Nurses picket as Hazelden Betty Ford drags out first-contract talks

June 5, 2026 by

MNA members picket outside Hazelden Betty Ford’s facility in Center City.

Nurses bargaining a first union contract with the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation held informational picketing June 2 at the renowned addiction-treatment facility in Center City, looking to raise awareness of their safety and staffing concerns.

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association had hoped Hazelden administrators would take a collaborative approach to addressing the issues behind their vote to unionize in January 2025.

But those hopes have fizzled over 16 months of mostly unproductive talks.

“A lot of things that we propose, they’ll propose back that they don’t need it to be written out,” Cara Bergner, a registered nurse in Hazelden’s detox unit, said on the picket line. “They just want it up to management’s discretion, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the contract.

“I think their hopes are that if they put it off, we’ll get tired and give up. But I don’t see that being the case.”

Anne Coleman, another registered nurse in the detox unit, said nurses are bargaining for changes that will make their jobs more sustainable – and they’re doing it because they believe in the Hazelden Betty Ford mission.

“We take people in a crisis situation who, a lot of the time, come in very broken, and I just love to see them get their lives back, to get the confidence and light back in their eyes,” Coleman said. “I love to see them heal.

“We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t love the mission, the patients and the many things that Hazelden has done for the community and nationwide. But the healthcare system itself is broken, and, unfortunately, it’s trickled down to Hazelden.”

As the rate of violence against healthcare workers rises nationwide, Hazelden nurses are increasingly treating patients under the influence of highly potent drugs like fentanyl. Union members say de-escalation tactics, which they are trained to use when a patient becomes violent, are insufficient alone.

“We’re bringing in higher-acuity, more severe cases of people who have mental-health issues and severe addictions,” Bergner said. “We don’t have any other safeguards (besides de-escalation) and any true, straightforward protocols for staff members’ safety.”

In bargaining, nurses have floated proposals like round-the-clock security, panic buttons and minimum staffing levels. Some units, Bergner and Coleman said, have just one nurse on the floor at times, leaving staff overwhelmed.

Perhaps predictably, an increasing number of Hazelden nurses are leaving the bedside. Turnover has affected about a third of MNA’s 60-person bargaining unit of registered and licensed practical nurses, according to the union.

Coleman said factors behind the attrition include stagnant wages over the last two years, recent benefit cuts and management’s unwillingness to agree to measures that would make nurses feel safer and more supported on the job.

Newly hired nurses are leaving too. “They come here,” Bergner said, “and before they really get a love for the job, they’re like, ‘This space is crazy.’”

For nurses who remain, the turnover creates more short staffing and extends their shifts. Coleman said she has worked as many as 16 hours straight.

“I’m happy to do it because I want my patients to have the support they need and the safety,” she said. “However, it’s not sustainable.

“We’ve got so many experienced nurses who really, truly care for our patients that we’ve lost. All that we’re asking is for Hazelden to work with us.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

As baristas warn of strike, Starbucks closes MN’s first unionized store

October 17, 2025 by

Baristas walk the picket line with community supporters at the unionized Starbucks in St. Anthony.

Starbucks has closed its café at 300 Snelling Ave. South in St. Paul, where baristas became the first in Minnesota to win a union election in April 2022.

The closure was part of a corporate restructuring in September that saw about 500 locations shut down.

Union shops, including Starbucks’ flagship coffee house in Seattle, were disproportionately impacted by the closures.

Starbucks Workers United represents over 12,000 baristas at 650 stores, roughly 3% of Starbucks locations in the U.S. Unionized locations made up about 14% of shuttered stores.

Phil Rienstra, who worked in the St. Paul store for two years before it closed, said he and other baristas learned on Thursday, Sept. 25, that the location would shut down for good that weekend.

Phil Rienstra is a former barista at the 300 Snelling store.

“It was sudden, it was callous and it was cruel,” Rienstra said of the abrupt closing. “Months and years of work for the company have been cast aside.”

Starbucks has yet to settle a first contract with any of the bargaining units that began forming at cafés across the country in late 2021. Workers at the St. Paul store briefly negotiated with the company’s representatives, who walked out of the meeting after about five minutes.

Talks shifted away from local bargaining teams in February 2024, when the company and Starbucks Workers United announced they would begin bargaining a national framework contract. The process shifted to mediation earlier this year and has stalled out under the leadership of new CEO Brian Niccol.

Union negotiators were able, however, to win an improved severance package for members impacted by the latest restructuring. In effects bargaining last month, Workers United secured, among other gains, severance pay for union baristas even if they turn down a transfer offer – a guarantee not extended to non-union baristas.

Rienstra said he and other union members were disappointed but not deterred by the closure, and he pledged to keep organizing for a union contract at Starbucks, wherever he ends up next.

Abby Haland says baristas at the St. Anthony Starbucks are ready to strike for a fair first contract.

“This round of layoffs created hundreds of angry but capable people, ready to fight for what they are owed and do whatever it takes to make our union heard,” Rienstra said. “Starbucks does not get to just ignore us.”

To that end, union baristas picketed outside a Starbucks in St. Anthony and in 35 other cities across the country during the week of Sept. 30, giving the company a taste of what could be coming if it doesn’t settle a fair contract soon.

The action in St. Anthony drew about 40 picketers – union members and community supporters – to the Starbucks at 3704 Silver Lake Rd., where they chanted, “no contract, no coffee!” and drew honks of encouragement from passing drivers.

As rush-hour traffic whizzed by, several baristas took the bullhorn to voice their contract demands – like better staffing, more reliable hours and higher pay. Abby Haland, a St. Anthony barista, told the crowd she’s ready to strike for a first contract – and asked for their support.

“Take the pledge, ‘No Contract, No Coffee!’” she said. “And pledge to stand with us on the picket line if we have to go on strike, which we are prepared to do.”

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Stagehands say conditions improved after Yacht Club picket

August 21, 2025 by

Local 13 members and supporters picket outside the stagehands’ gate during the Minnesota Yacht Club festival. (submitted photo)

Stagehands who worked the Minnesota Yacht Club festival in St. Paul last month got a bump in pay after union members set up a picket line outside the three-day event, IATSE Local 13 says.

“The picket worked, and I’m very proud that we put it up,” Local 13 business agent Kellie Larson said. “The goal was to inform workers that their working conditions were subpar, and we were able, through the informational picket, to get those conditions brought up to something that was better.”

Local 13 announced it would picket the Minnesota Yacht Club, which drew crowds of around 35,000 to Harriet Island July 17-19, after union members rejected a contract proposal from the live-events company behind the festival, RockForce Labor.

The wages, benefit contributions and work rules in RockForce Labor’s offer lagged area standards set by union stagehands in their contracts with local performing-arts venues, Larson said.

“They put up a hard final offer, I brought that to my membership and they voted it down,” she said. “They said they would rather bring awareness to the public that this was not safe or standard working practices.”

Timing played into the decision, too. Local 13 is currently in bargaining over its arena contracts, and union members worried that agreeing to a substandard contract, even temporarily, would send the wrong message to local employers.

“If I take a lowball offer in that way, just ‘to take the deal,’ I would be undercutting all of the working conditions we have in the Twin Cities,” Larson said.

Among the provisions the union found unacceptable were terms of the so-called “turnaround time,” the gap between when stagehands wrap work on one show and start work on the next. RockForce wanted Yacht Club stagehands to tear down after the last act ended its show and be back to work within six hours, Larson said. Local 13’s contracts provide at least eight hours.

“We start work when everyone leaves, from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.,” she explained. “It’s hard work, and it’s dark, especially at outdoor festivals. You’re walking out of the place at 2 a.m. and walking back in six hours later for sound check? That’s really tight.”

Stagehands install speaker stacks and sound gear, stage lighting, monitors and more. For festivals like Yacht Club, work typically starts early, as stagehands unload and install gear for each act, then run it through a sound check.

“That’s five or six different looks we have to go through,” Larson said. “Sound check for band No. 1, let’s say Green Day, is at 8 a.m. We do a 90-minute sound check and start falling back to each act that will come before them. All day, we’re just unloading gear, doing sound checks, setting up for the next band.

“The work we do is dangerous and hard, and we’re doing it at a time of day that doesn’t make sense for most humans. That’s why we have some of these clauses in place, so we do have the best workers, with the best mental capacity to do the work.”

RockForce Labor launched this spring, consolidating nine live-events production companies into one, with eyes on luring business from “concerts, festivals, sporting events, live broadcasts, awards shows and corporate activities.”

It made a splash in the live-events industry, and Larson said she faced pressure from her international union to get a deal done and prevent any bad blood.

“I tried to bargain with the company,” she said. “I told them, ‘I can give on wages if you can get the turnaround time better. But the company just wouldn’t negotiate, and our members didn’t really feel safe working under those conditions.”

Instead, RockForce subcontracted the stagehands’ work to a Wisconsin-based company, and Local 13 members hit the picket line, where they engaged both concertgoers and stagehands passing through the gate.

“After three days on the line, what I heard from workers inside the gate was that they had transitioned from 1099s to W-2 work, with workers-comp insurance,” Larson said. “And they moved up to the $28-per-hour range. They also moved from no minimums and no double time to a 4-hour minimum and double time after midnight, which kicked in on Saturday.”

If true, it bodes well for Local 13 members’ chances of reaching a deal should the festival return to St. Paul next year.

“We’ll see what we can do to repair the relationship,” Larson said.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Twin Cities doctors, nurses to picket June 3-4 as progress stalls on contract campaigns

May 29, 2025 by

Nurses at United and Children’s hospitals in St. Paul picketed during their 2022 contract campaign. (UA file)

Picket lines are coming to several Minnesota hospitals and clinics next week, as unionized doctors and nurses escalate their contract campaigns at Allina and other local health systems.

Newly organized doctors, physicians’ assistants and nurse practitioners at Allina Health clinics and urgent cares will hold picketing June 3 from 6 to 7 a.m. at four locations: Bloomington, Coon Rapids, Maplewood and West St. Paul.

It will mark the first time Minnesota doctors have staged informational picketing, members of the Doctors Council, a Service Employees (SEIU) affiliate, said during a virtual press conference yesterday.

“The contract Allina is offering us will unquestionably worsen primary care,” Dr. Matt Hoffman, who practices at Allina’s Vadnais Heights clinic, said.

By picketing, he added, the bargaining unit of over 600 doctors and clinicians hopes to show the public that “we are fighting to make primary care sustainable, and we want the same things as our patients.”

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association will hold informational picketing the following day, June 4, at 17 hospitals in the Twin Cities and Duluth, where the union is bargaining contracts covering more than 15,000 members.

Nurses’ contract demands include minimum staffing levels in their units and other provisions to ensure the safety of both workers and patients. MNA President Chris Rubesch said “shoestring, COVID-era staffing levels” remain in too many Minnesota facilities.

“Nurses are doing everything they can to keep patients safe, but we are being stretched beyond our limits,” he said. “Patients are facing longer waits, and overworked staff are facing dangerous conditions. Nurses are taking action because our health care system cannot afford more delays or excuses.”

Nurses plan to picket at hospitals in the Allina, Children’s Minnesota, HealthPartners, M Health Fairview, North Memorial, Essentia and St. Luke’s systems throughout the day. Supporters are encouraged to sign up to join them on the picket line.

Unionized doctors in the Allina system held a press conference in Minneapolis last fall.

Both the doctors and nurses stressed that they are not striking, and their actions will not interrupt care.

Improving patient care is a top priority for both unions. Doctors and practitioners formed their union in 2023, Hoffman said, to gain back a voice in health care decisions that many felt they had lost at Allina, and that remains an issue “important enough for us to picket over.”

Since the two sides began bargaining a first contract in February 2024, they have reached tentative agreements on scheduling, a new mentorship program and labor-management committee, discipline language and safety protections.

But Allina has refused even to discuss union members’ proposal to ensure adequate staffing among support staff – clinical assistants, nurses, lab workers and others – in their clinics. And union members want more assurances that they will have adequate time to devote both to their patients and the ancillary tasks their profession requires, like paperwork, trainings and meetings.

Dr. Dain Meyer said Allina has introduced a troubling new metric to evaluate the urgent-care clinic where he works: patients treated per hour. “We should be aiming at highest quality and not fastest speed,” he said.

“I feel like progress has stalled (in bargaining), and I’m picketing to draw attention to this so that, in the same way we support our patients in the clinic, they might support us in winning the changes we all need,” Meyer added.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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OPEIU members say Wilson-McShane is shortchanging them in talks

December 10, 2024 by
Union member lifting picket sign during rally.

Members of OPEIU Local 12 picketed outside Wilson-McShane’s offices in Bloomington.

The Wilson-McShane Corporation serves unions in Minnesota and across the Midwest as a third-party benefit administrator, but workers at the company say management is trying to shortchange their union in a surprisingly combative round of contract negotiations.

Members of Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Local 12 set up informational picket lines outside Wilson-McShane’s offices in Bloomington and Kansas City on Oct. 24. Organizers said it was almost certainly the first time that workers at the company, which works closely with organized labor, had resorted to picketing.

Deb Johnson, a claims administrator with 20 years of experience at Wilson-McShane, said bargaining is taking far longer this time than during any of the previous four times she served on Local 12’s negotiations team.

“Our contracts have always been settled, like, in three days,” she said. “This is uncharted water.”

Sign reading "You support union benefits but not YOUR UNION EMPLOYEES"Local 12’s previous contract with Wilson-McShane expired Oct. 1. Wages and benefits have been the primary sticking points in negotiations that began in August.

At the rally in October, Johnson said the company had only recently increased its initial offer of 50-cent raises to 55 cents in the first year, with smaller increases in the following two. The company also looked to slash short-term disability benefits.

According to OPEIU estimates, Wilson-McShane workers have seen their wages lose 12% in value as a result of inflation since 2010.

The union, which represents about 180 workers at offices in four states, appealed for solidarity in a letter to the company’s union customers.

“I wonder, do the other unions know what we have to do here, what our contract is?” Johnson said. “I’m not asking them to break the bank, but I’d like to be paid a fair wage. There are people in our bargaining unit who have to work two jobs.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Grad worker union calls on U leadership to engage in first-contract talks

September 26, 2024 by

On the Twin Cities campus, picketing graduate workers marched from Northrup Mall to McNamara Alumni Center, where the U’s Board of Regents was meeting.

As their union’s bargaining team met in mediation with the University of Minnesota on Sept. 13, graduate workers held informational picketing on three campuses, escalating a first-contract campaign that just entered its second year.

On the Twin Cities campus, picketers with the UMN Graduate Labor Union (UMN-GLU) marched from a gathering spot along the Northrup Mall to McNamara Alumni Center, where the Board of Regents was meeting.

Bargaining committee member Sam Boland, pursuing his doctorate in biomedical engineering at the U, said union members wanted to “bring the fight” to decision-makers with the power to move their contract talks forward.

So far, those administrators have kept the process at arm’s length, Boland said, sending representatives to negotiations on their behalf.

“Ultimately, everything they do has to get approved by this upper echelon of administration at the U who aren’t even in the room,” he added, calling it “a point of frustration through this yearlong process.”

Graduate workers only recently received the U’s financial proposal, and union members at the picket said it falls well short of the livable wages they are demanding.

The U’s proposal also does not provide relief from student fees that teaching and research assistants are forced to pay back to their employer “for the privilege of working here,” mathematics Ph.D. candidate David DeMark said. The fees vary but are especially high for international student workers, who often pay over $1,000 per year, according to the UMN-GLU.

To complicate matters, university administrators and graduate workers have clashed over the implications of a new law that allows academic employees known as “fellows” to join the graduate workers’ bargaining unit.

Fellows’ work, Boland said, “is completely indistinguishable” from that of the teaching and research assistants already included in the bargaining unit, which is why the union successfully lobbied state lawmakers to amend the Public Employees Labor Relations Act (PELRA) during the last state legislative session.

“The university has, more or less, chosen to ignore that,” Boland said. “It’s never happened before where, during contract negotiations, a bargaining unit was significantly expanded. They’re not really sure how to proceed.”

Although Boland acknowledged that the issue may likely end up decided in court, the UMN-GLU plans to continue putting pressure on the U to accept fellows in the bargaining unit, both at the bargaining table and, with support from lawmakers who drafted the new law, outside negotiations.

The U can also expect more contract actions on its campuses unless it ramps up the urgency toward reaching a first contract with graduate workers, many of whom have been in the fight for a collective bargaining agreement for three years or longer.

DeMark, who uses they/them pronouns, began organizing in support of the union in 2021, and they have grown tired of waiting for a “contract we can enforce, a stewardship system and a grievance procedure.”

“At the moment, we are subject to the whims of U of M policy, the whims of individual administrators,” DeMark added. “We don’t have anything we can use to hold them to their own policies even.

“I am hopeful that we can get a contract that’s fair for everyone, but I do not anticipate we are going to be able to do that without further escalation.”

Does that mean a strike?

“We really hope the key decision-makers at the university, including the Board of Regents, know this isn’t going away,” Boland said. “We’re standing together, and we’re willing to show the university how much they rely on us if we’re forced to do that.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Union members bristle at Allina plans for more hospital cuts

October 27, 2023 by

Nurses and other health care workers took to the streets outside three Allina Health hospitals Oct. 26, protesting the provider’s plan to cut services and reduce nurse and nurse-aid staffing by as much as 30% in some units, according to their unions.

“We believe this has nothing to do with the betterment of patient care and everything to do with the bottom line,” Mercy Hospital nurse Venessa Soldo-Jones said during a press conference on the picket line outside United Hospital in St. Paul. “Nurses are not in this business for profit.”

Two unions, the Minnesota Nurses Association and SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, organized the informational picketing at United, Mercy and Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.

Union members decried Allina for shutting down United’s adolescent mental health unit and Abbott Northwestern’s infusion care center, and they railed against another round of benchmarking – a process in which the system aligns its staffing levels with comparable hospitals across the country – in the works at their facilities.

Health care workers said the process almost certainly will lead to lower staffing and higher workloads in many hospital units – outcomes Allina should be trying to avoid in an already tight labor market, SEIU Healthcare Vice President Brenda Hilbrich said.

SEIU’s 5,000 members who work for Allina are “worn out” from “four years of short staffing,” Hillbrich said. But instead of providing a “soft landing” from the pandemic, Allina “has decided it needs to run productivity tests, benchmarking and other evaluations to justify and normalize the continued short staffing.”

Allina hospital nurses, meanwhile, have been sounding the alarm about short staffing – and its impact on safety and patient care – for over a decade.

United nurse Ali Marcanti said Allina’s plan for more benchmarking is especially troubling in the wake of an annual report, issued last month by the Minnesota Department of Health, that documented 572 adverse events in the state’s hospitals in 2022, the second consecutive year in which adverse events increased. Twenty-one resulted in patient deaths, the highest total since 2006.

“Direct caregiver cuts are seen as an appropriate way to save money, but they always lead to increased patient injury and mortality,” Marcanti said. “There are preventable patient injuries and deaths happening right now in Minnesota – in this hospital – because of chronic understaffing and subsequent failure to rescue.”

Although the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted health systems in 2022, MDH also acknowledged workforce shortages as a factor that contributed to the increase in adverse events last year. “Staffing shortages both limit the number of hands available to assist with patient care needs, such as repositioning and mobility, and create backups in transfers of care across facilities,” the MDH said.

Health care workers don’t want to see pandemic-level staffing become the new normal, Abbott Northwestern nurse Jessica Sherlock said. But that’s exactly what they fear Allina has in mind with this round of benchmarking.

“The pressure that these changes impose threatens to exacerbate our existing staffing shortages, pushing us all closer to the brink of quitting because of the moral injury that we take on every day,” Sherlock said. “Furthermore, we’re deeply troubled that these staffing changes could jeopardize our nursing licenses.”

Union members asked supporters – including elected officials – to contact members of the Allina Health Board of Directors and ask them to put patients before profits by backing away from the plan for more benchmarking.

“Stand by our side and hold Allina Health accountable for what appears to be a race to the bottom in Minnesota health care,” Sherlock said.

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For Mia workers, fresh approach to bargaining delivers big gains

March 15, 2023 by

Workers picketed the Mia in February. (photo courtesy OPEIU Local 12)

After their first public contract campaign in recent memory, union members who work at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) ratified a new agreement yesterday that will raise wages by $4 per hour across the board over the next two and a half years.

The contract covers about 120 members of Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Local 12 who work in a variety of roles throughout the museum. Their previous contract expired in January.

Negotiators reached a tentative agreement on the new pact Friday, March 3, and union members called off informational picketing planned each of the following two days – opening weekend of a new ticketed exhibit at the Mia.

Local 12 steward Aaron Barger, an IT systems administrator and member of the union’s bargaining team, said the scheduled action put pressure on management to reach a deal.

“It’s not something you want to have at the beginning of a new show,” he said of the picketing.

In addition to wage increases, union members won new language enshrining progressive discipline in the contract. They held the line on the existing health care split with management, added new curator positions to the bargaining unit and gained flexibility with regard to certain paid holidays when the museum is open to the public.

“It treats Black Friday, New Year’s Day and Juneteenth as optional holidays,” Barger said. “So if you want to come in and work those days you can, but if you observe Eid or a Jewish high holiday or something else of more significance to you, then you can do that.”

Union members made a strategic decision as began in November 2022 not to prioritize paid family leave in contract talks, Barger said. DFL lawmakers had won a “trifecta” of control over the state House, Senate and governor’s office, improving the chances that legislation creating a statewide insurance pool to extend family and medical leave to workers statewide will pass this legislative session.

Instead, Local 12’s bargaining team made wage increases its top priority, and they became the biggest sticking point as talks progressed.

Management came to the table expecting “bargaining as usual,” Barger said. But Mia workers had watched as workers at other museums in the Twin Cities and across the country joined together in the wake of the pandemic, creating unions and fighting for improved wages, benefits and working conditions.

“We are one of the oldest art museum unions in the country, at least 40 years old,” said Barger, who has worked at the Mia for four-plus years. “I think this is the first time we’ve held a picket since this union was founded.

“It’s almost like the union had become a formality or just a legal entity. But after COVID hit and there was a change in (Mia) leadership, people kind of woke up to the fact that we have to adopt more activist tactics.”

That meant informational picketing in February, a button campaign, an online petition and a switch from closed to open bargaining, which allowed union negotiators to share management’s proposals with fellow members.

“We could report back and say, ‘Here’s what the boss is saying. Here’s what they think of you,’” Barger said. “Your best organizer really becomes the boss.”

With a newly active and engaged membership, Barger added, the Mia bargaining unit is in a better position to build on its gains in future negotiations.

“The union is not a separate entity from you,” he said. “You are your union, and the people at the table are there to represent you. Ultimately, the work doesn’t happen without the workers.”

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St. Paul educators set March 10 strike deadline

February 26, 2020 by

SPFE members hold informational picketing outside Adams Spanish Immersion.

What would 3,600 St. Paul teachers, educational assistants and licensed professionals on strike look like?

Minnesota’s second-largest school district got a preview this morning, when members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators held informational picketing outside many school facilities.

Later in the day, educators delivered notice to the district that unless they make progress in upcoming negotiations, the picket lines will be back March 10 – this time for the first teachers strike here since 1946.

SPFE leaders say they hope the strike deadline will force school administrators to match the urgency educators have been bringing to contract negotiations since talks began last May, when union members began bringing forth 31 proposals to address the needs they see in their classrooms each day.

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Educators are demanding a contract that guarantees their students more mental-health supports, that ensures non-English speaking families can access school services and that reduces special-ed caseloads.

And SPFE members are willing to strike, if necessary, to force the district to address those concerns at the bargaining table.

SPFE members and community supporters line the sidewalk outside Highland Middle School.

In a strike-authorization vote Feb. 20, rank-and-file members signaled strong support for their bargaining team. About two-thirds of all members participate, according to SPFE, and 82% voted “yes.”

“Nobody wants to go on strike,” the union’s executive board wrote in an e-mail to members announcing the vote results. “That is why we’ve spent nearly a year engaging with the district on our student-centered proposals and on wages and benefits for our members.

“However, we refuse to accept the district’s position that our students and educators already have access to all of the supports they need to thrive.”

Teachers strikes have swept across the country over the last two years, as the #RedForEd movement pushes officials to address decades of disinvestment in public schools and the working people who staff them.

Last year alone, 237,400 teachers in North Carolina, West Virginia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kentucky and Oregon went on strike, fueling a historic surge in major work stoppages. Federal labor statistics released last week show the average annual number of workers participating in major strikes over the last two years – 455,500 – reached a 35-year high.

Long before the #RedForEd wave swept the country, though, St. Paul was the site of the first organized teachers strike in U.S. history, a 30-day work stoppage between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1946.

The city’s female teachers, members American Federation of Teachers Local 28 (still on SPFE’s union charter today), led the charge not just for pay increases, but a more equitable allocation of school resources and new investments in school facilities. They called it the “Strike for Better Schools.”

Today, it’s a fight for the “Schools St. Paul Students Deserve.”

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Cottage Grove Steelworkers overwhelmingly reject 3M’s contract proposal

October 5, 2016 by
Terry Fredrick drove 45 minutes from Woodville, Wis., to join informational picketing outside the 3M plant in Cottage Grove, where he's worked for over six years.

Terry Fredrick isn’t scheduled to clock in today, but he drove 45 minutes from Woodville, Wis., to join pre-dawn picketing outside the 3M plant in Cottage Grove, where he’s worked for over six years.

 

Two days after voting 3M’s contract proposal down, Steelworkers at the company’s Cottage Grove chemicals plant are putting their informational picket lines back up.

Members of United Steelworkers Local 11-00418 said they hoped the overwhelming opposition to 3M’s proposal, rejected by a 5-to-1 margin, delivers a message to the company, which made nearly $5 billion in profits last year.

“We aren’t going to accept some of the concessions that they’re looking for,” Local 11-00418 President Mike Schanks said. “We’re willing to bargain, but some of the things they want are just too much to ask.”

R to L: Jeff Puhl, Jeremy Hackbarth and Josh Noltin stand up for a fair contract outside 3M's Cottage Grove chemicals plant.

R to L: Jeff Puhl, Jeremy Hackbarth and Josh Noltin stand up for a fair contract outside 3M’s Cottage Grove chemicals plant.

About 380 Steelworkers work inside the Cottage Grove facility, and they’ve ramped up their campaign for a fair contract in recent months, hoping to fight off steep concessionary demands from 3M.

The company wants to roll back several provisions of workers’ previous contract, including premium pay for weekend work and seniority-based layoffs during slowdowns at the plant. 3M also wants to reduce its contribution to workers’ 401(k) retirement plans – and the power to force workers to take extra shifts without paying overtime wages, even on scheduled days off.

In addition to picketing outside their plant, Steelworkers have rallied outside 3M’s headquarters in Maplewood and marched together in community parades. Last month, they voted to authorize their leadership to call a strike if necessary.

The contract proposal voted down Monday came without a recommendation from the local’s bargaining team.

“We left it up to people to vote on their own,” Schanks said. “It was, in my 30 years of working at 3M, the highest turnout for a contract vote I’ve ever seen. These guys are holding tough.”

Their previous contract with the company has expired, but the two sides have agreed to extend the agreement, in seven-day increments, as long as negotiations continue. They are scheduled to meet with a federal mediator Oct. 11.

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