Twin Cities Habitat workers vote to unionize with AFSCME

March 24, 2026 by

Workers at Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity have voted to form a union, becoming the newest group of nonprofit employees to organize with Council 5 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

The new bargaining unit brings together about 100 workers from Twin Cities Habitat and its lending subsidiary, TCHFH Lending, Inc. Members work in construction, real estate, the Habitat ReStore, resource development and other programs and services.

The National Labor Relations Board tallied results of the mail-in election March 17. The union prevailed 43-31, with eight void ballots and one challenged ballot.

The St. Paul-based employer and Council 5 released a joint statement from their leaders – Council 5 Executive Director Bart Andersen, Twin Cities Habitat CEO Chris Coleman and TCHFH Lending President Robyn Bipes-Timm – pledging to move forward together.

“Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity and AFSCME Council 5 believe every eligible employee deserves the opportunity to make their choice freely and privately, and Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity shared with staff that their decision would be supported no matter the outcome,” the statement reads.

“Our entities are fully invested in our team members. We are appreciative of the respectful approach and investment shown throughout this process from eligible employees, Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity, TCHFH Lending, Inc., and AFSCME Council 5, and we thank the NLRB for facilitating the vote.”

Twin Cities Habitat workers formally requested recognition of their union from management in late January.

The union launched an Instagram account around the same time.

The Twin Cities Habitat campaign is the latest in a string of successful nonprofit organizing drives supported by Council 5 in recent years, from legal-aid and health-outreach services across the region to cultural hubs like the Minnesota Historical Society, the Walker Art Center and the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Andersen, Council 5’s executive director, said unions across the country are seeing an “explosion” of interest from workers – and organizing to meet that demand.

“These workers are fighting to ensure they have a voice on the job and can collectively bargain for higher wages, better benefits, safety on the job and dignity and respect for the work they do to uplift our communities,” Andersen said. “Labor unions not only have a duty and responsibility to build our unions internally, but to also ensure we provide a space and support for unorganized workers to come to and help form a union in their workplace.”

Filed Under: Organizing Tagged With: , , ,

Washington County workers ready to strike for staffing, mental health benefits

March 20, 2026 by

Members of AFSCME Local 517 march together into the Washington County Board meeting March 24.

Members of a bargaining unit representing nearly 900 Washington County employees voted in late February to authorize a strike, demanding a new union contract that addresses understaffing and improves their access to mental-health benefits.

Local 517 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) delivered a petition with over 1,800 signatures to the Board of Commissioners this morning.

The bargaining unit brings together a range of county employees, from social workers and child support officers to workers who handle property records and maintain county facilities.

Local 517’s previous contract expired Dec. 31, although its terms remain in effect as talks continue. The two sides are scheduled to resume talks with a state mediator April 17.

Workers don’t want to strike, Local 517 President Benjamin Henry, an eligibility specialist with the county, said. But they do want the county to take their concerns seriously.

“As long as they’re willing to meet with us and work in good faith to come to an agreement that works for both sides, we have no intention of calling a strike at this particular time,” he said.

But Henry also noted that any work stoppage would cripple the county’s ability to deliver services because, as workers have been pointing out at the bargaining table, their departments are already stretched so thin.

“This county has been grinding people to the bone for countless years,” Henry said. “They run a skeleton crew almost everywhere. Even a loss of 40% of the workforce would be devastating.”

Burnout on the front line

The union’s top two demands – accessible mental health care and better staffing – are related. Backlogs in some offices, Henry said, stretch months longer than state guidelines recommend, leaving staff members to deal with the stress of increasingly frustrated clients and community members.

“It’s not a sustainable model,” he said.

As their ranks have thinned through attrition, the work many members of the bargaining unit are doing has become more complex. That leads to what Carrie Genereux, a chief steward and Family Services worker for the county, called “secondary trauma.”

“A lot of the folks we’re working with on a daily basis have experienced some trauma, and the people who are helping are also impacted by that,” she said. “It plays a major role in why the focus on mental health is so important right now… Our jobs are hard, and they’ve always been hard, but it’s a different level of hard now.”

After the bargaining unit lost three people to suicide in recent years – with another worker attempting suicide and co-workers calling for a wellness check on a fifth – Local 517 came to the bargaining table with a dozen proposals for removing barriers that union members said they encounter in accessing mental health care.

The biggest barrier is out-of-pocket costs, which have increased by as much as 40% in recent years, and workers say their employer-sponsored insurance plans rate among the least affordable for county employees in the region.

“The high-deductible plan is what most of our folks can afford,” Henry said. “And for an individual, you’re looking at $3,500 as a deductible before $1 is covered on anything… people are finding it difficult to spend $200 to $250 once or twice a week to meet with a therapist.”

‘It didn’t feel like a negotiation’

In the first mediation session Feb. 2, county administrators leveled up their wage proposal, matching cost-of-living increases extended to two other bargaining units. But the employer brushed aside Local 517’s proposals around staffing and mental health, demanding the union bring their proposal to membership for a vote.

“It didn’t feel like a negotiation to me,” Henry said. “It felt like, you’ll take it and you’ll like it.”

Members voted to reject the offer and, Henry said, sent a message to county administrators that “they are failing to acknowledge that these are significant areas of impact for our members, who are standing up for themselves.”

Indeed, Local 517 has seen a surge in interest since the contract campaign began. Genereux said a significant number of workers covered by the bargaining unit have since signed up to join the union.

“If we’re not taken care of, we can’t take care of the community,” she said. “Our members want to make sure we are staffed appropriately and we are able to manage our own lives in a way that allows us to do our jobs and show up and serve this community.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

For St. Paul city workers, bargaining shifted into high gear after Her took office

February 27, 2026 by

Members of AFSCME locals 1842 and 2508 held informational picketing three years ago during the mayor’s State of the City speech.

Clerical and technical workers at the City of St. Paul ratified new three-year contracts earlier this month after just three bargaining sessions, locking in wage increases that will ensure most union members earn $20 per hour by 2028.

Negotiations between the city and two AFSCME locals, which bargain in tandem on behalf of a combined 1,000 workers, progressed much faster than they did three years ago, when dragged on for six months, sparked informational picketing and required 60 hours with a state mediator.

Two key factors, union leaders said, contributed to the quicker resolution. Workers were fired up from the start to support their bargaining team, and St. Paul voters elected a new mayor, Koahly Her, who sought to get her relationship with city workers off on the right foot.

“Some things we can give the city credit for, and some things we can credit ourselves with doing well,” AFSCME Local 1842 President Isaac Mielke said.

In the end, the new contracts will deliver a $1 across-the-board wage increase April 1 and increases of 3% and 3.5% on Jan. 1 of the next two years. Workers also gained a floating holiday, bereavement leave and a deferred-compensation match.

What’s more, those gains came with no concessions, Local 2508 Treasurer Chelsea Beary said.

“What did we give up? Nothing,” she said. “We took back some of our initial proposals, but the city didn’t add anything. There weren’t any real carveouts or concessions, and we’re really proud of that.”

The relationship between AFSCME – the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees – and city leadership has warmed significantly since last fall, when administrators surprised city workers and their unions with a list of proposed changes to its civil-service rules that they planned to implement by year’s end.

The proposal, which administrators told union leaders they had been working on for about three years, sparked outrage – and action – among AFSCME members, who had already been organizing in opposition to then-Mayor Melvin Carter’s proposed staffing cuts at rec centers and a library.

Locals 1842 and 2508 began gathering support from city unions for a letter to council members opposing the civil-service changes, which would have doubled the probationary period, shortened the timeline for unions to file grievances and lifted guidelines for management in responding to worker complaints, among other changes.

“I think every city local was extremely concerned, and we all hit the ground running, talking to city council members to say this is not how you make these changes,” said Beary, an executive assistant in the Parks Department. “This is something we’re going to negotiate.”

Meanwhile, about 50 AFSCME members showed up to the city’s Truth in Taxation hearing Nov. 25 to oppose the staffing cuts.

“We wanted to do something proactive for these negotiations,” Mielke, a library associate, said. “It turned out, we got a lot of support from community members at that hearing, even people there to talk about other issues. And we won that budget fight.”

Unions won the fight over civil-service rules, too, and they took that momentum into contract talks with the city.

Labor Relations representatives were dismissive, Mielke and Beary said, of AFSCME’s proposals in two bargaining sessions before Carter left office, but that changed in their first – and only – session after Her’s inauguration in January.

“There was an immediate kind of visual change because the city literally brought us donuts,” Beary said. “We met for nine hours, but it became clear as the day went on that the city (representatives) were there to wrap this up.”

After union members voted to ratify the contracts, several members of the bargaining unit who were not signed up as AFSCME members showed their enthusiasm by joining the union, Mielke said.

“Right after we reached the tentative agreement, [Parks and Recreation] had their staff day, and we signed up 11 new members that day alone,” he said. “It’s really exciting.”

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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

Ramsey County workers fight to save detox services: ‘It’s life or death’

October 23, 2025 by

Community members rally outside the Ramsey County Detox Center.

Workers and community members staged a demonstration outside the Ramsey County Detoxification Center in St. Paul on Tuesday, protesting the county’s plan to wind down operations by the end of this year.

Members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) criticized county leaders for scrapping the Detoxification and Withdrawal Management program during a substance-abuse crisis in the community.

“It’s life or death,” said Randy, a peer support specialist at the facility who asked that his last name not be published. “I know for a fact that there are people, if we do close, that have less of chance of just surviving. That’s not to be dramatic, but there are people who are really going to be in dire straits without our program.”

[Sign AFSCME’s petition to save Detox Services here.]

Shutting down the detox program will trim about $2 million from the annual budget, according to the county, which plans to partner with community providers to deliver detox services moving forward.

Counties are required to ensure detox services are available, but not to run their own facilities.

But workers at the rally voiced concerns about what those partnerships look like in practice – and whether community agencies are ready to absorb the clients Ramsey County begins turning away Jan. 1.

“They continue to push the narrative that there will be plenty of community providers out there, but all of the community providers are still asking us, what are they going to do when this is done?” nurse supervisor Channa Peters said.

There are no other detox facilities in the east-metro area, Peters added, and surrounding counties already steer their residents in need of services to the St. Paul site, located near Regions Hospital. After it closes, the nearest detox center will be at 1800 Chicago Ave. S. in Minneapolis.

Randy, a steward with AFSCME Local 151, said he worries that potential privatization of the services Ramsey County currently provides could jeopardize access for unhoused, uninsured and underinsured people in the community.

“If you get somebody that’s for-profit to come in and do these services, where’s their motivation to serve those most vulnerable people?” he asked.

The closure will eliminate about 43 positions at year’s end. The layoffs are poised to hit about a year after the detox program ramped up hiring to confront the opioid epidemic.

Already this year, the program has made contact with 1,700 clients, and it is on pace to serve about 1,900. That’s up from 1,567 last year and 1,269 in 2023.

Still, the county says its in-house program “has underperformed expected financial targets year-over-year and has had significant deficits for several years.”

But staff members say those targets were never laid out clearly by management, while the county’s inability to hire nurses has forced it to pay contractors at a much higher rate, inflating the program’s expenses.

“We know that we’re not going to be a moneymaking program, but we’ve saved people’s lives,” Peters said. “We had people stand up at the last board meeting and talk about how  having a detox here has opened the door to becoming a homeowner in this county.”

Randy said he understands the financial challenges Ramsey County faces, “particularly with the cuts that we know are coming down from the federal level.” But he disputed the county’s characterization of detox services as ineffective or inefficient.

His message to county commissioners: “We probably are your best effective bet to do this if you can figure out a way to fund us. Have you done everything you can to figure that out?”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Union members at No Kings: ‘We have to show solidarity’

October 20, 2025 by

Union members gather outside the United Labor Centre in Minneapolis before walking together to “No Kings.”

At “No Kings” demonstrations across the state Saturday, Minnesotans turned their individual anger over the alarming, anti-democratic trajectory of President Donald Trump’s second term into a collective display of strength, unity and hope.

Many labor unions endorsed “No Kings” events both here and across all 50 states.

The Minnesota AFL-CIO, the state’s largest labor federation, teamed with three other groups to organize the peaceful march in Minneapolis that saw thousands clog downtown streets for several blocks Saturday afternoon.

Union members who joined the march cited a wide range of motivating factors. But they agreed that “No Kings” was an opportunity to leverage the power of solidarity against Trump’s far-reaching attacks – on federal workers and their unions, on democracy and the rule of law, on immigrants, on public services, on the LGBTQ+ community and more.

“I could keep going and going,” Education Minnesota Local 2209 member Beth Kowski laughed after beginning to list the concerns that inspired her to march Saturday.

Beth Kowski (L) and Education Minnesota retiree Marsh Jarvela.

Kowski, and educator in Intermediate District 287, joined a pre-march meetup for union members at the United Labor Centre in Minneapolis. After a brief rally, union members walked to “No Kings” together, forming a labor contingent of about 200.

“Unions have a collective power and voice that is crucial at this juncture,” Kowski said. “We have to be together and be firm in our conviction. Silence is complicity.”

AFSCME Local 2864 President Amanda Gustafson, who marched with fellow Hennepin County employees, agreed.

“We have to show solidarity with people who are seeing everything fall apart right now,” Gustafson said. “We see all of the communities that are being attacked, and many of us (in unions) are people who are members of those communities as well.”

That includes union members in the federal workforce. Trump has been attacking their jobs, their union rights and the services they deliver since January.

For Miranda Kiwelu, a program support assistant at the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis, seeing so many people reject Trump’s agenda at “No Kings” felt “amazing.”

“We definitely have support, but I don’t know that federal employees feel that way now because it’s been nonstop attacks left and right,” said Kiwelu, a member of American Federation of Government Employees Local 1969 who serves as a young-worker coordinator for AFGE District 8.

Union members cross the Third Street bridge together on their way to “No Kings” in Minneapolis.

“No Kings” took place on the 18th day of a government shutdown, which the Trump administration has used as an excuse to continue its attempts – illegally, according to AFGE and several courts – to slash federal payrolls, redirect spending authorized by Congress and inflict pain on Kiwelu and other federal employees.

“By the time this is done, we’re going to have 1.3 million federal employees out of a job or impacted,” she said.

But in extending the shutdown, Trump and Republicans who control Congress are also refusing to address steep cuts to Medicaid and to subsidies that keep health coverage affordable on public exchanges like MNsure.

Health care workers like SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa member Viktor Solberg said they were marching at “No Kings” for themselves and the people who rely on them for care.

“It’s not just our jobs, it’s the ability of our clients to live their lives,” said Solberg, who provides in-home care funded by Medicaid.

“Health care is being cut by billions, and we can’t stand for that,” pharmacy tech Kyle Johnson, also an SEIU member, added. “We’re standing up for our profession and the community at large.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Legal Services staff look to increase transparency in first contract

September 19, 2025 by

SMRLS workers, joined by labor allies, support their bargaining team on Day 1 of negotiations.

Newly organized workers at Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services entered negotiations on a first contract Wednesday in St. Paul, less than four months after voting to form a union with Council 5 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Workers held a brief, morning rally with supporters outside SMRLS’s St. Paul offices before the union’s elected bargaining team met with management at Minnesota’s longest-standing legal aid nonprofit.

Sarah Palm, a senior staff attorney based in Albert Lea, said increasing transparency at SMRLS was a main driver of the unionization push that began over a year ago, and it remains a priority in bargaining – particularly when it comes to wages.

“Nobody really knew what our pay scale is,” Palm said. “But we would like to get our wages to keep increasing. We’ve never had a COLA (cost-of-living adjustment).”

The union also hopes to establish basic rights in the workplace, codify benefits and remote-work rules, and expand holidays to reflect the cultural diversity in its bargaining unit, Palm said.

Bargaining could move quickly. The union’s negotiating team had sent management a full contract proposal before the two sides even sat down.

Negotiators modeled their proposal on existing union contracts at other legal aid providers, including Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid. Workers there formed a union with Council 5 in January 2024 and settled their first contract, with 14% wage increases, last June.

SMRLS’s new “wall-to-wall” bargaining unit brings together over 70 workers, including staff attorneys, support staff, accountants and development professionals at the organization, which provides services to low-income residents of 33 counties in southern Minnesota, including the Twin Cities’ east and south metro, as well as agricultural workers throughout Minnesota and North Dakota.

Paralegals at SMRLS have long been unionized.

Mario Solis, a member of the bargaining team who works as an attorney in SMRLS’ Agricultural Worker Project in Moorhead, was a member of the paralegal bargaining unit for nearly 10 years before obtaining his law degree last year. Working under a union contract, he said, is better.

“It’s a lot of security – this beneficial state of understanding your rights, what you’re entitled to and what your benefits are. And I hope this doesn’t come up, but if things go badly I’d like to think there’s going to be solidarity among the workers and we’ll have an understanding of how things should be dealt with.

“I felt that security in the paralegal union, and I miss it. So I’m excited to get that back.”

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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

St. Paul school levy gets labor endorsement

September 18, 2025 by

Organized labor is backing the campaign to pass a new operating levy in the St. Paul school district this fall. Administrators and union leaders say the increased funds are necessary to maintain educational programming and avoid steep budget cuts.

Delegates to the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, which unites over 100 affiliate unions in the East Metro, voted Sept. 10 to endorse a “yes” vote on the levy request, which will appear on the ballot Nov. 4.

The St. Paul Federation of Educators, which represents about 4,000 teachers, education assistants and school professionals in the district, also endorsed the levy request, as did AFSCME Council 5, representing nearly 300 school clerical and technical workers.

Labor endorsement means unions will support the community campaign to pass the levy, Yes for St. Paul Public Schools, with both resources and volunteers. SPFE Executive Board member Quentin Ocama, a kindergarten teacher at Maxfield Elementary and SPPS graduate, is chair of the campaign.

“Labor knows how important strong public education is to our community and our city’s future,” Ocama said.

The campaign will hold a kickoff rally Saturday, Sept. 20 – the day after early voting begins. Organizers also invite volunteers to join regular door knocks and phone banks; learn more at www.yesforspps.com/events.

If passed, the levy referendum would raise $1,073 per student annually for the next 10 years, or about $37.2 million per year in additional revenue for the district. It also includes annual inflationary adjustments.

The new funding stream would help the state’s second-largest school district address a projected annual funding gap of over $50 million per year.

Several factors have contributed to the shortfall. Per-pupil funding from the state, although recently tied to inflation, lagged districts’ rising costs for two decades. Federal pandemic-relief funds helped bridge the gap temporarily, but the Trump administration has threatened to close the Department of Education, putting federal funding streams at risk.

Without an influx of revenue, SPPS leaders warn, the school system will be forced to make steep service cuts at its 69 schools, which serve over 33,000 students.

Erica Schatzlein, SPFE’s lead negotiator in contract talks with the district earlier this year, said those cuts would be “drastic” – and risk gains the union has made over the last decade in bargaining for classroom staffing, mental health services, outreach initiatives and other supports for students and families.

To make those gains, SPFE pushed administrators to dip into the district’s fund balance, arguing cash reserves were larger than necessary. That’s no longer the case, Schatzlein said.

“Now it’s at the bare minimum,” she said. “We didn’t ask them to dip into their fund balance to settle our contract this year because they can’t. We know. We looked at the numbers.

“This is a levy to keep the district stable and strong. We’re looking to the taxpayers of St. Paul to keep us on that track of providing the resources the schools St. Paul students deserve – and we don’t do that lightly.”

Investments in local public schools, St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Kera Peterson said, have a ripple effect throughout the community.

“Union members know that high-quality public schools are a key part of St. Paul’s economic vitality,” she said. “They equip the next generation of workers with the skills to meet employers’ needs. They are essential to the fabric of our community.”

“Strong public schools are necessary for St. Paul to continue to be a place where working families choose to live,” Ocama, the Yes for SPPS chair, said. “Public schools are a vital part of our civil fabric, and they are important so that we can raise the next generation of our city’s residents.”

Visit spps.org/vote to learn more about the levy referendum.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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

Science Museum workers appeal to public as cuts threaten programs, access

August 21, 2025 by

Paleontologist Nicole Dzenowski says the Science Museum backtracked after eliminating her position in violation of her union contract.

Nicole Dzenowski, a paleontologist with the Science Museum of Minnesota, was on a field expedition in Montana when she received the news that her position managing Minnesota’s only active fossil-preparation lab was being eliminated.

In a virtual staff meeting that followed, Dzenowski learned her lab, which maintains a collection of hundreds of thousands of fossils, would remain open with support from volunteers – in direct violation of the newly negotiated contract covering over 200 Science Museum workers, members of AFSCME Council 5.

Within weeks, management had offered Dzenowski the position back on a part-time basis, but she and other union members say that her experience epitomizes the museum’s indifference to frontline workers and their union contract – and to the organization’s mission – as it plows ahead with a plan to eliminate 43 full-time positions.

“I am grateful that I will, in part, get to keep my job,” Dzenowski said. “I am grateful that the scientifically significant fossils that our collection houses will get taken care of…

“I can be grateful for all of those things while also still recognizing that the way these layoffs have unfolded does not feel like management has followed our contract and considered any alternatives to these layoffs – let alone any and all.”

Dzenowski and other Science Museum workers – some impacted by the layoffs, some not – laid bare their frustration with the process and their concerns about the institution’s future during a press conference July 29 outside the museum’s Kellogg Boulevard entrance.

Museum management announced plans to shrink its operating budget from $38 million to $31 million July 9, pointing to “fundamental shifts in consumer behavior following the pandemic” that have resulted in lower attendance at museum’s across the U.S. The Science Museum also saw federal grant funding pulled back by the Trump administration earlier this year.

But rather than taking a collaborative approach to navigating the new industry landscape, Science Museum union members said, management has shut them out of the planning process.

“We wouldn’t be here today if Science Museum management wasn’t too afraid to actually listen to their workers, who have brought forward ideas of building a better Science Museum but have been ignored,” Council 5 Director Bart Andersen said.

Decisions behind closed doors

Workers’ requests for information about how leadership arrived at decisions, like eliminating programs or consolidating departments, have gone mostly unanswered.

Sheridan Small, a program specialist, questioned the museum’s plans to discontinue camps – her area of focus – after this season. Small, who accepted the year-round position last March and will be laid off effective Aug. 22, said the move will eliminate a program that brings families – and revenue – to the museum.

“This is one of the museum’s strongest membership drivers,” she said. “Families join to get early access and discounts (on camp registration). Even with the materials and staffing costs, this program pays for itself. It doesn’t drain resources, it generates them.”

Jennings Mergenthal questions the organization’s decision to eliminate every position dedicated to its access and equity program.

Small isn’t the only one struggling to understand management’s reasoning. Grace Richter, who works on the museum floor, said union members in her department have asked how this round of layoffs will be different from last year’s, which eventually forced management to address staffing shortages.

“They have refused to be transparent with my team or grant information requests from the union, and have not engaged in any dialogue,” she said.

“In the 2023-24 fiscal year, our CEO Alison Brown made $572,000 – a huge jump from the previous year,” Richter added. “If our leaders are going to make that much money while I barely make $35,000 a year, shouldn’t they be able to provide us with a bare minimum of transparency on why crucial museum staff are losing their jobs?”

Betrayal of values

Other workers worried the layoffs signal the Science Museum is walking away from its commitment to inclusion and community access.

Ashley Hausch said her entire department dedicated to evaluation and research will be eliminated, and so will the museum’s ability to track visitors by zip code – a critical piece of determining how diverse the museum’s visitor population is.

Jennings Mergenthal, a community engagement specialist, said his department, which seeks to build relevant connections between community members and the museum’s offerings, had been eliminated, too. The move, he said, will increase the distance between museum leaders and the communities the Science Museum claims to serve.

“If the museum wants to act like a business, it should be honest about that,” Mergenthal added. “But if it wants to keep saying that it’s a public good and receive state grants and appropriations in service of the public, then it needs to listen to the community feedback it receives.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Historical Society’s plan to close sites, lay off staff needs scrutiny, union says

August 15, 2025 by

Workers rallied outside the History Center in Saint Paul on Thursday. (AFSCME photo)

Union members are demanding answers from Minnesota Historical Society executives after a shakeup that will result in 36 layoffs and reduced access to sites and materials maintained by the organization.

“We want to see the receipts,” AFSCME Local 3173 President Jacob Rorem said.

The layoffs, announced July 28, impacted 28 members of the bargaining unit, which covers about 80% of MNHS’s workforce. A few members will be able to continue their employment with MNHS by transferring to open positions.

MNHS laid off seven workers in June 2024, and management had been hinting at deeper cuts to come. They cite a structural deficit, as revenues from membership sales and site fees, state allocations, grant funding and other sources have not kept up with rising costs.

While the layoffs did not come as a shock, Rorem said, the lack of transparency about what factored into the decision-making process has left union members frustrated with management – and anxious about MNHS’s future.

“It’s been a hard week and a half as people try to process the news,” Rorem said. “We know there’s a budget problem, but there hasn’t been a clear explanation as to how these cuts are going to help address that – what the decision-making process was, what the evidence or data they were using to make these decisions was.

“It’s something we are continuing to press because even if we … don’t necessarily agree with those decisions, we have a right to understand them and understand how (management) is stewarding the resources of our organization and of the state.”

One thing is clear: the restructuring will reduce public-facing services offered by MNHS.

The plan will eliminate regular summer programming – and most staff – at three sites: the Charles Lindbergh House in Little Falls, Historic Forestville in Preston and the Snake River Fur Post in Pine City.

All three sites will offer visitors free, self-guided tours instead.

Lacey Fontaine, a program associate at the Lindbergh House, said she and all but one of her co-workers, the site manager, will lose their jobs when the season ends Aug. 31.

“We’re eliminating positions that actually help the public,” Fontaine said. “We are the face of the Historical Society, not necessarily the people making these decisions in the background.”

Visitors, meanwhile, will lose the opportunity to engage with staff members like Fontaine, who holds a master’s degree in public history, about issues that still resonate today.

“As complicated as Charles Lindbergh was, he was good at one thing, and that was initiating dialogue with the public,” she said. “We’re losing all that important dialogue, that education and the discussion about where historic figures fit into our lives today.

“In today’s political climate, I don’t think that’s the best thing.”

Layoffs also targeted four workers in the Gale Family Library at the History Center in St. Paul.

As a result, the research library will no longer hold public visiting hours and, instead, will require visitors to schedule appointments.

Rorem said the change would impact historians, people doing ancestry and genealogy projects and journalists working on a deadline. “Most of the time they do not want to plan that far ahead,” he said.

Many challenges facing MNHS are also playing out at museums and cultural institutions nationwide, like falling attendance levels since the pandemic and a decline in philanthropic giving.

The union drive, too, may have played in a role, Rorem acknowledged, by forcing MNHS leadership to reckon with “a business model that existed for a long time that relied on low wages, on people dedicating themselves to the mission of an organization and sacrificing in terms of wages and benefits.”

MNHS workers voted overwhelmingly to form their union in November 2021 and ratified their first contract in March 2023. The bargaining unit, affiliated with AFSCME Council 5, brings together over 200 workers.

“We’ve been able to raise wages for a big chunk of our bargaining unit by a huge amount,” Rorem said. “We have six weeks of paid parental leave that we didn’t have before. We have protections from arbitrary or unfair discipline.

“It’s been really valued by our membership.”

Rorem called it a “disheartening and scary” time for workers at institutions like MNHS, and he said the union would appeal to the public, including state lawmakers, to step up support for the organization and its mission – and to hold its leadership accountable.

“We have a mission to serve the public,” he said. “The resources we take care of are the resources of the people of Minnesota. We’d love them to continue to visit us and utilize what we have.”

Fontaine said she’s already on the hunt for a new job where she can continue engaging people in conversations about how the past influences the present.

“If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out, but I’m hoping things will shift in the future where I can rejoin this business,” she said.

“We’re losing that connection to history, and it’s really sad.”

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

Member support, stories turned tide for state workers in tough round of talks

July 22, 2025 by

Members of AFSCME Council 5’s contract action team support the bargaining committee before a session with the state.

Negotiators for the State of Minnesota and unions representing nearly 40,000 state workers reached tentative agreements June 27 on new contracts that will raise wages, preserve longevity pay hikes and, in a big win for union members, make no changes to their health insurance.

Union members who served on the bargaining team for AFSCME Council 5, which represents about 18,000 state workers, said the state’s demands from the outset of talks included an overhaul of health benefits that would have increased workers’ share of the costs.

“The plan shifts they wanted to do would have shifted thousands of dollars onto our members,” Council 5’s lead negotiator, Joel Hoffman, said. “It would have been terrible.”

With the state bracing for federal funding cuts and a projected budget shortfall in the next biennium, unions anticipated a difficult round of contract negotiations. But even experienced negotiators like Hoffman, a lab assistant at Moorhead State who completed a fifth stint on the bargaining team, were taken aback by the severity of the employer’s demands.

In addition to the health plan changes, state negotiators balked at wage increases and wanted to pause workers’ step increases, too. Steps are like longevity bonuses, giving workers a pay bump on the anniversary of their hiring date until they reach the top of the pay scale.

“We’ve had challenging cycles before, but not like this,” Hoffman said. “All of it together, it was just unacceptable, untenable. We couldn’t deal with it.”

It took 215 hours at the bargaining table, but union members succeeded in moving the state off its demands for takebacks, preserving their steps and their health insurance – and winning raises of 1.5% this year and 1.75% in 2026.

Council 5 said in a statement that every worker in the bargaining unit will see a net gain on their paycheck, and the bargaining team voted unanimously to recommend members vote to ratify the deal in balloting this month.

AFSCME, MAPE team up

Union negotiators cited two factors as key to securing a contract they could recommend: a visible, vocal pool of support from rank-and-file members and unshakable solidarity with the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE), which reached a tentative with the state covering over 18,000 workers on the same day as AFSCME.

“They were in the same position as us, and we decided we were going to stick together and have solidarity between the two unions,” Hoffman said. “If they tried to divide us, we weren’t going to have it. We would meet periodically to make sure we’re on the same team, and we had rallies together.”

The unity was especially important in negotiations over health benefits, which bring together over 10 bargaining units at the same table with the state.

When those talks bogged down, union negotiators tapped their “Contract Action Team,” rank-and-file members who had signed up earlier in the year to support their bargaining team. They joined union rallies and showed up at negotiations to send a message to the state – and the Walz administration – that workers were watching the talks.

Jes Shimek, an assistant art studio manager at Anoka-Ramsey Community College in Coon Rapids, credited the team with being intentional about member outreach from the start of the contract campaign.

“They were organizing rallies and a gauntlet during push week and all kinds of outreach – phone banking, workplace actions – throughout this process,” Shimek said. “We communicated more with our members. They could see that they needed to help us fight to not go backwards.”

Getting personal

The turning point in bargaining, Local 2829 President Curtis Seelen said, was when Shimek and two other state employees offered up personal stories that drove home the importance of keeping health insurance affordable.

“Jes brought in her medical supplies and showed just how draconian the state’s health insurance would be to the individuals who work every day to make Minnesota a great place to live,” Seelen said. “I think it was putting a face to all the state workers that keep Minnesota functioning that really helped us turn the tide and prompt the state to drop their more egregious proposals.”

“Two other women, Jess Langhorst and Kate Ella, told their stories too,” Shimek, a member of AFSCME Local 4001, said. “The state’s team was always very cordial to us throughout the process, but this was the first time that we saw emotion from them – a crack in that exterior.

“Right after we shared our stories, everybody walked out of the room to this gauntlet of AFSCME and MAPE members standing silently with their signs, and that was the turning point. We started back the next morning and worked all the way through that night until we reached a tentative agreement at 6:10 in the morning.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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