The voice of Saint Paul's working families since 1897
A protest planned by retail janitors today outside Best Buy’s corporate headquarters turned into a celebration after executives agreed to partner with workers on efforts to ensure people who clean the company’s stores have safe and fair working conditions. The agreement, reached late last night on the eve of Best Buy’s annual shareholder meeting, […]
A St. Paul charter school’s campaign to deny employees a voice on the job reached a new low yesterday, when administrators announced a wave of staff cuts eliminating several key areas of classroom programming and decimating the union’s bargaining team. The number of teachers and support staff let go remains in flux, union leaders said […]
In contract negotiations with Allina, union nurses are standing together to defend their health insurance. And outside the health care provider’s Minneapolis headquarters today, the community showed it’s standing with nurses. Informational picketing of Allina Commons drew hundreds of nurses, who arrived in busloads from five metro-area Allina facilities. Supporters from the community, including […]
Katie Quarles, a nurse at United Hospital in St. Paul, was among 40 union members who answered the call for volunteers to take action Saturday in support of a $15 minimum wage in Minneapolis. “Fighting for higher wages for working people is what the labor movement does,” Quarles said before knocking on doors in Minneapolis’ […]
Union members in the Twin Cities plan to keep the heat on Verizon this week with two more actions in support of the company’s 39,000 striking workers in the Northeast U.S. Solidarity actions are planned from noon to 2 p.m. May 11 outside Verizon’s store at 474 Hamline Ave. N. in St. Paul, and from […]
Nearly 40,000 Verizon workers in the Northeast have been on strike for more than three weeks now. Their supporters in Minnesota will stand in solidarity tomorrow, a national day of action, outside the telecommunications giant’s Roseville location. The rush-hour action, from 4 to 6 p.m. at 2325 Fairview Ave. N, will call out Verizon for […]
Nurses and hospital workers today added their voices to the call for guaranteed access to earned sick and safe time for all workers, urging members of the Minneapolis City Council to take up a robust citywide ordinance when they meet Thursday. It’s estimated 42 percent of Twin Cities workers don’t receive earned sick and safe […]
Members of the Building Trades paused yesterday in St. Paul to honor members of their unions who died as a result of work-related injuries or illnesses in the previous year. The annual Workers Memorial Day ceremony was to take place at the Workers Memorial Garden on the Capitol grounds, but organizers moved the event indoors, […]
Workers Memorial Day is observed each April 28 because President Richard Nixon signed the OSHA law on that date in 1970. He called it the most significant legislation for working people enacted in American history. The new workplace-safety law was the culmination of decades of work by unions and safety advocates to reduce on-the-job deaths […]
Union employers, apprenticeship programs and community service agencies set up shop on St. Paul’s East Side last night, recruiting talent from the distinctly working-class neighborhood and beyond at the Union Jobs and Resource Fair. Many Latino, Hmong, Karen and East African families call the East Side home, and the job fair, organized by the St. […]
Union Advocate 