Union members urge hospitals to address staffing shortfalls with higher wages

December 6, 2021 by

Hospital workers, clockwise from top-left, Cliff Adams, Emilee Greskowiak, Lolita Granados and Steele Miller joined a virtual press conference on staffing shortfalls.

About 8,000 health care workers have publicly offered to renegotiate their union contracts with Twin Cities hospitals in an effort to help address staffing shortfalls that, workers warn, are only getting worse.

Members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota announced the offer Nov. 30 in a virtual press conference, during which they described the impact short staffing has had on patient care in the hospitals where they work.

Emilee Greskowiak, a nursing assistant at United Hospital in St. Paul, said understaffing impacts patient comfort, safety and hygiene. She noted that it has been nearly two years since she’s had time to help her most patients shower.

Recently, Greskowiak added, she was the only aide serving a 25-patient ward, where registered nurses were understaffed, too.

“All I can do is empty trashes and let nurses know when people are drowning – having codes and rapids and struggling to survive through their traumas,” she said. “Nurses are barely getting their meds in by the end of shift, let alone proper care and hygiene that families desperately need to … become healthy.”

Some patients don’t get a bed at all, added Cliff Adams, a nursing station tech at M-Health Fairview Riverside Masonic Children’s Hospital. He said his unit, which treats patients with cancer and blood diseases, could not fill eight of its 24 beds recently because the “caregiver-to-patient ratio wasn’t adequate to safely provide care” to more than 16 patients.

“That meant eight beds – eight kids – did not have an opportunity to be properly cared for,” Adams said.

Understaffing is not a new problem at metro hospitals. Workers pointed to several reasons their co-workers have walked away or scaled back their hours in recent years, including the additional pressures created by the COVID-19 pandemic, once again surging in Minnesota.

But while workers see their bosses asking them to skip breaks, extend their shifts and postpone paid time off, what they don’t see from management is a plan to deal with the problem.

“It’s caused tension among staff members because we don’t have enough staff to go around,” said Lolita Granados, a clinical support specialist at Children’s in Minneapolis. “We’re missing sleep, we barely have time to eat, and we are tired.

“It is currently worse than I have ever experienced this before. We need help and support, and I would like the hospitals executives who are working from home … to step up.”

In letters to those executives, SEIU Healthcare leaders pointed to other hospitals in Minnesota that have reopened union contracts to increase wage rates and write in other incentives aimed at attracting and retaining workers, and they requested metro facilities do the same.

Twin Cities hospitals settled new, three-year contracts with SEIU members earlier this year, but wages were a sticking point in negotiations. Some 4,000 workers at United and other Allina locations were poised to strike before reaching an 11th hour agreement with the provider.

Those agreements call for wage increases ranging from 5% to 7.5% over three years. But with inflation on the rise, it’s already clear to workers like Methodist Hospital ER tech Steele Miller that hospitals need to do more.

“People are leaving these jobs for jobs that are less traumatic, less stressful, less exhausting and that pay more,” Miller said. “We are not greedy. We just need to be able to take care of ourselves while we take care of other people.”

Workers also noted that many hospitals are already paying temporary workers – so-called “travelers” – higher wages to deal with the shortage, and they called out executives like M Health Fairview CEO James Hereford, whose annual compensation has ballooned to over $3 million. Allina CEO Penny Wheeler recently topped the $2 million mark.

For Hereford, Wheeler and other hospital executives, Greskowiak offered some pointed advice.

“If you give us better pay and benefits, maybe you’ll keep and retain the staff that you have – and then also get more staff to help us get through this hard time,” she said. “Everyone’s traumatized and underpaid and missing their family and doesn’t want to do this anymore.

“It’s exhausting, and you’re burning out your staff left and right.”

 

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Half Price Books workers in Roseville, St. Paul form unions

October 18, 2021 by

These Half Price Books workers fully support forming a union.

Workers at Half Price Books stores in St. Paul and Roseville marched on their bosses Thursday, demanding the bookseller recognize their union.

Afterward, several workers traveled to other Half Price Books locations in the metro, encouraging workers to join the union drive, supported by Local 1189 of the United Food and Commercial Workers and its sister local, Minneapolis-based UFCW Local 663.

Workers said they are joining together to bargain higher wages – currently they earn $12.50 per hour – and gain more say over working conditions that have worsened since stores reopened after pandemic shutdowns.

Laura Peña, who works in the St. Paul store, said management has cut staffing in half, leaving employees to do double the work.

“We take in a lot of books all day, and at first, when there was lower staffing, there was a restriction on how many (books) people could bring in to sell,” Peña said. “Then corporate kept ramping things up, telling us to take in more and more, but it’s not like we had any more staff to back the ramping up.”

Peña said workers also hope to amend a post-pandemic policy that makes all new hires probationary for 90 days, keeping them ineligible for benefits.

For many Half Price Books workers, the pandemic brought into focus both how little regard the company has for their concerns and how unsustainable their jobs have become, said Aaron Kerr, who has 24 years of experience working in Half Price Books stores.

“For years prior, we were really kind of just putting up with it, just accepting this as the way things are,” Kerr said. “And we would see so much turnover. People were saying, ‘I love this job, but I can’t afford to work here.’

“We all love our customers. We love being booksellers, and we want to continue being booksellers. We look forward to negotiating with Half Price Books to make our stores a great place to work and a great place for customers to come into.”

[Click here to sign a petition supporting Half Price Books workers’ organizing drive.]

Half Price books calls itself the nation’s largest family-owned retailer for new and used books, and successful organizing drives in Minnesota could give the UFCW a toehold in the chain of over 120 stores.

All 16 booksellers and shift leads at the Roseville store signed union cards, as did an overwhelming majority of employees in the St. Paul store, located in Highland Park.

Kerr and other Roseville employees began considering a union after surviving a round of layoffs that, to them, seemed unnecessary, given the availability of paycheck protection loans.

In May of this year, after the Center for Disease Control changed its masking guidelines, employees in Roseville sent a petition asking the company to hold off on lifting its in-store mask mandates. Half Price Books brushed it aside and lifted the mandate anyway.

“None of us wanted that,” Kerr said. “They lifted it without consulting the employees. They did it at a time when other big companies, like Target, were not.”

Half Price Books executives won’t so easily ignore workers’ petition for a union election. Perhaps by coincidence, the company’s district manager was in Highland Park when workers there marched on the boss, according to Peña.

“We were nervous, but I was glad we all had each other’s backs,” she said.

“We are prepared for the worst,” Kerr said. “But we’re already very organized, getting more organized and making more connections every day.”

UPDATE 10/19/21: Workers at a third Twin Cities store, in Coon Rapids, marched on their boss today, demanding recognition of their union.

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After landslide union election, M Health psych staff ready to bargain for wages, safety

September 28, 2021 by

(SEIU photo)

A resounding “union yes” vote, announced today, gives 350 psychiatric associates at M Health Fairview momentum as they look to negotiate better wages, safety protections and a voice in decisions that affect their jobs.

SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, which backed the essential workers’ organizing drive and will represent them in bargaining, said 98% of participating workers voted in favor of unionization. Balloting took place by mail, with votes counted earlier today.

Psychiatric associates have been discussing the idea of forming a union for at least 10 years, union supporters said in a virtual press conference held hours before the vote tally. Eric Immler, who works in M Health Fairview’s adult inpatient units, said his excitement was “hard to put into words.”

“Having a seat at the table, feeling respected is going to allow me to better focus on my patients and collaborate with my co-workers – and [retain] good employees,” Immler said. “We hope Fairview comes into negotiations after we certify our union realizing how serious we are and in good faith.”

Like many workers forming unions recently, M Health Fairview employees said the COVID-19 outbreak gave their campaign a sense of urgency. Senior psychiatric associate Andrea Rivas described working in small, confined areas with patients who sometimes refused to wear masks, and uncertainty over access to personal protective equipment.

But Rivas and her colleagues also pointed to increasingly dangerous working conditions in their field. Health care workers account for the majority of all nonfatal workplace injuries in the U.S., and injury rates are highest among workers in psychiatric and substance-abuse facilities.

Rivas is still dealing with the effects of a concussion she suffered nearly eight months ago, when she was “punched repeatedly” after rushing to the aid of a co-worker who was being assaulted. Erin McCormick, who works at M Health Fairview’s intensive treatment center for children, said people in her line of work are “in constant fight-or-flight mode” and burn out quickly as a result.

“During my time, I’ve been head butted and spent the night in the ER,” McCormick said. “While I was pregnant, I also got punched by a patient. Luckily, I turned at the last second and the patient punched my arm, but I was constantly worried about my baby’s health.”

To reduce violent incidents, workers said, they will bargain hard for contract language that requires safe staffing levels and puts preventative protocols in place, both before and after violent incidents.

The fledgling unit also hopes their first contract not only will raise wages, but ensure equitable pay. During their organizing drive, McCormick said, psychiatric associates discovered a pay gap between men and women.

“Having an open conversation about pay and a contract where everything is formalized will help to address these issues,” she said.

SEIU Healthcare Minnesota already represents nearly 2,000 workers in the M Health Fairview system. Psychiatric associates will build their own contract, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota said, that addresses the professional needs of the “most patient-facing staff in the mental and behavioral health field.”

Rivas said she believes giving psychiatric associates a seat at the table will be good not just for workers, but patients too.

“We interact closely with patients during their entire inpatient treatment,” she said. “Despite our close contact, we are left out of important meetings, and our opinions aren’t asked about patient concerns. This not only feels disrespectful, but it also means we are missing out on important information that could affect our clients.”

“Mental health is so important, but our society doesn’t seem to value it or the work done to help support those in crisis,” McCormick added. “We’re joining together in our union to help show that our patients and this work is important.”

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Frustration builds as lawmakers blow deadline for plan to pay frontline workers

September 22, 2021 by

Elia Starkweather, a janitor and member of SEIU Local 26, was among frontline workers who spoke at an event commemorating the anniversary of a COVID-19 state of emergency in March 2020.

Essential workers are taking aim at Republican members of a legislative work group tasked with delivering $250 million to Minnesota’s essential workers, accusing politicians of holding up the process in an attempt to pit frontline workers against each other.

“We went to work for the last 18 months,” said Rachel Hanneman, a member of the Minnesota Nurses Association who has worked in COVID-19 intensive care units at multiple hospitals. “And now we are asking you to go to work for us.”

Hanneman and other union members spoke during a press conference Sept. 15, nine days after the work group’s deadline for delivering a plan to the Legislature for distributing the $250 million to essential workers, allocated as part of the state budget passed in July.

[Click here to send a message to members of the Frontline Worker Pay Working Group.]

Lawmakers on the working group missed the deadline because they could not agree on an inclusive path forward, with Republican members demanding that the fund be administered in a way that would favor health care workers – and exclude many workers who kept the state running after the outbreak.

That’s not sitting well with some union members, including health care workers like Carmen Brown.

“I am a health care worker, and as a health care worker I am offended that Minnesota Senate Republicans are holding up paying all frontline workers bonuses,” said Brown, who works at Hennepin Healthcare and serves as president of AFSCME Local 977, representing clerical and general workers at the hospital. “To exclude anyone, that’s to say that you’re not part of the team.”

Workers potentially excluded if Republicans get their way include janitors and security officers, child care workers, school staff, meatpackers and retail workers – the same frontline workers celebrated as heroes for facing new, unknown risks after the pandemic hit in March 2020.

Many have been able to work from home during the pandemic. For essential workers, staying home to quarantine, care for family members, wait for test results or recover from illness has meant losing wages or burning through their paid time off.

Lawmakers, in fact, created the $250 million compensation fund as a compromise after failing to reach agreement on legislation that would have provided back pay to essential workers for hours lost during the pandemic.

Elia Starkweather, a janitor in Minneapolis and member of Service Employees (SEIU) Local 26, exhausted her sick days after contracting COVID-19 in January. She said 1,000 members of her union have gotten sick or been forced to stay home with a sick family member. Some, she said, have had to quarantine multiple times. Four Local 26 members have died from COVID-19,

Lawmakers, Starkweather said, “see us as just numbers” and not “as human beings, as people who have family.”

Lawmakers also set up the compensation fund as acknowledgement of the psychological and emotional toll the pandemic continues to take on many workers on the front lines.

Laura Heezen, a behavior analyst with Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs, said she and her co-workers, members of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE), were tasked with serving the population most vulnerable to COVID-19, the elderly.

“During the pandemic MAPE members came into (Veterans Homes) to care for veterans who were scared, sick and missing their loved ones,” Heezen said. “Residents had to be quarantined, alone in their rooms, sometimes for months at a time. After a while, we were at a loss for words trying to encourage them in their darkest days and hours.

“This task force is taking too long, and they’ve done nothing to provide actual relief for the workers so desperate for reprieve.”

Several unions and community organizations have signed onto a joint statement to Republican members of the work group, calling both for an equitable distribution plan and for lawmakers to allocate more dollars to expand the fund beyond $250 million.

“We worked to not leave anyone behind during COVID, and now some legislators are holding up Essential Worker pay in order to exclude us?” the statement said.

“Many of us lost pay when we had to quarantine or be vaccinated. Yet when our bills come due, we have to pay them. The bill for this working group is overdue, and it’s time they deliver.”

The statement was signed by AFSCME Council 5, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, the worker center CTUL, Education Minnesota, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, MAPE, MNA, SEIU locals 26 and 284, UNITE HERE Local 17 and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1189, among others.

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MN nurse on Biden task force: ‘I’m the one who brings reality’

September 22, 2021 by

MNA President Mary C. Turner

As the Biden-Harris administration assembled its COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force in the weeks following the inauguration, there was one health care leader the president asked for by name: Mary C. Turner, president of the Minnesota Nurses Association.

Turner had moved Biden to tears during a press conference roundtable in November 2020, as she described what she and other nurses working in North Memorial Health Hospital’s intensive care unit were experiencing at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Turner accepted Biden’s appointment to the 12-member task force, but admits that she initially felt intimidated to be working among experts in public health and other fields, who were accustomed to high-level discussions of data and policy. “I’m just a bedside-care nurse, who the hell am I anyway?” she remembered thinking.

A phone call to Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, chair of the task force, erased any lingering doubts.

“She said this to me,” Turner recalled. “‘Out of all 12 people, you’re the only one President Biden knows personally. He said that Mary Turner is so passionate about her patients, we’ve got to have her on the task force. Just be who you are, and you’re going to be just fine.’”

The task force began meeting in late February and will deliver its final recommendations to President Biden in October. Turner discussed the experience this interview, which has been edited for length.

UA: When the task force began meeting, vaccine production was just starting to ramp up. How has the scope of its work changed since then?

MT: We’ve had different topics, everything from vaccine hesitancy to the mental health of frontline workers and children. Then we did personal protective equipment, testing and what do we might do for the next pandemic. We’ve had four subgroups that meet, too. It’s been a lot of reading, a lot of meetings.

UA: What perspective or guidance has the task force delivered to the administration?

MT: The topic we started out with, vaccine hesitancy and immunizations, was cool because we had recommendations right away that we got to the president. Now, that’s not to say every state used those suggestions, but I know we did here in Minnesota. One of the recommendations was for migrant workers, to actually go in vans and take the vaccines right to them. And going by zip codes, into neighborhoods – those were all recommendations that came in that first month.

We also were instrumental in pushing OSHA to implement emergency temporary standards (in June), which, unfortunately, only covered health care workers. In the final report, we are pushing not just temporary but permanently updated OSHA standards, rather than guidelines, for all workers.

UA: I imagine you’re guided here not just by your experience as a nurse, but also as a labor leader.

MT: It’s funny because one of the chairs of our committee is a hospital administrator. He’s trying to say we don’t want standards, we want guidelines. I say, ‘No we don’t! Guidelines aren’t enforceable!’ …

If OSHA would have implemented standards instead of guidelines from the start, so many (workers) wouldn’t have died. That’s the reality of it. Guidelines give our employers free rein to just think of the bottom line and not necessarily keeping workers safe. If I do nothing else on this task force but to push through permanent, updated OSHA standards, I’ll consider my work successful.

I’ll be honest, though. It seems like whenever we run into a problem, especially in health care access, inevitably somebody will say, ‘Mary, the only way that’s going to be solved is Medicare for all or some kind of system where everyone has health care.’ A lot of the issues with our pandemic are due to our broken health care system.

UA: How do you feel you’ve influenced the task force?

MT: I may not be the one who can bring all the fancy data, but what I am is the only frontline worker with eyewitness testimony. I’m the one who brings reality. They’re all wonderful people, but I’m the only one who has been not just in my COVID ICU, but at the forums and picket lines and actions, where I have been with other frontline workers from different industries. I’ve heard all their stories. I am the dose of reality.

UA: What is it like to work closely with these experts, and then turn on the TV or log into social media and see disinformation on full blast?

MT: I think we all have a family member who’s in denial and watches more YouTube than they should. But it’s heartbreaking at the bedside for me. People coming in now, unvaccinated, it’s so tragic. That’s what all of that misinformation is doing. So it’s almost a joy to go back to any meeting of the task force and be back to reality.

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Minnesota AFL-CIO wraps 55th convention with call for solidarity

September 21, 2021 by

During a pandemic-shortened convention that gaveled to a close this morning, delegates from the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s affiliate unions reflected on the importance of solidarity during times of crisis, and reaffirmed their commitment to building a just, inclusive labor movement capable of fighting for all working Minnesotans.

“No matter what we look like or where we come from, we all should have the freedom to come together and negotiate,” Secretary-Treasurer Brad Lehto said in opening remarks Monday.

Held virtually, the statewide federation’s 55th convention featured guest speakers, resolutions and reports on local unions’ organizing and political work.

During a special presentation, frontline workers discussed their experiences keeping the state running during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ryan Ellison, a grocery store worker and member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1189, recalled tense interactions with customers about masks and widespread fear about coming into contact with the virus.

“None of us signed up for what we had to go through,” Ellison, a shop steward, said. “This isn’t something that was ever included in the job description.”

In a live address to the convention Monday, Gov. Tim Walz praised essential union members for “incredible acts of selfless service to others.”

“What’s been asked of you has not been asked of a generation,” Walz said. “I’m incredibly proud of you and the work you’ve done.”

Walz also credited unions for pushing employers, lawmakers and regulators to make workers’ health and safety a top priority after the pandemic hit, noting that “workers who were in unions felt safer in their positions, felt better respected.”

“More Minnesotans are alive today because union workers forced us to treat COVID as it should have been treated – as a life-threatening pandemic,” Walz said.

Looking forward

Convention business also included a series of resolutions that advanced out of committees and onto the convention floor, offering delegates the opportunity to shape their federation’s priorities.

Resolutions ranged from opposing the corporatization of health care to supporting union members in a fight to stop AT&T from outsourcing union jobs. Another put the federation on record supporting truth in education – a response to right-wing hysteria around the teaching of “critical race theory” in schools.

Delegates also celebrated steady growth in the local labor movement’s ranks. Spokespeople from new bargaining units at two charters schools, Fair State Brewing Cooperative and Augsburg University offered insights into their successful organizing drives, which took place in unprecedented times.

“We were organizing virtually,” Augsburg staff member Katie Asfeld said. “We didn’t have an opportunity to bump into colleagues after meetings or get together and have coffee…

“We developed different ways for staff to be able to show their support, and at the end of the day we saw that whether we are virtual or in person, there is power in our collective voices.”

Seizing an opportunity

Recent polling suggests more workers would like to join together and bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions.

A Gallup survey of U.S. public opinion of labor unions, released annually around Labor Day, this year recorded the highest favorability rating – 68%, since 1965. Support is relatively bipartisan, and a whopping 77% of young people view unions favorably.

“As long as I can remember, our opponents have been saying, ‘Unions will die, unions are obsolete,’” Lehto said. “Don’t you believe it.”

Passing the PRO Act into federal law, he added, would give unions a greater opportunity to capitalize on their surging popularity. The measure, which has passed the House, would hold corporations accountable for union-busting, strengthen workers’ rights to form and join unions and repeal right-to-work laws.

Minnesota’s senators assured delegates they are working to advance the bill to President Biden’s desk. Sen. Tina Smith said the PRO Act is necessary to undo the “concerted campaign” by big corporations “to undermine organizing rights.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar added, “I believe in my heart that when unions are strong, our economy is strong, and when our economy is strong, our country is strong.”

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Essential workers tell lawmakers: Minnesotans support emergency leave

June 17, 2021 by

Bill Schwandt, an paraprofessional educator in the Bloomington schools, speaks at a press conference in support of emergency paid leave for essential workers.

Thousands of essential workers in Minnesota have lost hours or exhausted their paid time off after being exposed to the coronavirus over the past 15 months, while a measure that would make them whole remains caught up in Capitol gridlock.

That needs to change, according to more than 5,000 nurses, janitors, educators, child care workers and other Minnesotans who signed onto a petition in support of the Essential Workers Emergency Leave Act.

Union members delivered the petitions to Gov. Tim Walz and legislative leaders today after holding a press conference on the Capitol steps.

“We deserve more than nice words, pats on the back and hearty handshakes,” said Bill Schwandt, a paraprofessional in the Bloomington schools and member of Education Minnesota. “We deserve to be remembered, respected and, yes, compensated for the work that we did.”

Lawmakers are scrambling to negotiate the particulars of a $52 billion, two-year budget by the end of the month. The budget taps into federal relief funds that, as several workers pointed out, should prioritize support for essential workers, according to guidance from the Department of Treasury.

Emergency leave for time lost would help workers like Eva Lopez, a local janitor, regain their footing. Lopez is vice president of Service Employees (SEIU) Local 26, which represents janitors and security guards in the Twin Cities, and she said over 1,000 members of her union have missed work to quarantine or wait for test results.

“Most don’t make enough to have big savings accounts, and we can never work from home,” Lopez said via a translator. “This year has been so hard.”

Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner, an intensive care nurse at North Memorial hospital in Robbinsdale, said members of her union have “dipped into their savings, their retirement, their 401(k)” plans to pay their bills while riding out quarantine.

The financial strain many health care workers are facing, Turner added, has only added to the stress of providing care through a crisis that has resulted in over 7,500 deaths statewide.

“We aren’t asking for a handout,” Turner said. “What we are asking for is justice.”

Turner and Troy Bowman, a Minneapolis custodian who had to quarantine twice in the last year, delivered copies of the petition to Walz, who has pledged support for the measure, and Sen. Erin Murphy (DFL-St. Paul), a lead author of the bill.

The DFL-controlled House included funding for emergency leave in its jobs bill last month, but Republicans in control of the Senate did not. Murphy, a registered nurse, promised to bring the petition to Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka’s attention, and thanked essential workers for their service to Minnesota during the pandemic.

“You went to work, you took care of us, you kept us alive, you kept us healthy and you kept our economy going,” she said.

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As special session nears, unions push lawmakers to prioritize working people

May 25, 2021 by

Kellen Sundet, 11, and Payton Del Rosario, 4, make signs at a rally May 15 calling on lawmakers to fund public education and other critical needs.

Minnesota legislators adjourned their regular session last week with the framework of a two-year budget in place, but the agreement merely sets the stage for another round of negotiations over spending and policy details.

That gives the state’s unions one last opportunity to push their legislative priorities – like crisis relief, paid leave and protections for working people – as lawmakers prepare for a special session beginning June 14.

Several labor groups joined the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, in a joint letter to Gov. Tim Walz and lawmakers yesterday as they began meeting in post-session working groups. The letter outlines measures – many of which have already passed in the DFL-controlled House – that unions want to see included in the final jobs bill.

“Working Minnesotans are hurting,” the letter says. “More than a year of pandemic-induced economic hardship, risks and sacrifice on the job, and civil unrest has exhausted workers and made existing racial and economic inequities even worse. Working people need their lawmakers’ help.”

[Individual supporters can sign onto the letter here.]

Unions want to see lawmakers create or extend benefits for workers who have struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic, like enhanced unemployment insurance, pandemic pay for frontline workers and a “right-to-return” guarantee for former employees as the hard-hit hospitality industry continues to recover.

Hourly school employees have been fighting for years to change a state law barring them from access to unemployment insurance. But the fight took on new urgency when schools shut down in-person learning last year, leaving thousands out of work.

“The path is not closed yet, but the road is narrowing,” SEIU Local 284 Executive Director Kelly Gibbons said, noting that the statewide association of school boards is fighting the measure.

“These are usually jobs where it’s women and people of color working with the children, working day in and day out, and they have no work in the summer and can’t get unemployment,” said Gibbons, whose union represents 7,000 school support staff statewide. “This is just so discriminatory.”

Making essential workers whole

Workers who could not stay home during the pandemic, meanwhile, aren’t giving up their fight to secure emergency paid leave, including retroactive benefits, for hours lost due to the pandemic.

Many health care workers, janitors, educators, warehouse and other workers burned through their paid time off – and often took unpaid leave – after being exposed to the coronavirus, or to provide care for family members.

In a roundtable discussion with Walz, Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner, a nurse in North Memorial Hospital’s COVID ward, said members of her union have lost 23 hours, on average, during the pandemic.

“Nurses didn’t bat an eye. We walked into the unknown – a horrible unknown,” she said. “We’ve had to face going to our job unprotected because we did not have the PPE we needed. We’ve had to put ourselves and our families at risk for over a year, and many have died.

“We’ve been there from the beginning, and we’re not leaving the front line. But we need justice.”

Building back safely

Other priorities unions will push in advance of the special session include jobs-creating investments in infrastructure and recovery from civil unrest in St. Paul and Minneapolis last summer.

Although the Legislature typically takes up so-called bonding bills in even-numbered years, House DFLers have advanced a $1 billion proposal to take advantage of historically low interest rates and ease uncertainty in the construction industry.

Minnesota’s Building Trades unions have backed the measure, and they are also pushing a new law that would require contractors at oil refineries – like the Marathon facility in St. Paul Park, where workers are sounding the alarm about safety concerns – to hire workers who have completed registered apprenticeships.

“More than 1,000 Minnesotans have called legislators to pass the refinery bill,” said Joel Smith, president of the Laborers District Council of Minnesota and North Dakota. “It is critical that lawmakers use this time to take action to keep refinery workers and nearby communities safe by requiring the use of a skilled workforce.” 

Unions and partners in the We Make Minnesota coalition staged a rally last month near the Capitol calling on lawmakers to “fund our futures.”

School funding set

Although much of the Legislature’s work remains unfinished, the budget deal reached last month does offer certainty to public school districts and their employees, who had been bracing for layoffs this spring.

The $52 billion biennial budget would increase K-12 education funding by 2% in each year. While that’s enough to prevent the layoffs many educators feared, Education Minnesota President Denise Specht said, it falls short of the sustainable investment public schools need and deserve.

“Minnesota schools should be a place where every student can succeed, no exceptions,” she said. “This budget should stem the tide of harmful local budget cuts, but educators throughout the state want to be able to promise their students and parents that their local school will have the resources to meet the needs of all students for years to come. We can’t do that today.”

The statewide educators’ union delivered a petition with over 20,000 signatures to lawmakers, calling on them to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Minnesotans to make up for investment gaps over the last decade-plus that have left schools underfunded.

Walz initially included the tax hike in his budget, but it was left out of the final agreement, which, instead, would tap into flexible funding from federal pandemic aid to cover proposed spending increases.

“While we’re disappointed the education spending in the final budget deal wasn’t closer to earlier budget proposals from the governor and the House, we are hopeful the final budget will limit layoffs and allow some schools to rehire educators who have already been pink slipped,” Specht said.

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

Walz joins Building Trades unions in remembering fallen workers

April 28, 2021 by

In a ceremony today on the State Capitol grounds, Gov. Tim Walz and Labor Commissioner Roslyn Robertson joined members of Twin Cities Building Trades unions in paying tribute to workers who died in the past two years due to work-related injuries or illnesses. 

Observed each year on April 28, Workers Memorial Day honors those who lost their lives on the job. In ceremonies across North America, union members pause to reflect on the impact workplace deaths have on families, co-workers and communities, and raise awareness of ongoing efforts to ensure safer, healthier workplaces.  

Walz and other speakers at the St. Paul ceremony noted that COVID-19 has created new hazards and uncertainties for frontline, essential workers, who have not been able to work remotely over the past 13 months. 

“Those that aren’t with us today, those 7,000-plus Minnesotans who aren’t here, no doubt some of them contracted COVID and lost their lives doing their jobs,” Walz said. “And we found out very early how essential workers are.” 

“Today is about remembering,” Walz added. “But there better be some lessons we’ve learned over the last year.” 

Building Trades unions honored 12 fallen members at the ceremony, their names affixed to white crosses held by family members or union representatives. At the conclusion of the observance, a speaker called out each name, followed by a single bell toll, as black sashes were placed over the crosses. 

“They used their God-given talents to provide,” St. Paul Building Trades President Tom McCarthy said during an opening prayer. “They left us too soon. We humbly pray for their families and loved ones.” 

On behalf of the people of Minnesota, Walz extended his “deepest condolences to the representatives and the families here who have lost loved ones doing the work that makes our lives a little better, doing the work that fuels our economy, doing the work that moves us from place to place.”

Nationwide, about 15 workplace fatalities occur each day, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. That’s roughly one fatal injury every 99 minutes. 

In Minnesota, the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigated 30 workplace fatalities in 2020. 

In her remarks, Robertson noted that Workers Memorial Day is timed to coincide with the anniversary of the date, now 50 years ago, that federal legislation creating OSHA went into effect. Minnesota won approval to establish its own OSHA in 1985. 

“Workplaces are much safer today than they were before the OSHA Act, but our work is not done,” Robertson said, adding that the legislation “transformed employers’ responsibility to keep workplaces safe.” 

Robertson emphasized the need to do more to protect workers who face greater risks on the job, whether due to the dangerous nature of their work or due to factors that may prevent them from understanding their rights and protections on the job, including language and cultural differences. 

“A safe workplace isn’t a privilege, it is a right of every worker,” the labor commissioner said. “It’s important that all workers have the information and training they need to be safe at the work site, regardless of what they look like, where they come from or what language they speak.  

“If they’re in the workplace, they have a right to a safe work environment.” 

That’s a principle shared by labor unions, which have taken a leading role during the pandemic in winning protections for members and all working people. Unions have fought for access to personal protective equipment, ventilation and paid COVID leave, and they have lobbied lawmakers like Walz for emergency workplace health and safety standards.  

“With the voice of labor and the voice of legislators to back it up, we made sure we wouldn’t ask someone to go back into an unsafe work condition unless we made sure they were taken care of,” Walz said. “We wouldn’t ask them to go back in there unless we were doing all we could to protect them.” 

View the names of tradespeople honored at today’s ceremony here. 

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

Metro Transit workers reject management’s ‘best and final’ offer

March 30, 2021 by

Members of ATU Local 1005 gather outside contract talks with Metro Transit.

Members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 voted May 17 to reject Metro Transit’s “best and final offer.”

The vote, in which 72% opposed the deal, shows “the members want management to get to the table and get this finished,” Ryan Timlin, Local 1005 president, said.

The union planned to request additional bargaining dates.

Local 1005 represents over 2,300 Metro Transit workers in talks with Metro Transit. The two sides have agreed to a temporary extension of their previous agreement, which expired Aug. 1, 2020, as negotiations continue.

But frustration with the agency’s plodding approach at the bargaining table – while transit workers continue to risk exposure to the virus – is at a tipping point among union members, bus operator Janea Scott said.

“We have put our families and our friends and ourselves at risk during COVID,” Scott said. “I feel like Metro Transit and the Met Council really don’t care about people like me out here working every day.”

ATU members voted overwhelmingly in September to authorize their bargaining team to call a strike.

Since then, they have been pushing Gov. Tim Walz and the Metropolitan Council, which oversees Metro Transit, for answers about how the agency’s COVID-relief windfall is being used to protect frontline workers.

Metro Transit’s latest offer included wage increases of 2 percent in the first year, 2 percent in the second year and 2.5 percent in the third and final year.

But management has refused to discuss the union’s list of about 20 non-cost items, including several safety issues. Timlin called that approach “infuriating,” given the risks workers face during the pandemic.

In addition, Metro Transit has been unwilling to address hazard pay for workers’ service through the pandemic.

“Those were the things that really pushed a ‘no’ vote,” Timlin said. To get a breakthrough in the negotiations, he added, “we might have to do some actions. We’ll see.”

– Updated May 25, 2021, to include reporting by the Minneapolis Labor Review.

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