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: , , , , , , , ,

Staff announce union drives at two Twin Cities charter schools

May 4, 2021 by

Teachers from Great River and Hiawatha announce their union campaigns during a video conference with Education Minnesota.

Staff at two Twin Cities charter schools kicked off Teacher Appreciation Week earlier this month by filing for recognition of their unions.

Teachers, paraprofessionals and support staff from Great River School in St. Paul and Hiawatha Academies in Minneapolis went public with their campaigns after filing signed authorization cards with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), triggering the union-election process.

“We are all incredibly proud and honored to be working with the amazing staff, families and students who really make our school run,” said Janiru Herath, a teacher at Hiawatha College Prep – Kingfield. “Through unionizing, we can have a seat at the table in which the decision-making process includes all voices.”

About 70% of workers eligible for the bargaining units signed authorization cards, according to Education Minnesota, the union of 89,000 education workers statewide, which is supporting both organizing drives.

The bargaining units would bring together as many as 122 school employees at Great River and 202 at Hiawatha.

Employees at both schools pushed administrators and board members to recognize their unions voluntarily, hoping to bypass the NLRB and get to work on first collective bargaining agreements that will strengthen their learning communities – but to no avail.

Instead, Great River staff members are scheduled to vote June 3 in person. Voting at Hiawatha will take place by mail, with ballots set to be counted June 8.

A bridge to support students

In a discussion streamed live on Education Minnesota’s Facebook page during Teacher Appreciation Week, Herath and other union supporters laid out their reasons for pursuing a collective voice at their schools. Each of the speakers said a union would increase staff members’ power to advocate for themselves and their students.

Great River’s Sarah Garton likened forming a union to building a bridge between staff and the school’s administration, so the two groups work together better. That would only benefit students, Hiawatha’s Tory Waggoner agreed.

“Students are the center of every- thing we do,” Waggoner said. “By prioritizing the voice of the people who work most closely with them, we can improve student outcomes and increase the satisfaction of workers as well.”

Growth at the schools has factored into workers’ decision to organize, too. Since the school’s founding in 2007, Hiawatha has expanded from a

single elementary campus into a net- work of one elementary school, two middle schools and one high school. Great River, a first- through 12th-grade Montessori school on Energy Park Drive, also has grown in recent years.

Great River teacher Nadine McNiff said growth is an opportunity “to expand what is working and improve what isn’t,” and a having a union will ensure staff members are part of that process.

“One thing that’s really important is continuity and foundation,” McNiff said. “Especially through a time of growth and changes at Great River, a union offers support for those things.”

Staff members at Great River, McNiff added, strive to create “space and structures that give students agency and voice.” And what better way to model that work than by forming a union?

“Our hopes are that unionizing and having that consistency in place, having that stability in place, can really help with maintaining working conditions that can feel supportive to workers, so they can focus and really invest their energies and thoughts on connections with students,” McNiff said.

Unions gaining favor

Charter schools are publicly funded but exempt from some state laws in order to increase flexibility, autonomy and innovation.

Minnesota is considered the birth- place of charter schools, having passed a first-in-the-nation law establishing their framework in 1991. Now, 168 charter schools serve about 68,000 pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade students statewide.

Teachers at the Twin Cities German Immersion School in St. Paul formed the state’s first charter-school union in 2014. Currently, Education Minnesota represents four bargaining units at three charter schools.

– Updated May 5, 2021, with reporting on NLRB election dates.

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

Wait for vaccines to reopen schools, St. Paul educators say

January 18, 2021 by

Hamza Dirie, 9, shows support for teachers’ safety during a car rally staged by the St. Paul Federation of Educators.

St. Paul educators, parents and community members wary of the district’s plan to resume in-person learning staged a car rally Jan. 12, calling on administrators to hold off on reopening buildings until COVID-19 vaccines are available to school staff.

St. Paul Public Schools plans to begin a phased-in reopening of elementary schools and some other programs Feb. 1, with new guidelines, protocols and facilities upgrades in place to prevent the virus’ spread among students and staff.

Those measures drew skepticism from rally-goers like Brittany Livaccar, an emergency-room nurse at United Hospital who drove to the rally with her family of five. She said district leaders should reconsider their timeline now that restaurants, bars and gyms are open, and a more contagious strain of the virus is spreading.

“Our hospitals are going to be overwhelmed soon, so it’s really important we keep our students and teachers safe,” said Livaccar, a member of the Minnesota Nurses Association. “I know it’s difficult, but we can’t go backwards now, when our COVID numbers are still high and we don’t have a vaccine for everyone.”

The SPPS plan for reopening received a vote of no confidence from members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators Executive Board, the union’s president told supporters at the car rally.

“We want to keep our community safe, we want to keep our students safe and we want to keep our members safe,” SPFE President Nick Faber said. “That’s why we are here tonight.”

Union members and supporters will be back in the streets tomorrow, Jan. 19, rallying outside Central high school from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. The district’s Board of Education is scheduled to meet later that evening.

Vaccines are coming

After across-the-board shutdowns last spring, Minnesota school districts have navigated COVID-19 differently during the 2020-21 school year. But none of the myriad local learning models has managed to avoid disruptions and frustrations resulting from the outbreak.

To create more certainty for the state’s youngest learners, Gov. Tim Walz in December eased guidelines for opening elementary schools, allowing districts to reopen classrooms even if community spread of the virus is higher than previously allowed.

But educators warn that, regardless of guidelines, community spread will impact schools’ ability to remain open – at least until their frontline workers are vaccinated.

SPFE President Nick Faber speaks at the rally, which was livestreamed on Facebook and Zoom for supporters in their cars.
United Hospital nurse Brittany Livaccar and her family join the SPFE rally.
SPFE members Mandi Jung (L) and Peggy Cobbins

“One of the hard lessons we’ve all learned from this pandemic is that you can’t operate schools when the virus is spreading too fast through the community because too many educators get sick or go into quarantine,” Education Minnesota President Denise Specht said. “Wearing masks, washing hands, keeping your distance – these are the choices that will decide when our school buildings reopen and stay open.”

Educators got some good news Jan. 18, when Walz’s administration unveiled a pilot program to prioritize vaccination of school staff and child care workers. But officials emphasized that the state’s allotment of vaccine doses from the federal government remains limited.

“While we do not have enough doses for everyone who wants a vaccine to receive one right away, we are building the system and structure so that once we receive those additional doses from the federal government, we can move quickly to support our school staff and bring even more students back into our classrooms,” Deputy Education Commissioner Heather Mueller said.

A plea for patience

At the rally in St. Paul last week, union members and parents urged district leaders to hold off on in-person learning until it’s clear students and educators returning to the classroom are there to stay.

“We are so close to finally feeling comfortable returning to our classrooms,” Bridge View elementary teacher Christin Fleming said. “Being vaccinated would be an absolute game changer.”

Reopening before it’s safe, SPFE leaders warned, will cost the district qualified educators at a time when they are in short supply.

Results of an Education Minnesota survey released last fall showed a majority of members who responded said teaching during the pandemic has left them stressed, anxious and overwhelmed. Nearly three in 10 were thinking about quitting or retiring, and applications for pension benefits were on the rise.

A post on SPFE’s social-media account in the days following the car rally reported that two kindergarten teachers assigned to in-person learning at one elementary school in the district already have resigned.

Janet Nelson has seen the attrition firsthand while working in the district’s child-care program for essential workers’ families. The SPFE member said staff turnover is a “constant challenge” for the program. Among staff assigned to the site when the school year began in September, Nelson said, she’s the only one still working there.

Faber and other union leaders pledged to keep pressure on SPPS to alter its course, urging supporters to sign an online petition to Superintendent Joe Gothard and contact members of the school board individually.

“It is not too late to turn this around,” Faber said.

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Survey says state’s educators are burning out fast

October 29, 2020 by

Educators from St. Paul and Minneapolis rallied together near the Lake Street bridge Sept. 30, urging their districts to engage with them in decisions about reopening school buildings.

In-person, online or with a hybrid approach, classes have resumed at public schools across Minnesota. While models differ from district to district, a new survey finds that educators are having similar experiences marked by stress, anxiety and overwhelming workloads.

Applications for retirement benefits, meanwhile, are on the rise – a troubling sign for a profession already facing worker shortages.

In light of the findings, Education Minnesota President Denise Specht, the highest-ranking officer of the statewide educators union, urged district leaders to recalibrate their models and bargain in good faith with local unions over the terms of pandemic learning.

“Our public schools won’t function if thousands of educators burn out and leave,” Specht said. “It’s time to adjust.”

The survey, conducted in September, asked members of Education Minnesota the question, “How are you currently feeling about your work as an educator?”

Among the nearly 9,500 members who responded, 79% reported feeling stressed, 73% felt overwhelmed and 51% said they worried about their mental health.

Teachers working in different education modes at the same time – both in-person and online, for example – reported the highest levels of stress and anxiety in Education Minnesota’s survey, suggesting the hybrid approach may not be sustainable over the full school year.

That’s a message Kaia Hirt, an English teacher from the Anoka-Hennepin school district, brought to a public gathering of educators Sept. 30 in Minneapolis. Hybrid learning has been a “circus” in her district, Hirt said. She pointed to constantly shifting expectations, murky health protocols and impossible workloads.

Hirt, whose district has since dialed back in-person learning, had a warning for educators from the Minneapolis and St. Paul districts, where remote learning remains the primary mode: “Don’t let them take you to the circus.”

In the metro, representatives of the school districts and educators unions have been discussing a potential hybrid return to classrooms for most students.

Both sides say in-person learning is the ultimate goal, but union members say the process has not adequately engaged educators or taken into consideration the needs of communities of color and multilingual families, who have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

“We need to stop talking about equity, and start being about equity,” Lindsey West, a teacher at Barton Open School in Minneapolis, said.

Making St. Paul’s school buildings safe for in-person learning, SPFE member Linda Jones said, would require large-scale investments, particularly in a district that serves communities hit hardest by COVID-19. Funding for that work has been held up by gridlock at the federal level.

“I give our national leaders an ‘F’ because their extremely irresponsible response to Covid has failed our people,” Jones said. “It is our duty and our obligation to not fuel the fires of the virus, but rather work to slow its spread. This means we do not open our schools to in-person learning until the virus is contained.”

In addition to pumping the brakes on in-person learning, educators want their districts to reconsider expectations for remote learning that have too many staff members burning out. “It is the fourth week of school, and we are already trying to figure out how we can keep this up,” St. Paul education assistant Yasmin Muridi said.

Widespread burnout could be disastrous for the state’s education system in the long run.

Education Minnesota’s survey found nearly three in 10 respondents were thinking about quitting or retiring, a trend backed up by the Teachers Retirement Association of Minnesota, which reported to the union that applications for retirement benefits increased by 35% in August and September 2020, compared to the same period last year.

“The goal remains to safely reopen school buildings and resume in-person learning, but this pandemic has taught everyone to be flexible,” Specht said. “This isn’t the time for finger pointing, but it is time to adapt.”

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Labor values are lived, not learned for union members on the 2020 ballot

October 28, 2020 by

Members of labor unions make the best labor-endorsed candidates. Fortunately for working families, several union members are running for office this year with the Labor 2020 endorsement.

“We know that when union members hold public office, they champion our values and work hard to shift the balance of power for working people,” said Bill McCarthy, president of the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

A power shift is exactly what Josiah Hill, an English teacher in the Stillwater school system, has in mind with his campaign to represent Senate District 39, which straddles the St. Croix River in Washington County.

Republicans hold a narrow, three-seat majority in the Senate, and they have used it to thwart progress on “environmental protection, public-school funding and expanding access to affordable health care coverage,” Hill said. Unseating his incumbent opponent would be a step toward a labor majority in the chamber.

Hill has served six terms as president of his union, the St. Croix Education Association. It’s an experience he considers the “perfect training exercise” for the Legislature because it involved reaching compromise, not scoring political points.

“I’m solutions focused,” Hill said. “I’m not interested in short-term wins. The work I’ve had to engage in makes it necessary to listen deeply to all parties and to find solutions that allow us to move forward with the resources available.”

Like Hill, Erin Preese is a union educator vying to unseat an incumbent. Preese’s work teaching English-language learners in the Lakeville schools has informed the type of legislator she hopes to be for the residents of House District 58A.

In fact, it’s why she’s running in the first place. Two years ago, as a member of the Lakeville Education Association’s committee on government relations, Preese paid a visit to her House representative – now her opponent – to advocate for fair funding of public schools.

“It was frustrating,” Preese remembered. “Our current representative, he has two daughters in private school, and sometimes it’s hard to understand life experiences that are not your own.”

Preese said she plans to continue teaching in Lakeville if she wins Nov. 3, with a leave of absence during the legislative session.

“The decisions made at the Capitol have real effects on people here at our school, on their everyday lives,” she said. “Working will help me stay grounded. I think maybe if you’re at the Capitol too much you can get caught up in the politics.”

Jim Swenson makes a point of keeping politics out of the City of North Branch’s business. A member of Local 110 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Swenson is seeking reelection this fall to a second two-year term as the Chisago County community’s mayor.

North Branch is growing, and Swenson’s focus has been on making that growth sustainable for everyone. Building permits are up over 250% this year, and the city has seen 96 new homes built already in 2020. A 48-unit, income-based housing development has opened, and last year the city added a 20-unit apartment complex for people struggling with mental-health issues and homelessness.

In August, Gov. Tim Walz visited North Branch to present the city with a “Telecommuter Forward!” award for its efforts to expand broadband internet access citywide – something of critical importance to workers during the pandemic. During the ceremony, Swenson said, he pulled Walz aside and touted the nonpartisan, community effort that led to North Branch’s success.

“This is the way government needs to work, with two people from totally separate parties working together,” Swenson told Walz. “Can you believe that? It’s the way government should work – for the people.”

Bringing people together is, of course, what unions do. So it should come as no surprise Swenson and other candidates with union backgrounds are good at it. As a member of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) for the last six years, House District 58B candidate Sara Wolf has seen firsthand the power of collective voice.

“It’s telling that when the topic of health insurance comes up and someone says, ‘I’m union,’ everybody knows that it means they have good insurance!” Wolf laughed.

Kaela Berg, a flight attendant seeking office in House District 56B, remembered how she felt upon joining her union, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, 17 years ago. It was “a spark that was ignited that became a fire in my belly for fighting for working families,” she said.

Since signing that union card, Berg has taken an active role in local movements for economic and environmental justice, serving a stint as director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition. Now she’s ready to go to work in the Legislature, fighting to advance the priorities she and all labor-endorsed candidates share, like accessible health care, fully funded schools and economic opportunity for everyone.

“They aren’t just legislative talking points to me,” Berg said. “They are my lived experience. I’m passionate about a Minnesota that works for working families.”

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As new school year draws near, unions push districts for answers

August 24, 2020 by

Members of the White Bear Lake Area Educators rally before a school board meeting, urging the district to delay its plan to return to in-person classes.

As school districts across Minnesota prepare for a school year unlike any other, the union members who work in public education are pushing for a voice in decisions impacting their health – and the health of their communities.

State guidelines announced by Gov. Tim Walz in July set the ground rules for reopening public school buildings during the COVID-19 pandemic, but allow districts leeway to craft their own protocols.

What should not be optional, unions say, is collaboration and communication with their employees. But in several districts across the metro, union members are calling out administrators for looking past workers’ concerns as they push forward with plans to reopen.

“The communication that is received by staff and families is vague at best and non-existent at worst,” said Karin Hogan, an educator in the White Bear Lake Area Schools, where union members rallied before the school board tonight.

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“Educators are feeling extremely wary, scared and nervous about going back to school because of all of our unanswered questions surrounding safety, consistency, and educational quality,” Hogan said.

Until they get specific answers to those questions, union members want administrators to pump the brakes on in-person learning, set to begin Sept. 8 with a hybrid approach that combines in-person and at-home learning. In a survey of union members, 74% said they prefer distance learning to start the year.

“Our union is appreciative of the cooperation that the administration is currently showing with our negotiations committee. It is more than many other districts,” Hogan said. “However, it is not enough to address and alay our concerns.”

Unions representing school employees initially praised the governor’s reopening guidelines as data-driven and based in science.

But Denise Specht, president of Education Minnesota, stressed that readying school buildings would take a “tremendous amount of work,” and she cautioned local districts against settling for “safe enough” to meet arbitrary deadlines for starting classes.

“We know we have a lot of work to do before school can start this fall,” Kelly Gibbons, president of SEIU Local 284, added. “We are committed to doing everything in our power to make sure every district in the state, no matter what their plan may be, is putting the health and safety of students, staff and our communities before everything else.”

Already, local unions are reporting problems.

A White Bear Lake school board member listens as one of the district’s educators explains her concerns about plans to reopen school buildings.

Under Walz’s executive order, districts are required to accommodate staff members with health conditions that put them at elevated risk to COVID-19.

But Specht has said she is “deeply troubled” that educators’ requests for accommodation haven’t always been taken seriously. In a public statement, she listed several examples of complaints – some “plainly illegal” – Education Minnesota has heard from its members.

“We can and must do better,” Specht said. “Education Minnesota calls on school districts in this state to be model employers.”

The American Federation of Teachers has authorized educators to go on “safety strikes” during the pandemic as a last resort in efforts to secure certain protections on the job. But some metro districts are doing better by their employees without large-scale worker mobilizations.

In St. Paul, where the coronavirus cut short a contentious educator strike in March, administrators not only invited members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators to join work groups charged with planning for the fall semester, but took their input seriously, SPFE President Nick Faber said.

“Most of the discussion was around hybrid and returning to classrooms, what it would look like to go back,” Faber said. “It seemed like every time we answered a question or concern, it just opened up 50 more. It was just not logistically possible to do it safely.”

Tiffany Dittrich, president of the White Bear Lake Area Educators, speaks at the rally.

The St. Paul Public Schools will begin the school year with remote learning for all students, a move Faber characterized as the least-bad option on the table for SPFE members.

“Our members aren’t crazy about having to go back to teaching over a computer screen, often while their own kids are in the house somewhere,” he said. “But they know this is the safest way.”

Other metro-area school districts, including Roseville and Bloomington, have recently come to similar conclusions, postponing their initial plans for in-person classes due to safety concerns.

Tiffany Dittrich, president of the White Bear Lake educators union, hopes her district will do the same. Two weeks ago, she presented administrators with a list of over 100 questions about the safety and quality of instruction under the district’s back-to-school plan. Most remain unanswered, Dittrich said.

“I’m proud of the tireless work of our district leaders and teacher leaders throughout the entire summer to set the stage for our return this fall,” she said. “Yet there is much work that must still be done … and time is running far too short.”

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

Excluded from unemployment benefits, hourly school workers speak out: ‘It is insulting’

July 16, 2020 by

School employees on the video press conference (clockwise from top-left): Teresa Jakubowski, Ronnie Sprigler, Rochelle Stoffel, Sieara Washington and Kelly Gibbons.

For decades, hourly school employees in Minnesota have been fighting to change a state law that restricts their access to unemployment insurance benefits, but to no avail.

Now, school bus drivers, paraprofessionals, teaching assistants and support staff across the state are being left behind as unemployment benefits, bolstered by $600 per week through the federal CARES Act, keep many Americans from slipping into poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is insulting we aren’t treated the same as other workers when it comes to unemployment,” Sieara Washington, an education support professional in the Osseo school district, said. “It’s really telling us how they feel about ESPs. I guess we aren’t valuable enough.”

Washington spoke out during a virtual press conference hosted today by four Minnesota unions that represent hourly school employees: Local 284 of the Service Employees International Union, Education Minnesota, AFSCME Council 5 and Teamsters Local 320.

Union members called on state lawmakers, who began a special legislative session Monday, to take emergency action providing relief for hourly school employees, who are simultaneously dealing with the uncertainty of what their jobs will look like – assuming they exist at all – in the fall semester.

Kelly Gibbons, president of SEIU Local 284, said hourly school employees want both “short term solutions and long-term structural change.”

While construction workers, landscapers, resort workers and other seasonal employees are eligible for unemployment, school employees are not, according to the state’s unemployment statute, provided they have a “reasonable assurance” of returning to work in the fall.

“I think it’s discriminatory,” Gibbons said, noting that hourly positions in school districts are “more female-dominated” than other seasonal jobs like construction. “We’re being excluded from the law, so I think it’s not equitable. I don’t think it’s fair.”

Meanwhile, union stewards on the press call described the mounting financial pressures facing hourly workers, some of whom have been out of work since March.

Local 320 steward Ronnie Sprigler, a teaching assistant in the St. Paul Public Schools, said the sudden loss of income has been “catastrophic” for many of her fellow Teamsters, particularly single parents. Sprigler, herself a widow who cares for a disabled son, has incurred “serious debt and quality-of-life issues” as a result of the pandemic.

“But I also know that I am far from alone,” Sprigler said, noting that calls have been streaming in from distressed co-workers. “There’s a level of mental and emotional damage happening to people I hear from every week.”

Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan bus driver Teresa Jakubowski, a steward with Local 284, said that while she’s able to weather the storm by taking on debt, others without access to credit have faced heartbreaking decisions. One member of her bargaining unit recently sold her mother’s engagement ring for cash, Jakubowski said, and another couldn’t afford to replace her broken-down car.

“Food and rent are the biggest worries,” Jakubowski said. “We are frustrated, and we are fearful.”

AFSCME steward Rochelle Stoffel, a middle-school office clerk in St. Paul, said she gets “calls and emails constantly” from members in a panic about their unemployment status.

“They thought because programming was cancelled and they lost their position, they would receive unemployment, only to find out they’re in a pending status, with no help or estimation from the unemployment office when or if they will see a benefit at all,” Stoffel said. “It’s a terrible feeling.”

As painful as the last three months have been for hourly school employees and their families, union members on the press call said they were hopeful the crisis would finally lead to action, which workers like Gibbons have been pressing lawmakers to take for decades.

“I don’t think it’s any coincidence that this law applies to jobs that are traditionally done by women and people of color,” Gibbons said. “But this work is way too important to be treated this way. We need action from our state leaders.”

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

Labor gets behind school bonds, levies in East Metro

October 25, 2019 by

Organized labor is boosting efforts to fund new investments in several East Metro public school districts, including a record-breaking building referendum in the White Bear Lake Area Schools.

Levy and bond referendums empower communities to invest in their schools’ programming, facilities and technology – investments that always pay off in the long run, St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Bobby Kasper said.

“Great schools are the bedrock of every strong community,” Kasper said. “They educate our future workforce and attract good employers to our area.

“That’s why, as a labor movement, we usually support operating levy and bond referendums as down payments on our economic future.”

The St. Paul RLF, which unites local unions from Ramsey, Chisago, Dakota and Washington counties, has endorsed levy requests on the Nov. 5 ballot in the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage, Lakeville, Mounds View and Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan districts, as well as a separate bond request in Lakeville.

But the referendum in White Bear Lake is the biggest of the bunch.

District leaders have pitched a $326 million package of technological, facility and safety improvements that would touch every building and program in the school system.

It’s the largest school bond referendum ever to appear on a ballot in Minnesota, and it comes after months of strategic planning, which brought together residents with and without children, business owners, teachers and other district staff.

Even if it passes, property owners in the White Bear district would still be paying less toward school debt, about $275 per year, than their counterparts in neighboring districts, who average about $317 per year. And taxpayers who file for the state’s property tax refund would see their burden cut by as much as 80 percent.

Meanwhile, the building referendum provides an opportunity to address issues that have been bubbling to the surface within the community for over a decade, like concerns about school safety and changing technology, as well as an expanding student population.

Tiffany Dittrich, president of the White Bear Lake Teachers Association, said the district anticipates an influx of up to 2,000 students over the next 10 years.

“We’re currently at capacity,” Dittrich said. “So it’s critically important that we have additional classroom space to be able to support those students.”

The building referendum also would fund construction of a unified high school in the district, which currently splits students between north and south campuses. Dittrich, in her 23rd year as a language arts teacher at White Bear, said a single-site high school is “something the community has wanted for a long time.”

With improvements proposed at every school site, and a brand new elementary school in Hugo, the White Bear bond would create hundreds of construction jobs. It would also strengthen and support existing jobs in the district, which maintains 11 different collective bargaining agreements with local unions.

Dittrich said she isn’t taking anything for granted, but she remains hopeful the referendum will pass Nov. 5.

“In my experience, the residents of the White Bear community support their schools,” she said. “That support has contributed to an environment that empowers me to support students and allow them to thrive educationally.”

 

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

Labor unites behind Walz for governor

August 16, 2018 by

Tim Walz talks with union members at a Helmets to Hardhats event in Duluth last month.

After emerging as the Minnesota DFL’s nominee for governor on primary-election night, Tim Walz today won the endorsement of the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

With the endorsement, Minnesota’s unions join forces to elect one of their own to the state’s highest office. Walz worked as a classroom teacher and coach for 20 years before winning a seat in Congress, and he was a member of Education Minnesota, the statewide educators union.

Because of his experience as a teacher and union member, Walz “understands first-hand the importance of protecting working people’s freedom to join together in union to negotiate a fair return on their work,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy said.

Keeping an ally in the governor’s office is the top election-year priority for the federation and its 1,000-plus affiliate unions, which represent more than 300,000 working people statewide.

Union members have much at stake. Since the 2010 election, Minnesota and Gov. Mark Dayton have charted a very different course than most other Midwestern states, where Republican governors have pursued a steady erosion of working people’s freedoms.

Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin passed “right-to-work” laws that weaken unions’ bargaining power. The same three states recently repealed prevailing-wage laws that build fair wages into the bidding process for public construction projects – a direct attack on union tradespeople’s quality of life.

And Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker remains infamous for Act 10, a blunt attack on public workers’ wages, benefits and union rights that served as a model for GOP lawmakers in other Midwest states – and aspiring lawmakers, too. Walz’s opponent in the Nov. 6 election, Jeff Johnson, promised during his failed campaign for governor four years ago that he would “go all Scott Walker on Minnesota” if elected.

Dayton, meanwhile, signed legislation expanding collective bargaining rights to more than 20,000 home care workers, and he used his veto pen to fend off Walker-inspired style attacks on public workers and prevailing wage.

Unions trust Walz to govern similarly.

“Working people can count on Minnesota AFL-CIO endorsed candidates to share our values,” Secretary-Treasurer Brad Lehto said. “We can count on Tim and Peggy because they value our freedom to negotiate a fair return on our work, so we can provide for our families; workplaces where we are safe and respected; and the freedom to retire with dignity.”

At a union-sponsored debate in February, Walz told activists he would be an “organizer-in-chief” as governor. “This is about us taking a message beyond the four walls that we’re in,” he said.

He also said he would recruit teachers and high-road businesses from Wisconsin, where Walker’s anti-union agenda has driven educators away from the profession and left wages stagnant.

Prior to representing the 1st Congressional District in southern Minnesota, Walz taught and coached football at Mankato West High School for 12 years. He was named Mankato Teacher of the Year and a Minnesota Teacher of Excellence in 2003.

Walz also served 24 years in the Army National Guard, including a deployment overseas in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. He retired in 2005 as a command sergeant major, the highest-ranking enlisted National Guard soldier in southern Minnesota.

Flanagan is a state lawmaker from St. Louis Park and former director of the Children’s Defense Fund-Minnesota. She is a citizen of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe.

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Teaching, union leadership ‘all come together in the auditor’s office’ for Blaha

August 2, 2018 by

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Julie Blaha

Julie Blaha’s first paycheck came from a job making cold calls for the United Democratic Fund. She was 14 years old.

“I asked people over dinner how they were going to vote for president,” recalled Blaha, the DFL- and labor-endorsed candidate for state auditor. “I thought it was amazing. I thought it was glamorous.”

A self-described “math nerd,” Blaha’s thirst for glamour and excitement eventually led to a career as a middle school math teacher, but her interest in elections and politics remained. She served multiple terms as president of the Anoka-Hennepin teachers’ union and, two years ago, made a successful bid to become Secretary-Treasurer of the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

In June, Blaha secured the DFL nomination in the auditor’s race, prompting her to resign from her labor position to focus solely on campaigning statewide. Her interview with The Union Advocate has been edited for length and clarity.

UA: Is running for auditor just a way for a middle school math teacher to find trickier word problems for her students?

JB: When you’ve been on a nerd trajectory of math teacher to treasurer, this is really the next logical step…

I started out as an educator, and you learn really early on that if you truly want to support your kids, you need to get involved politically. We say we’ll do anything for our kids, and one of those things is making sure our policies give them the schools they deserve. We have wonderful policy ideas. All we need are the resources to implement them.

UA: You’ve seen that at the bargaining table, as a president of your union.

JB: One of the first things that really opened my eyes to school finance issues was when we didn’t have enough, when we had to lay off 100 teachers. We realized our only choice was to go to our community and ask them to agree to a tax increase.

That’s a big lift, but as you begin to talk to people about money that gets spent close to home, you start to have some real good conversations. It was a very real, very authentic, relatively nonpartisan discussion we could have, and it was one of the few places you can have it – in your county or your township or your school district. I love that part of government.

UA: What perspective will you bring to the auditor’s office, as a math teacher and as a union leader?

JB: I know I don’t have to have all the answers, but I want to give our local governments all the tools. As an educator, your job is not to do the work for your kids. It’s not to tell them the answer… The solutions are all in our communities. Just like in the labor movement, we know you should never do for a member what they can do for themselves. As the auditor, I’m not there to tell you what to do in your community. I’m there to make sure you’ve got the tools to find the solutions together – and then to check to see if your solution did what you hoped it would.

There’s something that is absolutely connected to how a good teacher works, to how a good union leader works and how a good politician works. They all come together in the auditor’s office for me.

UA: Some are pushing to get rid of the office altogether? I would assume you disagree…

JB: I think we can all agree that in this time of fake news and unprecedented assaults on truth-tellers at every level of government and work, we absolutely need the auditor’s office more than ever. It’s important we have somebody people know is simply there for the truth.

The people for getting rid of it, you really ought to ask them, why don’t you want that truth out there?

UA: What should union members who are public employees, in particular, expect of their auditor?

JB: I think you have an opportunity to look at public and private spaces, where you have private interests encroaching on the public. That’s a place to watch, where those worlds meet…

We have people in the public sector who have seen how it’s been abused. We have contractors in the private sector who have done it right. Our job is to make sure we all know what an effective public-private partnership looks like… And these aren’t always black and white issues. You’re not calling a coin toss. Your job is to look deeply into it.

UA: Retirees, too, have an interest in electing a good auditor, right?

JB: The next auditor is definitely going to need to understand pensions well. The auditor audits a number of public pensions, and we’re seeing right now unprecedented attacks in Minnesota on defined-benefit pensions. You need an auditor who can see through some of the subterfuge from folks against public pensions. That next auditor had better be able to look at the numbers and know which ones are real and which ones aren’t.

UA: You’ve given up your position at the state AFL-CIO. Was that a difficult decision?

JB: It was heartbreaking to leave. A friend of mine asked me, where are you most needed right now – is it secretary-treasurer of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, or is it in a statewide office? That was a real turning point. There are wonderful people who are ready to step into the secretary-treasurer’s role. There are fewer people who could run for office. But I miss it every day.

The main reason I had to resign is that I wanted to be crystal clear that we were being fair about the finances. It’s the way campaign finance laws work – and should work.

UA: What were your favorite parts of the job?

JB: My absolute favorite part of being a union officer has been standing up to right to work. For years, I’ve been part of this reawakening of the labor movement. It’s been exciting, it’s been terrifying, but most of it has been absolutely invigorating and inspiring.

UA: The ways that we work together as union members, is that what you mean?

JB: This idea that the movement is more than our individual organizations… It is something bigger and deeper, and you can just feel it throughout the entire country.

UA: It feels like a very pivotal moment, like our back can’t get any closer to the wall.

JB: And what are we seeing? We’re seeing increases in membership, we’re seeing increases in organization, we’re seeing increases in influence. We have to keep doing what we’re doing – and do it even more – because it’s working.

UA: You’ve been running for union office for a long time. How has it prepared you to run for auditor?

JB: I’m probably better prepared to be a first-time candidate than most because of my background in the labor movement. I’ve gotten a ton of training through the movement, and the movement’s support has been amazing. I’m a math teacher. I don’t have millions of dollars at my disposal. I don’t have the money to pay hoards of people to do the work. But I’ve got my union family. People ask what solidarity looks like? I know what it looks like now.

UA: Is this why we talk so much about encouraging union members to be candidates?

JB: If you’re going to fight big money in politics, you fight it with your family. I know if there’s something that I need, there’s always somebody I can call… If you’re a union member who’s thinking of running for office, remember that your union family is one of your biggest assets. Remember your union family – and then run!

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