Video game workers in Bloomington ready to strike for first contract

October 23, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Members of CWA Local 2750 held a contract rally at Activision’s Bloomington quality-assurance site in August 2026.

A week before the much-anticipated “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4” was set to launch, video game workers bargaining a first union contract with the game’s Microsoft-owned publishing company announced that they had voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike.

Activision Quality Assurance United-CWA, a bargaining unit of about 450 quality-assurance workers, including 300 based in Bloomington, has been in negotiations with Microsoft-owned Activision for over two years.

Union members are still waiting for management to get serious about the issues they brought to the table, CWA Local 7250 member Emily Danko said.

“Bargaining has been a long, exhausting process spanning over two years, with our committee making responsible moves while the company continues to stall on critical issues like wages, accommodations, and worker protections,” Danko, who works at the Bloomington site, said. “Despite our efforts to bargain in good faith, meaningful progress has been difficult, leaving key issues unresolved.”

The authorization vote, also approved by workers at Quality Assurance facilities in Texas and California, empowers Communications Workers of America President Claude Cummings Jr. to call a strike if negotiations continue to stall.

The strike vote comes at a critical time in the production and release cycle of one of Activision’s most popular – and profitable – franchises. “Call of Duty” is set to launch worldwide today.

“Our members remain united and continue to mobilize, but we are exploring every option available to secure the fair contract we deserve,” Danko said.

Quality Assurance workers won recognition of their union in March 2024 and entered bargaining that August seeking wage increases, guardrails on the company’s use of contractors and artificial intelligence, and protections around their right to seek accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Microsoft has failed to bargain in good faith on any of those issues, CWA District 7 Vice President Susie McAllister said.

“The results of the strike authorization vote send a clear message to Activision management: it is time to stop playing games because our members are united and prepared to do what it takes to win the strong contract they deserve,” McAllister said.

In Bloomington, Local 7250 members have begun ramping up the pressure on Activision to settle a fair deal. Nearly 50 members joined a midday rally in August, joining other Microsoft workers in a nationwide day of action. They rallied again the day before CWA announced results of the strike vote.

“We’re all kind of feeling that pinch,” union steward Andrew Snell said. “It’s taken two years. It’s taken a really long time. We’re fighting tooth and nail just to get this contract done, but we’re getting closer.”

Click here to contribute to Activision Quality Assurance workers’ strike fund.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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Bloomington video game workers ‘fighting tooth and nail’ with Microsoft for first contract

August 27, 2026 by

Activision workers march from their office in Bloomington to demonstrate along Old Shakopee Road during the “Save Our Devs” national day of action.

BLOOMINGTON – Video game workers rallied Aug. 18 for a fair first contract with their Microsoft-owned publishing firm, while also standing in solidarity with workers across the country fighting layoffs and corporate greed in Microsoft’s gaming studios.

Members of Activision Quality Assurance United, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), held “Save Our Devs” rallies at Activision worksites in Minnesota, Texas and California.

Union members called for a nationwide day of action after Microsoft announced in July that it would shutter some gaming studios and lay off over 3,200 workers in its XBOX division, which includes Activision. The first round of layoffs, scheduled this month, will impact 1,600 XBOX workers, including hundreds of union members.

So far, the layoffs have spared Activision Quality Assurance United members, but union steward Andrew Snell said the union wanted to join workers and gamers across the country voicing their anger over the unilateral path Microsoft has laid out for XBOX.

“It’s good for us to have a good relationship with our developers in order to have a quality game that goes out,” Snell said, adding that labor law requires the company to engage workers’ union in bargaining over discretionary layoffs.

Quality assurance workers also want to keep the pressure on Microsoft to settle a first contract with their bargaining unit, which brings together about 450 workers across the three facilities, including roughly 300 members of CWA Local 7250 in Bloomington.

The unit won recognition of their union in March 2024 and opened negotiations with Microsoft five months later. The “Save Our Devs” rally came as those talks were poised to enter a third year.

Snell, a quality assurance specialist with six years of experience at Activision, said progress toward a contract has been steady, with the two sides meeting three days per month.

Outstanding issues include wages and job security. Union members also want to secure workplace accommodations for those who need them, pointing to a lack of transparency and consistency in Activision’s office policies.

“I’ll go to my manager with a question about a particular policy, and they’ll come back with something,” Snell said. “Then I’ll go ask two or three other managers for someone else, and they’ll all have different answers. So it kind of depends on which manager you ask until you go and ask somebody higher up. It would be helpful if people were all on the same page.”

A union contract would accomplish just that, and nearly 50 union members joined the rally in Bloomington to let Microsoft know they are running out of patience with the bargaining process.

“We’re all kind of feeling that pinch,” Snell said. “It’s taken two years. It’s taken a really long time. We’re fighting tooth and nail just to get this contract done, but we’re getting closer.”

Learn more about forming a union in the video game industry at uvw-cwa.org.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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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

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In unionization push, Alamo Drafthouse workers cut to the chase

April 17, 2026 by

Workers at Alamo Drafthouse in Woodbury (photo courtesy CWA Local 7250)

The time it takes to organize a union is typically measured in months, if not years. Not so for workers at the Alamo Drafthouse in Woodbury, who voted March 27 to join Communications Workers (CWA) Local 7250 in a process that took a mere six weeks.

It was as quick an organizing drive as anyone at CWA could remember and, according to workers, an indication of just how miserable a new digital ordering system has made the Alamo Drafthouse experience for both employees and moviegoers.

“It really eliminates the guest-to-server interaction – the community that comes with being part of the Alamo,” support crew member Isabelle Hernandez, 22, said. “The team, the movies and even our regulars really make the Alamo as special as it is, and we don’t want to lose that.”

Alamo Drafthouse operates 40 cinemas across the U.S. that provide moviegoers with the big-screen experience in a bar-and-grill setting.

The corporation has been gradually introducing a new business model at its locations over the last year, replacing servers who take tableside food and drink orders with a mobile app.

That change came to the Woodbury location, which employs about 60 people, on March 3.

For workers, it’s meant reduced hours, with no guarantee of even one shift per week. And for former servers like Hernandez and Max Chitwood, who previously earned tips, it’s meant a pay cut. Instead of taking hushed orders in the theater – and earning tips from customers – they now run food and drinks from the kitchen to the tables and clean theaters between screenings.

Chitwood’s hourly wage increased from $13 to $22 per hour after the change, but she said it’s not enough to cover the loss of her tips.

“For a lot of the former servers, it’s cut our paychecks in half, at least,” Hernandez said.

Guests have noticed the change too. Phone use, previously forbidden, is now encouraged by a QR code at each table.

“Alamo’s big thing has always been no talking and no texting,” Hernandez said. “They play that before every single movie. It’s just not the Alamo that we used to know and love. There are so many times now that I’ve caught people on their phones who weren’t ordering food.”

Hernandez isn’t alone. An IndieWire review last week blasted the changes: “Once America’s most promising movie theater chain, the Alamo Drafthouse has become a QR-coded symbol of corporate ens***tification.”

Aware that other Alamo Drafthouse locations had organized unions with CWA, Woodbury workers reached out to Local 7250 in February after getting “offer sheets” from management outlining their new terms of employment.

Within 24 hours of obtaining authorization cards from the local, half of eligible workers at the theater had signed one. Within nine days, they had petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for a union election, with support from a supermajority of 72%.

“They told us we set a CWA record for fastest total time between taking the first steps toward unionizing to filing,” Chitwood, 24, said.

Alamo Drafthouse tried to pump the brakes on workers’ momentum in the month between filing their petition and voting.

The corporate office sent a representative to Minnesota to “watch us and talk to us about why the union wasn’t a good idea,” Hernandez said. And local managers attempted one-on-one communications with staff members to persuade them to vote against the union.

Both efforts, workers alleged, crossed the line between appropriate and inappropriate behavior. The corporate representative was recalled, and two workers quit over private messages from local managers that made them uncomfortable.

“It was nothing explicitly bad or outright aggressive, just very passive-aggressive, and it made the work environment uncomfortable or unsafe for those workers who left,” Hernandez said. “They were both really good team members, and we miss them.”

Ultimately, workers voted 33-14 in favor of forming a union, with one challenged ballot.

When negotiations on a first contract begin, union members hope to address wages, staffing and, of course, the new business model. Hernandez said other bargaining units have pushed for a hybrid ordering system that offers guests a choice between the QR code and in-person service.

Chitwood said the goal is to improve the Alamo Drafthouse experience for everyone, adding that many moviegoers who have learned about the union drive have responded with “a resounding hell yes, good luck in bargaining.”

“It’s reflective of how united we are as a team and how much we care about our co-workers and even the company itself,” Hernandez added.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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Video game workers in Minnesota make history with union drive

March 22, 2024 by

Over 300 video game workers in Eden Prairie have joined together with colleagues in Texas and California to form the industry’s largest union, looking to protect their work-life balance in a trade notorious for its “crunch culture.”

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) announced March 8 that about 600 workers at Activision Central Quality Assurance, a division of the Activision Blizzard gaming company, had won voluntary union recognition from Microsoft, the firm’s parent company.

With 334 workers, the Eden Prairie site is Activision Central Quality Assurance’s largest location, and employees there had been trying to organize with CWA for about four years.

Two recent developments – a return-to-office order last November and a round of layoffs in January – kicked the union drive into high gear, organizing committee member Allen Junge said.

“The way management approached layoffs was terrifying,” Junge, a Quality Assurance (QA) functional tester, said. “We’d gotten an email to tell us that layoffs were happening, but nobody knew how many people or who would be laid off. And in the Zoom call, it seemed like even the director of QA didn’t know whether or not we were going to be laid off until we were on the call.

“It was an awful experience, and that got a lot of people motivated.”

Within weeks of the Jan. 26 layoffs, Activision Quality Assurance United (AQAU) had enough support to request recognition from Microsoft under the terms of its labor neutrality pact with the CWA, reached after the tech giant acquired Activision Blizzard in 2022.

Over 1,000 Microsoft video game workers now have CWA representation. They include quality assurance workers with ZeniMax studios, who unionized last year and have since reached groundbreaking agreements on subcontracting and use of artificial intelligence.

“Microsoft continues to keep its commitment to let workers decide for themselves whether they want a union,” CWA President Claude Cummings Jr. said in a statement. “Time and again, other big companies in the industry have made the decision to undermine and attack their own employees when they join together to form a union. Microsoft’s choice will strengthen its corporate culture and ability to serve its customers and should serve as a model for the industry.”

In addition to job security and layoff procedures, AQAU members said they hope to bargain a first contract that raises pay, creates more opportunities for advancement and puts remote work back on the table.

Junge, who lives in Minneapolis and began working for Activision Blizzard after the COVID outbreak in 2020, said getting called into the Eden Prairie office in November amounted to a pay cut for him and many other workers, given the added transportation costs and travel time. The policy is particularly burdensome for workers with disabilities, he added.

“Like a lot of tech companies, they put a lot of talk into diversity-equity-and-inclusion efforts and supporting people with differing abilities and disabilities,” Junge said. “But they’ve taken away the thing that makes our job more accessible to those people.”

QA workers run fully built video games through a series of tests before they hit the market to find bugs or crashes. Companies often pitch the work “as a way to get your foot in the door in the video game industry,” Eden Prairie QA tester Kara Fannon said.

In reality, Junge said, the work is almost always confined to projects that don’t come with opportunities to learn new skills. “We’re isolated,” he said. “Everything we do has to be QA, and there’s not a lot of options elsewhere.”

“At best, we get the internal job posting before the public does,” Fannon added. “We’re ready to grow our careers here and believe that having a strong union contract will set workers and the company up for success.”

As for the “crunch culture” that has become synonymous with video game work, Junge said that’s already starting to change, as workers’ organizing efforts in recent years have brought the industry under greater scrutiny – and raised workers’ own expectations.

“There were some awful experiences that people had, like working 16-hour shifts into the night and having to come in again at the start of their regular shift,” Junge said. “A lot of people kind of saw through it, that it is actually pretty terrible.”

Having organized the industry’s largest union “feels pretty historic,” he added.

“I think we’ll be a good voice for change in not just the gaming industry, but in the tech industry as a whole.”

Members of AQAU-CWA who work in Eden Prairie will join Minneapolis-based CWA Local 7250.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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MN workers win union elections at nonprofit law firm, Fairview hospital, ADT and recycling startup

February 23, 2024 by

(Teamsters Local 120 photo)

Recycling, security and health care workers in the Twin Cities voted to form unions recently in separate elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, as workers continued to show interest in joining together to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions.

And on Wednesday the NLRB tallied votes in a mail-in organizing election covering 130 workers at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, who voted 70 to 25 in favor of bargaining collectively as members of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 5.

Based in Minneapolis, MMLA is the state’s largest nonprofit law firm, and its employees are forming a “wall-to-wall” union of workers from across the state.

Management has challenged the eligibility of certain professional employees – including assistant supervising attorneys and managing attorneys – to participate in the bargaining unit with members of other job classifications, like paralegals, legal assistants, advocates and support staff. The NLRB has not yet issued a ruling, but it will not impact the election results.

“From the outset, these workers have made their priorities clear – they are committed to putting their colleagues, clients, and communities at the forefront of their mission to come together and form a union,” Council 5 said in a statement. “Their dedication to solidarity and community exemplifies the true spirit of unionism.”

In other local union elections:

• Health unit coordinators at M Health Fairview Riverside Hospital voted to join SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa on Feb. 13, with 77% of participating workers voting yes.

The new bargaining unit of 32 employees joins over 1,500 area health care workers who have joined the SEIU local since 2021. Two other groups of workers – at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis and Unity Hospital in Fridley – have also filed for elections with the union.

• Twin Cities-based security technicians with ADT voted 14-4 in favor of forming a union with Communications Workers of America Local 7250 in an election held Feb. 16. The bargaining unit brings together 22 tech engineers, classic technicians and service technicians.

• Workers at Ridwell, a recycling startup with a branch based in St. Paul, voted unanimously to unionize Jan. 30. The company’s seven drivers and warehouse workers in Minnesota will join Teamsters Local 120.

Jamie Hoekstera, a Ridwell driver, said workers hope to bargain a first contract that addresses their concerns over wages, benefits and working conditions.

“My coworkers and I voted to become Teamsters so that we can gain a voice in our workplace,” Hoekstera said. “I am excited to work under a strong union contract that will give me a say in the decisions that affect my career and future.”

The St. Paul unit is the third group of Ridwell workers in the U.S. to join the Teamsters.

Ridwell’s services include reusing and disposing of hard-to-recycle items like batteries, lightbulbs and plastic film. Since its founding in 2018, Ridwell has expanded from Washington state to California, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon and Texas.

“We look forward to helping this new group of Teamster workers negotiate a strong contract that reflects the critical work they provide to their communities,” Local 120 President Tom Erickson said.

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Union members push back on AT&T’s return-to-office plan

August 24, 2022 by

Charli Haataja shares the results of a survey showing AT&T call center workers are more productive and less likely to miss work when allowed to work from home.

AT&T will begin forcing workers to report to call centers in Minneapolis and Bloomington next month, a decision that members of Communications Workers (CWA) Local 7250 condemned as unnecessary, risky and costly for workers and their families.

Union members aired those grievances at a press conference today outside the United Labor Centre in Minneapolis. They said corporate executives abruptly backed out of an agreement reached with CWA earlier this month to extend the Work-From-Home (WFH) agreement in place since COVID-19 hit in March 2020.

“They drew up a contract and gave us a return-to-office date of March 31, 2023,” union steward Yolanda Olmo said. “The contract was signed, but in less than 24 hours AT&T came back and said they weren’t going to honor that contract.”

Call-center workers said absenteeism is down and productivity is up since they began working from home, with workers more likely to work through mild symptoms, illnesses to family members, extreme weather and other events that might prompt them to avoid the shared workspace.

“You want us to be in each other’s faces,” union steward Angela Bates said. “Now, we may not be able to be in our families’ faces.”

Yolanda Olmo

A survey of over 500 CWA members found an overwhelming majority reported concerns about rising commuter costs, COVID risks and the safety of AT&T’s downtown location. Local 7250 President Kieran Knutson said members are “more united and passionate” about keeping their WFH agreement than any issue in his 18 years with the union.

“Work From Home is our new normal,” Local 7250 Area Vice President Charli Haataja said. “If you’re going to change that for us, we want actual reasons why.”

AT&T has yet to provide a legitimate business reason for the return to in-person work, union members said.

“You say that you need us to come back to the office for collaboration,” Olmo said. “We are credit representatives that collect money. Why do we need to collaborate collecting money?”

Meanwhile, call center employee Sara Fry said, costs associated with returning to the office – parking, transit, gas, child care – will hit workers like a pay cut when the policy takes effect Sept. 21.

“We haven’t had a meaningful raise in over five years,” Fry said. “We didn’t have the money before COVID, and we can’t afford to go back to the office now.”

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Don’t be fooled by AT&T’s authorized retailers, CWA members warn

December 17, 2021 by

Union members and supporters demonstrate outside the AT&T authorized retailer in Roseville, where CWA members used to work.

After a push from union members in Minnesota, the Communications Workers of America is stepping up its campaign to fight back against job cuts and union busting at AT&T retail stores nationwide, asking supporters to do business with stores that employ CWA members.

AT&T workers were in the streets outside dozens of “AT&T authorized retailers” across the country last weekend, including stores in St. Cloud and Roseville. The actions drew attention to the company’s recent move convert corporate-owned stores, staffed by CWA members, to third-party dealers.

That’s union-busting, said Kieran Knutson, president of CWA Local 7250, which represents AT&T wireless sales reps, technicians and call-center employees in Minnesota.

“It’s an attack not just on our union and on the working conditions in those stores, but also on the communities because there are less union jobs available,” Knutson said during a protest Saturday outside the authorized retailer in Roseville. “We’re not going to let them off the hook for that.”

AT&T has closed or converted more than 650 corporate-owned stores in the last two years, including 12 of 36 stores in Minnesota. The cuts have come despite AT&T’s promise that then-President Trump’s 2017 tax cut, which put billions into the company’s coffers, would create new jobs.

Local 7250 authored a resolution, passed by the CWA at its international convention in October, calling for the day of action against AT&T’s job cuts, held Saturday during the holiday shopping season.

The union also has launched a campaign to help AT&T customers tell the difference between union and non-union stores, which look alike except for a small sign on the front indicating which are authorized retailers.

Union stores in the east metro include Burnsville, Maplewood, St. Paul (Highland Park) and Woodbury. Find a complete list of union stores nationwide at CWA.org/ATTstore.

Union members and supporters all but shut down the AT&T authorized retailer in Roseville for nearly two hours Saturday, marching outside the storefront with signs and distributing fliers in the parking lot.

The store used to be staffed by union members, Knutson said, but recently closed and reopened as an authorized retailer owned by Prime Communications. That company’s leadership includes several former AT&T executives.

“The sole purpose of Prime Communications is to franchise AT&T retail stores, to turn them from union into non-union stores,” Knutson said. “It’s not like they also franchise Verizon; they are purely a creation for union-busting.”

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AFSCME united for ‘substantive change’ in talks with U

October 18, 2021 by

AFSCME members rally at the U of M Twin Cities campus.

The maroon and gold that typically adorn the University of Minnesota’s campuses have been spiked with AFSCME green this fall, as frontline workers make a public push for higher wages and other demands in contract talks with the school.

Clerical, technical and health care workers, members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, have been in bargaining with the university since May. Their previous, two-year contracts expired June 30.

But the slow pace of negotiations has prompted unions to begin putting public pressure on the U to get serious about their demands.

AFSCME members staged rallies on the Twin Cities and Duluth campuses Sept. 22 and, two weeks later, marched on a Board of Regents meeting. Tomorrow, Oct. 19, workers will hold informational picketing from noon to 1 p.m. on the corner of Delaware St SE and Church St SE, near Boynton Health Services.

Union members say they will keep the heat on the university until its words of support for frontline workers translate into real gains at the bargaining table.

“The U is interested in image,” Local 3800 President Cherrene Horazuk said during a rally last month on the steps of Coffman Memorial Union. “U of M AFSCME is interested in substantive change. That’s why we’re here today.”

Demanding pay and respect

Wage raises and “essential pay” are among AFSCME locals’ top demands in bargaining.

All workers deserve wages that keep up with the rising cost of living, the unions say, and workers who kept the university running during the pandemic deserve “tangible appreciation for risking our lives,” said Deb Pavlica, the president of Local 3260 and a nurse at Boynton Health Services.

“The Board of Regents all stayed home safer. President Gable, management, leadership all stayed home safer,” Pavlica said. “But they sent us to the frontline for an extra $16 a day for less than three months…

“We want raises and compensation that acknowledge our sacrifices.”

Beyond higher pay, workers are pushing for contract language that would keep in place remote and flexible work schedules introduced at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their demands also include a formal process for appealing management decisions related to remote work.

Diane Blumenfeld, a clerical worker in the university’s dentistry program, said all workers should have the right to “meaningful flexibility” in their work schedule. “During the last year and a half, we have proven that we do not need to be physically in the office to do our jobs well,” she said.

Other AFSCME members at the Sept. 22 rally demanded a more robust Regents Scholarship program for U of M employees. Sarah Vast, a transgender, nonbinary worker, called on the university to do more to make its workplaces “safe, healthy and just for workers of all identities, needs and abilities” and described having to “walk three buildings away to use a restroom that is safe and comfortable.”

Lei Simmons, a clerical worker at Masonic Cancer Research Center and member of Local 3800, demanded the contract reflect a commitment to racial and social justice that goes beyond “diversity training” and begins the work of addressing and eliminating bias.

“The University of Minnesota has a history of turning that blind eye. We have a history of managers rationalizing and justifying behaviors that demean people,” Simmons said. “Each person that is at the university as a student and as a worker has the right to be respected.”

Support and solidarity

University students and non-AFSCME staff joined the rally in support of the workers’ contract campaign. Members of other unions – including the Communications Workers (CWA), Service Employees (SEIU) and Education Minnesota – also showed their solidarity.

“We support the workers here fighting for what’s right,” CWA Local 7250 President Kieran Knutson said. “No business as usual until there’s justice for the workers.”

Greg Namacher, president of SEIU Local 26, noted that U of M AFSCME members supported janitors when they went on strike in February 2020.

“It is critical that we stand with each other when we’re fighting for what’s right, especially in this moment,” he said. “It is also critical that we stand together to push the university to be an engine of economic and racial justice – and not an impediment to it.”

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

Union pledges fight as AT&T plans more Twin Cities store closings

February 26, 2021 by

Local job cuts at AT&T will continue this spring, when the company plans to close three more wireless retail locations in the Twin Cities suburbs, according to Communications Workers Local 7250.

The union, which represents AT&T wireless sales reps, technicians and call-center employees in Minnesota, received official notification of the store closings yesterday.

AT&T closed nine retail stores across the state last summer, and has been shamelessly outsourcing and offshoring American jobs at a steady clip in recent years. The cuts have come despite AT&T’s promise that then-President Trump’s 2017 tax cut, which put billions into the company’s coffers, would create new jobs.

That will never happen, AT&T retail sales consultant Larry Thompson said, unless executives feel pressured to live up to their promises. Thompson, a Local 7250 officer who works in the company’s St. Paul store, said the union is at work on plans to exert that pressure.

“We all see the writing on the wall,” he said.

A year ago, Local 7250 represented workers in 36 AT&T Wireless locations statewide. By June that total will have dropped to 24.

Each store employs five sales reps, on average. They typically earn around $17 per hour in base pay, plus commission and benefits, Thompson said.

The company closed 250 stores nationwide last summer and, in October, warned of more cuts to come. CWA Local 7250 President Kieran Knutson said the three Minnesota stores set to close this spring – in Apple Valley, Shakopee and West St. Paul – are among 95 closing nationwide in April and May.

CWA’s nationwide contract with AT&T guarantees workers the opportunity to transfer to other wireless stores within a 30-mile radius or, if they meet the qualifications, to work from home as a customer-service consultant.

That softens the blow some. But Thompson said customer-service reps earn considerably less than sales reps without commission, and AT&T “has closed so many stores, we’re running out of places to put people.”

Stores slated to close typically reopen as nonunion “authorized retailers,” selling AT&T products and services but not owned by the company. The products are the same, but the experience inside the store is different for both workers and customers.

“They typically reduce sales staff to he bone, and they don’t offer the same kinds of benefits, wages and job security that our contract guarantees on top of the commissions,” Knutson said.

“They don’t operate with the same integrity,” Thompson added. “Everybody who works at a corporate-owned store has had a negative experience with authorized retailers because of that.

“We get paid well, we do a great job and we keep our jobs. It’s that simple.”

Find a list of corporate-owned stores, staffed by Local 7250 members, on the union’s website.

Meanwhile, supporters should stay tuned to the union’s social media feed for upcoming actions pushing back against job cuts at AT&T, Knutson said.

“This is a clear union-busting move by the company,” he said. “Behind all of these cuts are some real people and their families. We’re not going to take this lying down.”

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