Feds spied on local unions during Operation Metro Surge

August 27, 2026 by

Communications Workers (CWA) Local 7250 President Kieran Knutson speaks during a demonstration outside Target’s corporate offices in Minneapolis. Federal agents issued administrative summons to obtain information on the union’s recent political spending.

Minnesota’s largest labor federation accused the Trump administration of “bringing back McCarthyism” after court filings exposed wide-reaching federal surveillance of local unions during the deadly and chaotic immigration dragnet last winter.

While purportedly investigating a criminal conspiracy to impede Operation Metro Surge, Department of Homeland Security agents infiltrated a meeting at the United Labor Center in Minneapolis, demanded one local union’s transaction log from U.S. Bank and dug into the political spending of another.

DHS investigators dubbed the spying campaign “Operation Puppet Master.”

Undercover agents, posing as protesters, also surveilled meetings at churches, parks, libraries and schools, “at times working to entice people into discussing or committing crimes,” according to court documents filed Aug. 13 by an attorney for one of 15 Minnesota protesters facing federal charges stemming from Metro Surge protests.

The filings also unearthed a diagram produced by DHS to show 18 organizations allegedly leading “The Conspiracy.” They include the Minnesota AFL-CIO, the Service Employees, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE).

Attorney Kevin Riach, who filed the motion, said DHS investigators “conjured up a vast and irrational conspiracy” without any criminal predicate.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham and other labor leaders called it an attempt to criminalize dissent.

“The Minnesota AFL-CIO and several of our affiliated unions are being targeted simply because our state’s labor movement stood in solidarity with our immigrant union members and neighbors when our state was under siege this past winter,” Burnham said.

“Minnesotans and most people across our country have rejected this administration’s attempts to demonize immigrants. They are now bringing back McCarthyism to paint unions and organizations that advocate for workers and families as threats to the nation.”

MAPE member Alec Stewart, one of 15 ICE protesters facing charges, says DHS surveilled unions “because our community connections and solidarity were so effective.”

The motion for discovery exposing the surveillance measures used here last winter seeks to compel DHS to provide a fuller picture of how its agents spied on Minnesota unions, nonprofits and activists.

Riach filed the motion earlier this month on behalf of Isaac Sant, one of 15 Minnesotans, including some union members, charged in June with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer as part of a coordinated Justice Department operation. Sant also faces interstate stalking charges for allegedly following an ICE vehicle to Hudson, Wis.

Unions and civil rights groups roundly condemned the charges.

In a public statement, 50 organizations accused the Trump administration of weaponizing the Justice Department to punish a few activists for a historic campaign of popular resistance to Metro Surge.

The statement, signed by the Minnesota AFL-CIO, Education Minnesota, the Minnesota Nurses Association and 13 other union groups, decries that the charges come from “the very same (agency) that refuses to investigate or press charges in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.”

The 15 protesters charged were among thousands of Minnesotans who rose up to defend their neighbors – tracking ICE agents, alerting communities to their presence, documenting their actions and demonstrating in the streets.

Organized labor lent critical support to those efforts – and federal agents clearly took notice, MAPE member Alec Stewart, one of the activists facing charges, said.

Stewart, a forestry worker for the State of Minnesota, joined a press conference last month outside Target headquarters in downtown Minneapolis, where labor, faith and immigrant organizations called on Minnesota’s large companies to publicly reject political surveillance and retaliation.

“The revelation of Operation Puppet Master exposes that while the government was targeting immigrant communities, tearing families apart, abducting children and murdering folks in the street, they were also attempting to disrupt and dismantle one of the facets of Minnesota that makes us so unique,” Stewart said. “That is our strong and unified labor movement.

“They were doing this simply because our connections and our community solidarity were so effective.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

AFL-CIO convention spotlights strength, solidarity of Minnesota’s labor movement

June 7, 2026 by

Minnesotans who joined the solidarity efforts during Operation Metro Surge take the stage on Day 1 of the convention. (AFL-CIO photo)

Union leaders and activists from across the U.S. are gathering in the Twin Cities this week for the 30th AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention, the American labor movement’s biggest event.

The national labor federation picked Minneapolis as the site of its four-day convention well before a violent surge of federal agents in Minnesota drew worldwide outrage over the winter. But among the first orders of business on Day 1 was a recognition of local unions’ role in organizing resistance to the occupation.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, reelected to a five-year term later in the day, turned the Convention Center stage over to three local leaders, Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham, St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Kera Peterson and Minneapolis RLF President Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou.

The presidents offered visiting delegates an overview of unions’ response to Operation Metro Surge – and the work that prepared Minnesota’s labor movement to meet the moment with solidarity.

The federal occupation saw unions raise funds for mutual aid and legal defense of detained members. Unions tapped into local solidarity networks, hosting training sessions for constitutional observers and preparing members to respond if ICE showed up on their worksite. And union members not only showed up in the streets as observers and demonstrators, but dozens of activists trained to become “union peacekeepers,” who kept marches safe and orderly.

“They thought Minnesota nice meant we would stand by quietly while federal agents disappeared our friends, neighbors and co-workers,” Burnham said. “But they mistook kindness for weakness. They invaded a winter people in winter, and our solidarity froze them in their tracks.”

(AFL-CIO photo)

Delegates on the convention floor rose for a standing ovation as Burnham welcomed anyone in the room who joined the solidarity efforts in Minnesota onto the stage.

“Now they know Americans are not afraid,” Burnham said. “They know if they send ICE into any of your communities, you will fight just as hard.”

Shuler thanked Minnesotans for their “sacrifice and resilience” before returning to the business of the convention – committee reports, elections and a roll call of affiliated unions, which included the 2-million-member Service Employees (SEIU) for the first time in 21 years.

The AFL-CIO also recognized seven new affiliates representing professional athletes, including WNBA players, who this year won historic gains in a new union contract, and Major League Baseball players, who are in a bitter round of negotiations with owners intent on suppressing their pay with a salary cap.

The theme for the 2026 convention is “With You, It’s Better in a Union.” Organizers expected between 1,500 and 2,000 delegates and guests to attend the four-day affair.

Delegates from the AFL-CIO’s 65 affiliated unions and from state and local labor councils come together at conventions to conduct required business and chart the future of the labor movement.

The event will feature prominent guest speakers and expert panelists to discuss issues facing workers and their families, from artificial intelligence to the rising cost of living.

AFL-CIO Minneapolis convention, Sunday June 7, 2026. Afternoon plenary. Photo: Jay Mallin
AFL-CIO Minneapolis convention, Sunday, June 7, 2026. Photos: Jay Mallin

The convention put a spotlight on Minnesota again on Day 1 when the AFL-CIO recognized the state’s labor movement as one of two recipients of the 2025 Meany-Kirkland Human Rights Award, celebrating the most powerful examples of solidarity in action from across the world.

Minnesota shares the award, presented during a dinner reception, with the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions (BKDP).

The federation’s executive board announced winners of the award in March. Its announcement cited Minnesota union activists’ “courage and commitment to fighting for democratic rights” during the surge that began last December.

Peterson, president of the St. Paul RLF, said the convention was an “exciting opportunity for our nation’s union movement to find inspiration and advance the coalition work that will meet the challenges ahead for working people across the country.”

“The world watched as Minnesotans joined together last winter to protect our neighbors and defend our democracy, and local unions and federated labor bodies, through their organizing work, helped build power and solidarity to meet that moment,” she added.

Both Shuler and Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond were re-elected on Day 1 after no other nominations emerged from the floor.

Watch video of the convention’s proceedings at aflcio.org.

— Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Union members sound off on impacts of DOGE cuts to federal workforce

April 10, 2025 by

USDA worker Skye Carpenter sounds the alarm on the Trump administration’s reckless layoffs and what they will mean for Minnesota farmers, the nation’s agricultural industry and the integrity of its food supply.

While members of Congress went on recess the week of March 17, Minnesota’s labor movement went to work.

Union members showed up at Republican congressional offices across the state to support federal workers and services in the crosshairs of unelected billionaire and Trump megadonor Elon Musk’s “DOGE” team.

The message to lawmakers, Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said, is that federal workers are real people, not lines on a balance sheet.

The statewide labor federation worked with the American Federation of Government Employees to coordinate actions at offices of all four Republican members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation during the recess week.

[More town hall meetings with lawmakers are scheduled for the upcoming congressional recess. Click here to RSVP.]

Republicans so far have shown little interest in oversight of Musk, and they showed little interest, too, in hearing from federal workers impacted by the chaos that DOGE has sewn across federal agencies. While some union members at the actions were able to meet with lawmakers’ staff, Burnham said, others were “shown the door.”

During the same week, AFGE members aired their concerns at a Capitol press conference in St. Paul, warning that the damage DOGE has done in the first two months of Trump’s second term could take years to fix.

Skye Carpenter, an employee in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and member of AFGE Local 3748, struggled to suppress her anger as she described the work done by employees laid off from her office, Agricultural Research Services.

Those fired include leaders, scientists and support staff who work “hand in hand with farmers,” she said, to implement scientific research into agricultural practices. She called the cuts “an attack on every farmer, every consumer and every community that depends on research we conduct.”

“The farmers who rely on our cutting-edge research to combat drought, disease and pests are left without answers,” Carpenter said. “The scientists working to protect against livestock illnesses that could devastate our agricultural economy are silenced. The taxpayers funding this research are robbed of the progress and innovation they were promised.”

Jacob Romans, a registered nurse at the VA Hospital in Minneapolis and president of AFGE Local 3669, said DOGE layoffs at Veterans Affairs have nothing to do with efficiency.

“Let me be very clear,” Romans said. “DOGE is run by very unserious people making very serious decisions.”

Earlier in the month, a leaked memo showed the Trump administration planned to slash the VA’s staffing to 2019 levels. That would mean cutting nearly 80,000 jobs, or 20% of the department’s staff. Romans estimated the local VA would lose 1,300 workers.

“We were already short staffed before 2019,” he said. “This would devastate our workforce… I have nurses right now who are working 16-hour days. We’re being mandated to because we don’t have the staff.

“It is imperative that Congress exercise their ability to halt these layoffs and prevent the dismantling of the VA care system.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Unions vow to lead with solidarity as second Trump administration looms

December 12, 2024 by

This article appeared in The Union Advocate’s January 2025 print edition, which can be viewed on the Recent Issues page.

Three weeks after Election Day, members of more than 25 local unions gathered at the St. Paul Federation of Educators’ offices. After sharing a meal and making introductions, they began discussing ways to support each other and fight back during a second Trump administration.

The event, SPFE President Leah VanDassor said, gave union members an opportunity to cope with fear and uncertainty by building community and solidarity. But she acknowledged very real threats ahead.

“They’re going to come after labor, it’s just a matter of time,” VanDassor said. “At SPFE, we feel like we can’t sit still for two years and hope it will change if we get better people back in office. Education is on the chopping block. Public unions are on the chopping block. Let’s figure out ways to be proactive.”

Similar meetings are surely taking place in meeting halls across the state and country after an election that produced mixed results locally but a devastating outcome on the federal level, with an incoming president and congressional majorities that are hostile to workers’ bargaining rights, committed to slashing public services and bent on settling scores with their perceived political opponents.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, the nation’s highest ranking labor leader, called the election results “a blow for every worker who depends on our elected leaders to fight for our jobs, our unions and our contracts.”

In the months before the election, Shuler and other labor leaders tried to sound the alarm about Project 2025, a 900-page document drafted by staffers in Trump’s first administration that outlined plans for a return to power. Proposals would undermine unions’ bargaining power, gut federal agencies and replace federal civil servants with Trump loyalists.

“The Project 2025 agenda promises to dismantle labor unions because we are a pillar of democracy and a check on power,” Shuler said. “We’ve seen assaults on our fundamental rights before. In the days, months, and years ahead, labor’s task will be to defend working people when it happens again.”

Minnesota unions, meanwhile, will find a changed landscape at the Capitol in St. Paul when the 2025 legislative session begins Jan. 14. While labor-endorsed DFLers maintained their majority in the Senate, the two parties are arranging to share power in the House, with 67 Republicans and 67 Democrats.

The Minnesota AFL-CIO, which led the Labor 2024 political campaign, had hoped to return labor-friendly majorities to both chambers.

The nine-week campaign mobilized more than 550 union volunteers, who engaged fellow union members in thousands of conversations during door-knocks and phone banks across the state. The campaign also included worksite visits, election mail, digital ads and more.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham credited union volunteers with helping “buck the national trend” and deliver Minnesota’s electoral college votes to Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The labor-to-labor campaign also worked to re-elect Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Angie Craig in Minnesota’s most tightly contested congressional district.

As for the change in power coming to Washington, D.C., Burnham pledged that Minnesota’s unions will “refuse to be divided” no matter what comes their way.

“Like we have for generations, we accept this election’s results,” she said. “However, if the incoming administration attacks the rights of workers – no matter where they were born, what they look like, how they pray, who they love, or how they identify – Minnesota’s labor movement will continue to stand in solidarity and fight like hell.”

What, exactly, that fight will look like is still taking shape in union halls like SPFE’s.

“At the end (of the meeting), everyone kind of came to the same conclusion,” SPFE’s VanDassor said. “We need to have one-on-one discussions with our union siblings, figure out where we’re at, keep in contact and plan our next steps.

“It’s not like, ‘Here’s the plan, here’s the magic bullet.’ But we can’t hunker down either.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Volunteers key to Minnesota unions’ election-year goals

July 19, 2024 by

The Minnesota AFL-CIO made its first round of legislative endorsements in June, bringing into focus the statewide union federation’s objectives in the 2024 election cycle.

The 79 endorsed candidates would preserve a pro-worker majority in the Minnesota House of Representatives, one-third of the political “trifecta” responsible for delivering a historic package of investments and policy changes that, Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said, have “set Minnesota on its way to becoming the best state for working people.”

“We can’t afford to go backwards,” she said.

But protecting the labor-endorsed majority in the Legislature – only House races are on the ballot this year, aside from special elections – is just one outcome that Burnham and other labor leaders hope to see from the Nov. 5 election.

Other goals include sending endorsed candidates to Congress, including Rep. Angie Craig in the state’s tightly contested 2nd District, and delivering the state’s electoral votes to the Biden-Harris ticket, endorsed by the national AFL-CIO over a year ago – and reaffirmed by the federation’s Executive Council after a meeting with President Biden on July 10.

“No president has been more invested in expanding the labor movement and empowering workers than President Joe Biden,” council members said in a joint statement afterward. “The AFL-CIO welcomed President Biden back to the House of Labor, and national leaders reiterated their strong solidarity with the Biden-Harris ticket.”

While narrowly-contested races like Biden’s and Craig’s are sure to dominate the airwaves and social media, the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s political work happens closer to the ground.

At the heart of the “Labor 2024” campaign, Burnham said, will be conversations between union members – in the break room, on the doorstep or over the phone – about what matters to them.

“It’s an opportunity for union folks to talk to and show their fellow union members that when we win collective power, we win tangible improvements for working people,” Burnham said. “It’s making sure that folks know that their voice counts and the more we stick together the better off we’re going to be.”

The Minnesota AFL-CIO’s member-to-member approach has a track record of success.

Labor’s unified political effort every two years represents the largest campaign in the state not affiliated with a party or candidate. In 2022, more than 450 union volunteers knocked on 62,000 doors statewide and had more than 30,000 conversations with union voters.

Unions focused their work on 34 “targeted races,” and their endorsed candidates won 25 of them.

Volunteers will need to bring the same energy to Labor 2024, Burnham said. The campaign’s phone banks, rallies and door knocks are likely to begin later this month, after the Aug. 13 primary election.

“Pretty quick here, we’re going to be on the pavement pounding it pretty hard up until Election Day,” she said. “This program is only going to do well if we have members out on the doors, have members making phone calls.

“There are really any number of ways to make a difference. Just get out and be a part of the program.”

The Minnesota AFL-CIO is expected to make additional endorsements this summer as candidates continue to screen with their area labor councils.

To learn more about volunteering, or to receive invites to Labor 2024 campaign events, go to mnaflcio.org and click “Get Updates.”

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

Unions to stay vigilant at Capitol: ‘What we’ve got can go away in a vote’s notice’

February 23, 2024 by

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham spoke at a rally outside a business lobby event on the opening day of the 2024 legislative session.

Minnesota’s unions will approach the 2024 state legislative session looking to expand on – and defend – the historic package of labor standards and public investments passed by DFL lawmakers last year.

Legislators returned to St. Paul on Feb. 12. Before their deadline to adjourn May 20, they are sure to hear from union members pressing for action on a range of issues, including infrastructure investments, pension adjustments, protections for health care and railroad workers and more.

Of course, union members and their allies won’t be the only voices lawmakers hear from at the Capitol this spring. On Day 1 of the new session, the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce hosted a reception with legislators at River Centre in downtown St. Paul. The event’s theme was “Restore the Balance.”

To union members like Jake Anderson, a special education teacher in the St. Paul Public Schools, that sounded like going backwards – “and we are not going backwards,” he said at a rally outside the event.

“We won a lot of things last time around,” Anderson, a member of the St. Paul Federation of Educators, said. “Our kids get free school lunch. We get unemployment for our paraeducators. But it’s not enough, it’s just the beginning.”

Kelly Gibbons, executive director of Service Employees (SEIU) Local 284, said 18,000 education support professionals accessed unemployment insurance last summer, after legislation passed to make hourly school employees eligible for the benefit. She said union members have told her that “unemployment insurance has changed their lives.”

“They’re going to talk about going back to the system that was rigged against us, the workers,” Gibbons said of the Chamber. “They want it to go back in their favor, and we’re here to say absolutely not.”

The state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, last month identified its top priorities for the session, and defending the gains made in 2023 is at the top of the list.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said the federation developed its priorities through conversations with affiliate unions and labor leaders.

“First and foremost, we’ve got to protect the things we’ve got,” Burnham said. “We’re going to be working to make sure that paid family and medical leave and union rights – all of that and more – stay in place. What we’ve got can go away in a vote’s notice.”

Burnham said it’s an indication of just how much work lawmakers did on labor issues last year that there are few holdovers from 2023 on the federation’s list of legislative priorities.

Along with paid family leave and unemployment for school employees, union-backed measures to expand earned sick and safe time benefits, ban captive audience meetings, raise safety standards in refineries and give public-sector unions more bargaining rights all became law, not to mention historic one-time investments in public schools and infrastructure jobs.

Still, there are policy measures the state AFL-CIO will work to advance in 2024, including a crackdown on employers who misclassify their workers as independent contractors. Unions have long said the practice is alarmingly common in the nonunion construction industry, but it also applies to the gig economy, advocates say.

Unions want to see legislators put teeth into the state’s existing misclassification laws this session. When workers are misclassified, Burnham said, “they lose out on minimum wage, they lose out on benefits like workers’ comp and overtime pay.”

The federation also plans to lobby for extending unemployment insurance to workers who are on strike. Such a law would level the playing field in collective bargaining, Burnham said, noting that employers can replace striking workers, cut off their health care and stall negotiations.

“There is so much action right now among people who are fighting to do better on the job,” she said. “If they have to go on strike, how are they going to make ends meet?

“If we are going to continue in Minnesota with all the good things we got last year, why wouldn’t we go that next step further?”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Ban on captive audience meetings advances in Minnesota Legislature

May 3, 2023 by

Patrick Kennedy, a licensed social worker, recounted the chilling effect captive audience meetings had on a campaign to organize his workplace two years ago.

After the pandemic hit three years ago, Patrick Kennedy and his co-workers at a local community mental health center became concerned about abrupt and unilateral changes management began making at their workplace.

Talk of forming a union soon turned into a full-fledged organizing campaign with Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Local 12. Sixteen months later workers were poised to vote in a union election, with public support from nearly 60% of the agency’s 130 workers.

That’s when the “mandatory information sessions” with their bosses began, Kennedy said.

“In one meeting we were told that wage increases were just about to roll out, but could be delayed another year if we were to unionize,” he said. “In another, the CEO assured us that a union would only harm our clients.”

The meetings, according to Kennedy, a licensed social worker, had a “shocking” impact on his co-workers’ organizing drive. By the time workers voted, support for unionizing had dropped to 42%, and the effort failed.

Testifying before a Minnesota House committee earlier this legislative session, Kennedy and other workers urged lawmakers to support legislation that would make it illegal for employers to compel their employees to attend meetings where bosses promote religious or political views, including views on collective bargaining.

“The person who signs your paycheck should not be allowed to force you, under threat of discipline or retaliation, to listen to their opinions about your legally protected right to choose whether to join a union,” Kennedy said.

The proposed legislation has since passed both the House and Senate as part of omnibus labor policy bills. It has been a top priority for unions this legislative session, along with paid family leave, the infrastructure jobs bill, earned sick and safe time and fully funded public services.

Captive audience meetings have come under scrutiny in recent years from policymakers and analysts looking to understand why union membership has remained flat despite polling that shows interest in forming unions at a near-record high.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham (L) testified in support of the captive audience meeting legislation, authored by Rep. Kaela Berg in the House.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham, head of the state’s largest labor federation, said captive audience meetings have become even more common – employers use them in an estimated 90% of union elections, according to one study – during a recent surge in organizing activity both in Minnesota and across the U.S.

“These meetings have nothing to do with the actual jobs that workers do for an employer,” Burnham told legislators. “In fact, many workers describe them as raw intimidation.”

Minnesota lawmakers are not alone in seeking to protect workers’ right to not listen to unwanted political or religious speech. Connecticut passed a ban on captive audience meetings last year, and Oregon has had one on the books for over a decade.

The National Labor Relations Board may soon act, too. A recent memo issued by NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo urged members to reverse the board’s precedent of allowing employers to force their workers to listen to anti-union speech, calling it a “license to coerce” and a “fundamental misunderstanding of employers’ speech rights.”

The Minnesota bill’s lead House author, Rep. Kaela Berg (D-Burnsville), said employers would still be allowed to encourage workers to listen to their political or religious views if her bill becomes law. “If the employee wants to have that discussion with the employer, that’s great,” she said. “This just says it cannot be required, and you cannot be punished if you say that’s just not for me.”

That’s a right Kennedy and other workers who have experienced captive audience meetings can only wish they would have had.

Nate Krantz, who went through an organizing drive while working as a certified nursing assistant at a local health care facility, told lawmakers he “noticed that my heart-rate tracker on my Apple watch showed a spike in my heart rate each time I had to sit through one of those meetings.”

Jeff Schreiner, a member of Teamsters Local 120 who helped lead a 10-year organizing drive at Sysco in St. Cloud, said regular captive audience meetings created a “psychologically stressful” work environment, pitted workers against each other and spread misinformation.

“It’s almost like there’s a script that companies follow,” he said after listening to testimony from workers in other industries.

“Employers use mandatory meetings to unfairly influence workers,” Kennedy said. “If the meetings didn’t influence workers, they wouldn’t be happening.”

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

State AFL-CIO convention spotlights worker power, political goals

September 20, 2022 by

A panel brings together worker-organizers from Planned Parenthood, MN United, Activision Blizzard and Trader Joe’s.

Labor leaders and activists from across the state gathered in St. Paul this week for the Minnesota AFL-CIO‘s 56th constitutional convention, looking to tap into the energy of a recent wave of union-organizing victories as they make a united political push this fall.

Several of the federation’s endorsed candidates, including Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, addressed the delegation of nearly 300 union members. Walz said labor backing was less “a pat on the back” and more of a “kick in the butt” to win a second term, strengthen Minesota’s labor laws and carry forward the state’s economic recovery.

“The one thing I want union members in Minnesota to know is, as long as I am governor, you do not have to spend one second worrying about a piece of anti-union legislation crossing my desk,” Walz told delegates Sept. 20 as the three-day convention came to a close. “We have to get re-elected to make sure workers’ rights are protected, to make sure women’s rights are protected, to make sure voting rights are protected.”

“This November, labor is on the ballot,” Flanagan added. “Our opponent has made it very clear that he will gut labor protections and turn Minnesota into a right-to-work state. That will not happen on our watch.”

MN AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham chairs her first state fed convention.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham, chairing a constitutional convention for the first time, said Republican gubernatorial nominee Scott Jensen would “take Minnesota backwards” if elected. Unions, she said, have begun a robust member-to-member outreach campaign to get out the labor vote for Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, U.S. Reps. Angie Craig and Dean Phillips and other endorsed candidates.

“While the opposition might be able to outspend us, they will never out-organize us,” Burnham said. “We’re going to deliver the union vote in November not only for the governor’s race but to increase the working families’ majority in the state House and flip the state Senate so we can continue building a more just and fair Minnesota.”

Burnham, sworn in Feb. 1 as president of the statewide federation of over 1,000 local unions, won re-election on the convention’s final day, running without opposition. Brad Lehto, secretary-treasurer since 2018, also won re-election, fending off a challenge from Southeast Area Labor Council President Pommella Wegmann.

Burnham and Lehto pledged to continue making progress on the state AFL-CIO’s strategic priorities, to welcome new affiliates into the fold and to build solidarity across the labor movement to support legislative, organizing and collective bargaining campaigns.

“We have only just begun,” Burnham said. “Your state federation is there to assist you as we expand our labor movement and build our power.”

Union membership has increased in Minnesota in each of the last three years, and it’s likely to do so again in 2022, as a wave of union organizing has brought workers in coffee shops, bookstores, craft breweries, nonprofits and health care facilities into the labor movement, both locally and across the U.S.

“We need Minnesota’s labor movement now more than ever,” AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Fred Redmond tells delegates. “So keep organizing, keep mobilizing, keep being a force for working people.”

Organizing took center stage on Day 1 of the convention, when a panel discussion brought together four young workers who have organized or are currently organizing unions: a quality assurance tester at a video game company, a video board technician with Minnesota United, a Planned Parenthood employee and a Trader Joe’s clerk.

“This wave of workplace organizing has been hugely inspirational to all of us,” said Josiah Wollan, a video-board technician organizing with IATSE. “We’ve realized what power workers have, and knowing that has really started this process. We knew there was nothing coming down the line for us – we weren’t going to get anything until we unionized.”

Organizing growth strengthens and diversifies the labor movement, Burnham said. She also credited Minnesota Building Trades unions for their intentional efforts “to recruit workers and young people from underserved communities into their apprenticeship programs.”

“It’s this work that shows the people of Minnesota, no matter where you come from or what you look like, we want you in the labor movement,” Burnham added.

Recent polling shows people want to be in the labor movement, too. Attorney General Ellison was among several convention speakers who pointed to a Gallup survey, taken in August, that found 71% of Americans approve of unions, the highest mark since 1965.

St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Kera Peterson welcomes delegates to the capital city. “Workers are building power in new and innovative ways, and they’re calling on us to join them in solidarity in that fight,” she said.

“Americans would not know that a union would improve people’s lives unless they saw you improving people’s lives with a union,” Ellison said.

Ellison, Walz and other guests also thanked delegates from the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) for fighting to put patients over profits in their current contract campaign. Some 15,000 hospital nurses in Duluth and the Twin Cities staged a three-day strike last week, the largest private-sector nursing strike in U.S. history.

Fred Redmond, secretary-treasurer of the national AFL-CIO, said Minnesota nurses are turning heads across the labor movement.

“These are heroes, and they’re exhausted,” Redmond said. “They’re underappreciated, and yet corporations keep making cuts, keep squeezing, keep trying to get blood from a stone and keep putting profits before people. But those nurses here in Minnesota said enough is enough.”

MNA President Mary Turner said the strike was a lesson for many members of her union who had never been on a picket line that labor’s power stems from solidarity, which was, appropriately, the theme of the Minnesota AFL-CIO convention.

“We had community members, family and friends, elected officials and our labor allies on the line with us,” Turner said. “To see all the other unions there, this was a part of being a union a lot of younger nurses had no idea existed.

“We know the problems we are facing are not unique. We’re all fighting our own unique battles, but we’re all workers.”

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

Unions decry Supreme Court ruling, urge action to protect abortion access

June 27, 2022 by

Minnesota’s highest-ranking union officer added to the chorus of labor voices decrying the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, eliminating the federal right to abortion.

“Reproductive rights are workers’ rights,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said in a public statement, calling the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade after nearly 50 years as the law of the land “a direct attack on working women and people who can get pregnant.”

Research shows people denied abortion care face increased health, wellness and financial risks as a result. Burnham noted that, in the post-Roe landscape, those risks will disproportionally impact “low-income women, black, brown, non-binary and trans workers seeking care.”

“Fortunately for working women and people who can get pregnant in Minnesota, our state Supreme Court has ruled our state constitution protects reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy,” Burnham added. “Minnesota’s unions are committed to protecting these freedoms and closing disparities through policies such as universal paid family and medical leave, affordable childcare, and creating more family-sustaining jobs.”

Leaders of several national unions, including the Service Employees (SEIU), Communications Workers of America, Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) and American Federation of Teachers, issued similar statements in the hours following the June 24 ruling.

National AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler called the decision “a devastating blow to working women and families.”

“We strongly believe everyone should have control over their own bodies, including decisions over their personal reproductive health care,” Shuler added.

Some unions already have begun strategizing ways to use the collective bargaining process to ensure access to abortion care.

The Newsguild-CWA, which represents about 26,000 journalists and other workers in the U.S. and Canada, began holding meetings in May, after a draft of the Dobbs decision was leaked to Politico, moving quickly to “develop bargaining approaches that provide coverage for abortion care in collective bargaining agreements and to equip our membership with the tools to organize their coworkers to take action on this core labor issue.”

“Working people need access to safe, affordable abortion care just as we need quality health care generally, parental leave, childcare, and all other policies that help us support our families,” NewsGuild President Jon Schleuss said. “This is an issue that spans class, race and gender. And we should fight for it as such.”

That fight will play out in the political arena, too, as several union leaders noted.

Education Minnesota, the statewide union of nearly 90,000 educators, issued a statement from its executive board calling on unions “to harness their collective power and fight for affordable health care for all, equal pay for equal work and paid family and medical leave so workers can care for themselves or loved ones without fear of losing a paycheck.”

“That’s why this fall’s election is so important,” the statement added. “Every Minnesotan needs to be a voter to elect candidates who will defend workers’ rights – including their right to health care and bodily autonomy. We can make it happen, but only if Minnesotans do it together.”

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

Burnham sworn in as first person of color to lead MN AFL-CIO

February 1, 2022 by

Bill McCarthy administers the oath of office to Bernie Burnham.

In a ceremony broadcast live on the federation’s social media platforms, outgoing Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy swore his successor, Bernie Burhnam, into the state’s highest-ranking union office today.

“Every Minnesotan deserves the best opportunity in life, no matter where they live, what they look like, who they love, where and how they worship and even how they vote,” Burnham said in remarks after taking the oath of office. “I promise to do my very best work with you and for you in achieving the goals of our Minnesota AFL-CIO strategic plan, ensuring well-paying jobs which will strengthen our communities and, finally, raising the voices of all working people and their families.”

McCarthy, a longtime member of UNITE HERE Local 17, has retired after more than six years as president of the state federation of labor unions, representing more than 300,000 working people.

The federation’s General Board voted unanimously in December to elect Burnham, a former Duluth elementary teacher and member of Education Minnesota. She is the federation’s 10th president and, as a Pacific-Islander, the first person of color elected to the office.

Burnham pledged to carry forward the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s racial-equity and diversity work, both internally and in the community at large. She has co-chaired the federation’s Committee on Racial and Economic Justice for the last two years.

“I am committed to broadening our understanding of one another’s members, our unions and other organizations,” Burnham added. “We must stay united against the forces that try to divide us.”

Burnham also pointed to recent workforce data showing Minnesota’s union membership is growing, and she called on unions across the state to work together, in partnership with the federation, to keep that momentum going.

“Let’s work to keep growing,” she said. “One-to-one conversations, mentorship, increasing and supporting apprenticeship programs in our schools – these are some of the ways we will make this happen.”

Burnham taught for 14 years in the Duluth Public Schools and was elected president of the Duluth Federation of Teachers. Members of Education Minnesota elected her the statewide vice president in 2019.

Burnham is a dues-paying member of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, which released a statement celebrating her swearing-in. Jigme Ugen, the APALA’s state president and executive vice president of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, called it a “historic and exciting moment” for the local labor movement.

“Besides being the first person of color and AAPI to be elected president of the MN AFL-CIO, Bernie brings decades of union membership with diverse experiences around racial and social justice at the local and national level,” Ugen said. “She is an inspiring choice to lead our labor movement into the future.”

Bill McCarthy (L), Bernie Burnham and Brad Lehto

Burnham will serve alongside Secretary-Treasurer Brad Lehto, who has held office since 2018. Both officers’ terms run until the next Minnesota AFL-CIO convention, planned in September.

McCarthy, meanwhile, enters retirement after 36 years in the labor movement, a career that began as a bartender at Cleo’s Lounge on the 50th floor of the IDS Tower in downtown Minneapolis.

He rose through the ranks and served 15 years as president of Local 17, the Twin Cities hospitality union, before a successful run for president of the Minneapolis Central Labor Council in 2002. McCarthy won election as state AFL-CIO president in 2015.

The outgoing president thanked his staff, the federation’s board members and its affiliate unions for their support, and said the federation is “positioned well” for the transition.

“I want to congratulate President Burnham on her history making achievement and wish her all the best in leading Minnesota’s Labor Movement,” McCarthy said. “The Minnesota AFL-CIO is in good hands with an exceptional leader in the fight to build a more just and equitable state.”

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