Anti-union ‘paycheck deception’ bill advances in Minnesota House

March 26, 2018 by

Legislation that would make it harder for working people in Minnesota to join together cleared its first hurdle Thursday night, as the House Government Operations Committee voted to advance a paycheck deception bill.

Authored by notoriously anti-union lawmaker Steve Drazkowski, a House Republican, the bill would ban public employees from using payroll deduction to pay their union dues, if those dues fund political activities.

Drazkowski claimed his intent was to protect public workers who don’t agree with their union’s political agenda from being forced to pay for it. But in testimony before the committee, Minnesota AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Julie Blaha said the bill’s true motive is far less noble.

Paycheck deception “really has one purpose: to make it harder for working people to join together in common purpose,” Blaha said.

At best, Drazkowski’s bill is a solution in search of a problem. Whether they work in the public or private sector, union members already have a choice when it comes to paying for political activities.

No worker in the U.S. can be forced to join a union. In Minnesota, workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement may opt out of membership dues and pay agency fees, which cover only the cost of representation but do not fund political advocacy.

At worst, the bill is a cynical ploy to make it harder for working people to engage in politics through their unions. Blaha called it an unnecessary “hoop” through which unions would be forced to jump, rigging the system even more for corporations and the super-rich.

“People that push paycheck deception laws want you to think these laws protect workers,” Blaha said. “They don’t. Paycheck deception bills only protect billionaires and CEO’s who want to chip away at the freedoms people in unions have won for all of us.”

Rep. Mike Nelson, a union carpenter and the DFL party’s leading member on the committee, offered an amendment to Drazkowski’s bill that would have forced corporations to jump through the same hoops. Any corporation that spends more than $10,000 on political activity in Minnesota, Nelson said, should have to poll their shareholders first.

“I’m a stockholder in many corporations,” Nelson said, adding that “corporate boards are able to spend money on political purposes” he doesn’t always agree with – and do it without his consent.

The amendment failed.

Union members packed the hearing room at 10:15 a.m. for the start of the committee meeting to show their opposition to paycheck deception. But the committee adjourned after roughly two hours without considering the bill, then reconvened more than five hours later.

Drazkowski’s was the final bill the committee considered before adjourning for the night.

 

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Labor federation looks to put union members on ‘Path to Power’

January 28, 2015 by
Lynn Barton, a child care provider and AFSCME member from Alexandria, joined in a workshop at the Path to Power training.

Lynn Barton, a child care provider and AFSCME member from Alexandria, joined in a workshop at the Path to Power training.

Lynn Barten stood up in a conference room Sunday morning in St. Paul and gave a stump speech for a campaign she isn’t running – not yet, anyway – before a roomful of people who couldn’t vote for her anyway.

Barten, an AFSCME member from Alexandria, was one of more than 70 people who enrolled in the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s Path to Power training, a two-day boot camp in the most basic skills necessary to run an effective campaign for public office – skills like messaging, fundraising, networking and, yes, writing a stump speech.

“There are all these things like messaging, how you present yourself, how you sell your campaign,” Barten said. “It’s campaign basics, but had I thought of it before? Probably not.

“If it weren’t for an event like this, I’d just be doing everything on Google, searching for how to write a stump speech.”

The best advocates

When union members like Barten win election to public office, they make the best advocates for working families. That’s the idea behind the new Path to Power initiative, introduced by the Minnesota AFL-CIO last year.

[Click here to check out details regarding the next Path to Power training, April 25-26 in Little Canada.]

In many ways, program coordinator Bill Emory said, Path to Power is a response to the proliferation of attacks on the middle class. Corporate-backed lobbying groups like ALEC have turned state capitols into battlegrounds for workers’ rights, and billionaires like Michael Bloomberg are using personal fortunes to push their agendas on an increasingly local level.

“We need more people at all levels of government who actually know what it’s like to balance a checkbook on a middle-class paycheck, know what kind of impact unions have on building a stronger, more fair economy and know how important it is that our public dollars are spent well,” Emory said.

The Minnesota AFL-CIO, the state’s largest labor federation, hopes Path to Power will create a “pipeline” of leaders capable of standing up for the labor movement and its values. The state federation teamed with the national AFL-CIO to develop curriculum for the training.

“We want to make sure that union members have the best preparation possible before they run for office,” Emory said.

Path to Power trainings took union members through the steps of running for public office.

Path to Power trainings took union members through the steps of running for public office.

Everyone welcome

Participation in the training was not restricted to union members. Ira Jourdain, a losing candidate for school board in Minneapolis last year, enrolled in the training to increase his familiarity with unions, how they operate and how their issues relate to campaigns like his.

“It was an eye-opening experience,” he said. “I had so many people, even after the election, who were part of a union tell me to run again. Being here today, I’m learning more about making connections with unions and other groups sooner in the campaign.”

Building confidence

Emory said there appears to be a strong appetite for Path to Power candidate trainings among union members and the progressive community. Registration for the first training more than doubled expectations, and already 15 people have signed up for a second training April 25-26.

“I hope that participants will come away feeling confident that they can build a team of committed volunteers, communicate a strong message that includes a focus on economic justice, raise money, talk to voters and do all those things they’ll need to do to run for office successfully,” Emory said.

Barten, who is eyeing a run for Minnesota House of Representatives, said the training moved her one step closer to taking the plunge.

“I was so excited to be here today,” Barten said. “Putting these tools in my toolbox gives me a little more confidence that I really can do this. Maybe it’s not that tough.”

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Labor 2012 Endorsed: Carlson, Masin, Morgan eye return to Legislature

October 29, 2012 by

Jim Carlson (top-left), Sandy Masin and Will Morgan are labor-endorsed candidates seeking to return to legislative seats they lost in 2010.

Jim Carlson, Sandy Masin and Will Morgan are hoping voters who bounced them from office two years ago will show buyer’s remorse in 2012.

All three DFLers represented suburban areas south of St. Paul, including Burnsville, Eagan and Lakeville, from 2007 to 2010, but they were swept out of office by a wave of support for “tea party” Republicans two years ago.

What have Republicans accomplished since taking control of the Legislature? One state government shutdown, two divisive constitutional amendments and a $2.4 billion I.O.U. to public school districts.

“Instead of focusing on creating jobs and improving the economy like they promised, they got sidetracked by irrelevant issues, gridlock and shutting down the government,” said Morgan, a high school physics teacher from Burnsville running for House District 56B (map). “None of that helped improve the lives of working Minnesotans.”

Morgan, Carlson and Masin believe voters want a Legislature that will focus on moving Minnesota forward with real solutions – not scoring political points or advancing an extremist ideology.

Masin, a longtime parks advocate and community volunteer in Eagan, says voters in her House District 51A (map) deserve representatives who will act like adults. “We know some of the Republicans were just not willing to compromise at all to do the work of the state,” she said. “That’s the reason for the state shutdown.”

Carlson, a retired mechanical engineer from Eagan, is running against Sen. Ted Daley in District 51 (map). Daley was among the most vocal supporters of so-called Right to Work legislation, a direct attack on workers, collective bargaining rights and the middle class.

Carlson says Daley is taking marching orders from the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, the corporate-backed lobbying group behind right-wing model legislation introduced in statehouses across the country, much of it aimed at stripping protections for middle class workers and their families. “If you go to China or to India, you’ll see what (ALEC) wants: to be able to have the lowest labor rates avail to them.”

Rather than compete in a race to the bottom, Minnesota should be developing an economy prepared to compete for the best jobs of the future – and that means making investments in K-12 and post-secondary education, keeping our infrastructure sound and preserving our high quality of life.

Masin agrees: “If we want to maintain our businesses and attract businesses, they need to know we have a workforce that is well educated.”

Morgan, meanwhile, isn’t shy about telling union members what’s at stake in this election. If Republicans maintain control of the Legislature, he predicts Minnesota will have a Right to Work constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2014 – legislation that would “turn Minnesota into a cold Mississippi.”

“We need to make sure our economic future is sound to bring prosperity to all,” Morgan added. “It starts with a strong middle class, and that starts with good schools and making sure working folks have a voice regarding their working conditions, wages and benefits.”

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October 2012: Remember when farmers and union members worked together?

September 27, 2012 by

With families across the Midwest struggling to keep their farms out of bank foreclosure, union members rallied with farmers Oct. 10, 1987, at the Heartland Jobs with Justice rally on the Iowa State Fairgrounds.

About 40 Minnesotans were among the estimated 1,500 to 1,700 union members at the rally, Union Advocate Editor Barb Kucera reported from Des Moines, Iowa. And with 1988 caucuses just around the corner, presidential candidates Bruce Babbitt, Richard Gephardt and Paul Simon made the rounds.

Helen Waller, president of the National Save the Family Farm Coalition, thanked union members for working “shoulder to shoulder” in Washington to advance farm credit reform to help family farmers avoid foreclosure – a partnership sugar-beet farmers in Minnesota and North Dakota appear to have since forgotten.

“We appreciate so much having labor help us in our way toward just farm credit reform,” Waller said. “This underscores my belief that farmers and laborers are critically dependent on each other… Neither of us can prosper unless we prosper together.”

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

• 50 Years Ago: Support for Hastings strikers. In October 1962 Twin Cities-area members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union rallied around their sisters and brothers – but mostly sisters – of OCAW Local 6-717, on strike at Smead Manufacturing in Hastings since Aug. 27.

Supporters packed hundreds of cases of canned food and shipped them to striking workers and their families – so much food that it overflowed the double garage of Local 6-717 Secretary Helen Herrmann.

Between 450 and 500 workers at the office-products manufacturer went on strike after Smead refused to bargain in good faith on a first contract with their newly elected union representatives, according to the Oct. 11 Union Advocate.

More than a month after the strike began, Smead employees were still “standing fast, adhering to their principles, despite the threats of discharge for continuing a lawful strike, despite the economic pressures, despite the company’s efforts to resume operations with scabs who sulk through the picket lines,” The Advocate reported.

“Most of the strikers are women, but they don’t act like members of any so-called ‘weaker sex’ when it comes to standing up for their rights pertaining to job security and other issues which the company had declined to negotiate.”

The strike dragged on into December 1962, when union members narrowly voted to accept a two-year contract ending the strike. The contract called for a 13-cent wage increase retroactive to March 28.

• 75 Years Ago: St. Paul Airport expansion. The St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly rolled out a special committee in October 1937 to direct a “vigorous campaign of education” against a proposed bond issue to improve and expand the city’s airport. Notably, the opposition included the St. Paul Building and Construction Trades Council.

A front-page editorial in the Nov. 4 Advocate opposed the airport development as “a private utility at public expense for the benefit of wealthy, gouging air transportation lines.”

Labor opponents pointed out that St. Paul – already “rated as one of the most over-bonded cities” in the nation – had more pressing priorities than airport expansion, a project many considered a real estate boondoggle.

“Labor is suspicious of this whole proposition,” The Advocate reported. “The property adjacent to the present airport is largely delinquent and this bond issue is being used to bolster the owners’ hope of selling lands to the city which otherwise will be taken over by the state.”

The bond issue passed in a special election Nov. 16. The Assembly later censured two labor-endorsed elected officials for championing the airport proposal, and appointed a committee to monitor the airport project and publish its findings in The Advocate.

• 100 Years Ago: ALEC didn’t invent ‘model legislation.’ A committee of state senators, appointed to “carefully examine the subject of compensation for workers injured in the line of their employment,” held its first meeting in October 1912. Interested parties in attendance included representatives of the Minnesota Employers’ Association and liability insurance companies – but not organized labor.

The idea that union leaders would be left out of drafting Minnesota’s first workers’ compensation law didn’t sit well with The Advocate, which ran an indignant, front-page report in its Oct. 25 edition.

“So far as we have been able to learn, no notification was sent to any of the labor unions of the state or any of their representatives but E. G. Hall, president, and W. E. McEwen, secretary, of the State Federation of Labor,” The Advocate reported. “These gentlemen will, in all probability, attend the next meeting of the committee.”

With labor absent, George M. Gillette of the Employers’ Association “occupied the greater part of the time of the meeting,” The Advocate noted. The Employers’ Association presented committee members with a model bill they might use as a template in crafting the state’s workers’ compensation law. (Sound familiar?)

The Advocate picked through Gillette’s model bill, pointed out several concerns and offered this warning to union leaders:

“It is of the greatest importance that the labor unions of the state have persons present at [the next committee] meeting to present their views. Otherwise, they are likely to have to put up with a law not at all agreeable or helpful to them in any large measure. And they ought to get to work at once in the matter, in order that their views may be fully and clearly presented to the committee and pressed on its attention in the most forcible and emphatic way.”

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Oakdale community forum to tackle money in politics

July 12, 2012 by

River Valley Action will host a forum entitled “Follow the Money: How big money influences our elections and public policy” Aug. 8, from 7 to 8:30 p.m., in Peter O’Neill Hall at Guardian Angels Church in Oakdale.

From the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling to the influence groups like ALEC are having on the legislative process, Minnesotans are seeing the impact that big money is having on our elections, public policy, and civic dialogue. Panelists at the Aug. 8 forum will provide an in-depth look at the changes. Panelists include:

• Tom Horner, 2010 Independence Party candidate for governor.
• State Sen. John Marty, a DFLer.
• Beth Hawkins, a journalist from MinnPost.

The discussion will be moderated by former Minnesota House Minority Leader Matt Entenza.

The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

River Valley Action is a group for citizens of the St. Croix Valley area who value a healthy and informed civic community. The nonpartisan group is “associated with labor unions, nonprofit organizations and faith communities,” and it focuses on public policy at the state and local levels.

For more information go to www.RiverValleyAction.org.

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