City of Stillwater workers protest stalled contract negotiations

The City of Stillwater is stalling in contract negotiations with its workers, and members of AFSCME Local 517 are running out of patience. Before the Stillwater City Council convened its Truth in Taxation hearing last night, city employees and their supporters demonstrated outside City Hall, raising awareness that they have been working without a new […]

For unions, opposition to marriage amendment swells from grassroots

Mary Larson Dennis, a social worker and member of AFSCME Local 151, remembers exactly the moment when she decided the freedom to marry wasn’t just a gay-rights issue, but a union issue as well. It was March 2011, and Dennis, then an officer in her union, was making the rounds on a lunch break, talking […]

Vote No Way: Union members rally against voter restriction, anti-marriage amendments

More than 100 people joined a union-backed rally yesterday in Rice Park downtown St. Paul, voicing their support for statewide campaigns to vote “no” on constitutional amendments that would restrict Minnesotans’ freedoms and hurt their quality of life. The state’s largest labor federation, the 300,000-member Minnesota AFL-CIO, opposes both constitutional amendments on the Nov. 6 […]