted repeatedly to curb Walz’s emergency powers during the pandemic, were exacting political revenge.

“You look at the pedigree (Leppink) brings to the table – the professionalism, the experience,” Isaacson said. “And then you look at the ridiculously long list, bipartisan list … who unanimously endorse Commissioner Leppink…

“It leads me to wonder, why would you do this? Is it because we didn’t get our way, and now we’re mad? Is it because the governor hurt our feelings?”

After accepting a position in Walz’s cabinet, Leppink relocated from Geneva, Switzerland, where she worked as branch chief for the International Labour Organization, overseeing efforts to improve worker protections in 187 member states.

But St. Paul is where Leppink began her career as a watchdog for workers’ rights 34 years ago, advancing from the state Attorney General’s Office to a position as chief general counsel in the labor department. She served under both Republican and DFL governors. Later, she went to work in the Obama administration as a leader in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.

In less than two years as commissioner, Leppink has drawn praise from unions and industry groups for her department’s approach to workforce development, particularly when it comes to expanding registered apprenticeship opportunities statewide.

Additionally, Leppink has sought to modernize the department’s enforcement of wage-and-hour standards, including Minnesota’s historic wage theft law, which Leppink championed last year. The department recently secured nearly $315,000 in total back-wages owed to 70 construction workers on a project in Thief River Falls, where a subcontractor violated prevailing-wage, overtime and other wage rules.

But during debate on the Senate floor yesterday, Gazelka and other Republican senators said Leppink had not been accommodating enough to the state’s business owners.

“The Department of Labor and Industry is expected to be responsive and not a hindrance to state’s businesses,” Gazelka said, claiming his caucus has heard “case after case of harassment” from constituents interacting with the department. “She’s in the wrong role.”

Every Republican who spoke in support of removing Leppink was quick to offer assurances that the decision was not being made lightly – even if it was being made without warning.

“I take this very seriously,” Sen. Carrie Ruud (R-Breezy Point) said.

“This is a serious issue we take up,” added Sen. Jason Rarick (R-Pine City).

“We do take this very seriously,” Assistant Majority Leader Karin Housley, of Stillwater, insisted. When the Senate Jobs Committee issued no recommendation on Leppink’s confirmation during a meeting six months ago, Housley added, “that was the notification right there” that yesterday’s floor vote was coming.

DFLers remained unconvinced. Sen. Scott Dibble (D-Minneapolis) pleaded with Republicans not to throw the agency in charge of protecting workers’ health and safety into chaos during a public health emergency, just “to get a shot off at a chief executive with which you are unhappy.”

Whatever victory Republicans achieved with yesterday’s vote, Minnesota Building and Construction Trades President Harry Melander said, came at the expense of working people.

“In these uncertain times, difference of opinion is healthy, but this kind of unproductive posturing in government serves no one and creates anxiety for our members,” Melander said. “Minnesota workers should be put first, but today’s action by the Senate put workers last.”

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

As GOP plays politics with infrastructure bill, tradespeople warn their jobs hang in balance

July 21, 2020 by

Fred Livingston, a member of LIUNA Local 563, speaks at a Capitol press conference on the bonding bill.

If Minnesota lawmakers treated their jobs as seriously as the state’s union tradespeople treat theirs, Gov. Tim Walz would be signing a bonding bill this week.

That’s the message Minnesota’s Building and Construction Trades unions brought to the Capitol in St. Paul today, hours after legislators adjourned a second special session without investing in infrastructure and local jobs.

“Construction workers put in long, hard, exhausting hours, and we get the job done well,” said Fred Livingston, a former Marine who joined Laborers Local 563 after reentering civilian life. “We take our jobs very seriously.

“My brothers and sisters and their families hope lawmakers come back to the table, sit down, roll their sleeves up and do whatever is required to get this bonding bill passed … so we don’t have to tell our families we lost our jobs.”

Infrastructure bonding bills authorize the state to borrow money for investments in local water-and-sewer systems, roads, bridges and public buildings. It is traditionally a priority for lawmakers during even-numbered years like 2020, when they are not working on the biennial state budget.

Bonding, however, requires support from two-thirds of the House and Senate, and this year Republican lawmakers have used the measure as a bargaining chip in efforts to force Walz to call off the state of emergency he’s declared to respond quickly to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Led by Minority Leader Kurt Daudt, House Republicans held firm to that stance early this morning. They voted in lockstep to block a package of more than $1 billion in local projects that would have created an estimated 12,000 jobs and generated $3 billion in economic impact, according to an analysis by the Building Trades.

Jason George, business manager of Operating Engineers Local 49, said Daudt and his caucus “chose to fight with the governor instead of creating good jobs in Minnesota. That’s just something I don’t understand.”

The political standoff comes at a delicate time for both the construction industry and the state’s economy, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause uncertainty.

Employment in Minnesota’s construction industry has remained steady so far during the pandemic, union leaders at the Capitol said, but there are signs of trouble ahead.

Minnesota Pipe Trades President David Ybarra said several significant projects have been delayed or canceled since the economic downturn, while design and engineering firms warn of a slowdown in demand for their services.

“It goes without saying that if architects and engineers are not seeing projects, our members will be without work eventually,” Ybarra said.

State lawmakers may get yet another crack at the infrastructure bill in August, when Walz would need to call the Legislature back into session to extend his emergency powers.

That gives union tradespeople a glimmer of hope their representatives may finally do the job right – even if it’s not done on time.

Keoudon Yang, an apprentice with the Electrical Workers union, said it’s “unfortunate that state leadership, in these challenging times, will not do their part.”

“This has been one of the most uncertain years and our future feels unpredictable at best,” Carpenters Local 930 apprentice Benjamin Statz added. “We need the Legislature to do their part and chart a strong path forward for young trades workers.”

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

Excluded from unemployment benefits, hourly school workers speak out: ‘It is insulting’

July 16, 2020 by

School employees on the video press conference (clockwise from top-left): Teresa Jakubowski, Ronnie Sprigler, Rochelle Stoffel, Sieara Washington and Kelly Gibbons.

For decades, hourly school employees in Minnesota have been fighting to change a state law that restricts their access to unemployment insurance benefits, but to no avail.

Now, school bus drivers, paraprofessionals, teaching assistants and support staff across the state are being left behind as unemployment benefits, bolstered by $600 per week through the federal CARES Act, keep many Americans from slipping into poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is insulting we aren’t treated the same as other workers when it comes to unemployment,” Sieara Washington, an education support professional in the Osseo school district, said. “It’s really telling us how they feel about ESPs. I guess we aren’t valuable enough.”

Washington spoke out during a virtual press conference hosted today by four Minnesota unions that represent hourly school employees: Local 284 of the Service Employees International Union, Education Minnesota, AFSCME Council 5 and Teamsters Local 320.

Union members called on state lawmakers, who began a special legislative session Monday, to take emergency action providing relief for hourly school employees, who are simultaneously dealing with the uncertainty of what their jobs will look like – assuming they exist at all – in the fall semester.

Kelly Gibbons, president of SEIU Local 284, said hourly school employees want both “short term solutions and long-term structural change.”

While construction workers, landscapers, resort workers and other seasonal employees are eligible for unemployment, school employees are not, according to the state’s unemployment statute, provided they have a “reasonable assurance” of returning to work in the fall.

“I think it’s discriminatory,” Gibbons said, noting that hourly positions in school districts are “more female-dominated” than other seasonal jobs like construction. “We’re being excluded from the law, so I think it’s not equitable. I don’t think it’s fair.”

Meanwhile, union stewards on the press call described the mounting financial pressures facing hourly workers, some of whom have been out of work since March.

Local 320 steward Ronnie Sprigler, a teaching assistant in the St. Paul Public Schools, said the sudden loss of income has been “catastrophic” for many of her fellow Teamsters, particularly single parents. Sprigler, herself a widow who cares for a disabled son, has incurred “serious debt and quality-of-life issues” as a result of the pandemic.

“But I also know that I am far from alone,” Sprigler said, noting that calls have been streaming in from distressed co-workers. “There’s a level of mental and emotional damage happening to people I hear from every week.”

Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan bus driver Teresa Jakubowski, a steward with Local 284, said that while she’s able to weather the storm by taking on debt, others without access to credit have faced heartbreaking decisions. One member of her bargaining unit recently sold her mother’s engagement ring for cash, Jakubowski said, and another couldn’t afford to replace her broken-down car.

“Food and rent are the biggest worries,” Jakubowski said. “We are frustrated, and we are fearful.”

AFSCME steward Rochelle Stoffel, a middle-school office clerk in St. Paul, said she gets “calls and emails constantly” from members in a panic about their unemployment status.

“They thought because programming was cancelled and they lost their position, they would receive unemployment, only to find out they’re in a pending status, with no help or estimation from the unemployment office when or if they will see a benefit at all,” Stoffel said. “It’s a terrible feeling.”

As painful as the last three months have been for hourly school employees and their families, union members on the press call said they were hopeful the crisis would finally lead to action, which workers like Gibbons have been pressing lawmakers to take for decades.

“I don’t think it’s any coincidence that this law applies to jobs that are traditionally done by women and people of color,” Gibbons said. “But this work is way too important to be treated this way. We need action from our state leaders.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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