Union volunteers take center stage at Labor 2012 kickoff event

May 18, 2012 by

Terri Buttleman of SEIU Local 284 urges union members to get involved in the Labor 2012 political campaign. “Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work,” she said.

Regional labor federations from both sides of the Mississippi River fêted their union volunteers yesterday, hosting a barbecue at the Operating Engineers Hall in Minneapolis to thank activists for helping stave off a flood of attacks on workers during the 2012 legislative session.

The event also kicked off the Labor 2012 political campaign in the Twin Cities, as union volunteers received a preemptive “thank you” for the work they will do to get out the vote for labor-endorsed candidates in November.

The St. Paul and Minneapolis Regional Labor Federations, in partnership with the Minnesota AFL-CIO, are set to ramp up their political campaign this summer, and it was clear from the speeches union leaders made yesterday that electing a pro-worker majority in the Legislature is their top priority.

“We get to choose who is going to be (at the Capitol) for the next two years,” said Steve Hunter, secretary-treasurer of the Minnesota AFL-CIO. “We need each and every one of us who’s in this room, and we need about 100 more for every one of us in this room. We’ve got to turn our people out to vote.”

If they succeed in electing pro-labor majorities to the Minnesota House and Senate, the state’s union members can be assured that right-wing attacks on workers won’t resurface in 2013. That includes reckless “Right to Work” legislation, which would weaken unions by forcing them to represent workers who don’t pay dues.

Last winter Republican majorities in the Legislature attempted to put RTW on the November ballot as a constitutional amendment. In response, unions rolled out an aggressive grassroots campaign that included member-to-member phone banks, door knocks and rallies at the Capitol.

“You made the calls. You attended the rallies. You were at the Capitol,” said Bill McCarthy, president of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation. “All of these things led to victories.”

The St. Paul and Minneapolis labor federations also set out to educate the public about the threat RTW poses to workers and their unions. With the help of workers released by their local unions to work on the RTW campaign, the federations hosted 120 briefings on RTW across the Twin Cities area.

Harry Melander, president of the Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council, thanks union members for their work to keep “Right to Work” off the 2012 ballot. “You are the people that made this thing go away,” he said. “Not forever, but you made it go away this year.”

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 released four workers to the RTW campaign. Local 1005 President Michelle Sommers said her members understand “that in order to keep what we have, we have to find a way to work together. We need to move forward, and we cannot move forward as long as we’re spending all of our time and money on fighting the attacks. We have to become proactive.”

RTW wasn’t the only attack on workers offered by Republican majorities, of course. The list of targets also includes teachers’ tenure rules, nurses’ professional standards and construction workers’ prevailing wages.

St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Bobby Kasper compared the 2012 session to a 15-round fight, which unions managed to win by judges’ decision.

“Do you know what the knockout punch is?” Kasper asked. “We need to take both the House and the Senate back so we can help Superman, our governor, Mark Dayton.”

The governor’s chief of staff, Tina Smith, received a standing ovation for the work Dayton’s administration did to fend off – often by veto – Republican attacks. While the governor, a former hockey goalie, has become adept at playing defense during his tenure in office, he would prefer to play some offense next year, Smith said.

“He cannot do that without Democratic, DFL majorities in the House and the Senate,” Smith said. “We need everybody’s help.”

Click to view a gallery of photos from the Labor 2012 campaign kickoff.

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Dakota County legislators dodge community meeting on school funding

May 16, 2012 by

Working America member Mike Adair addresses a community meeting on school funding in Burnsville.

A group of Dakota County residents convened a community meeting in Burnsville May 12, hoping to give people an opportunity to ask their legislators questions about things like school funding and property taxes.

Unfortunately, not one of the area’s legislators acted on the invitation to attend, leaving the roomful of concerned parents, school district employees and other community members with more questions than answers.

“Why are our schools suffering? Why are property taxes on the middle class skyrocketing while our schools are giving kids less and less each year?” asked Mike Adair, an Eagan resident and father of four students in the Eagan school district.

“It’s not the district’s fault that they are squeezed dry every year. This mess comes directly from the state, and our representatives need to be held accountable for making choices that hurt our kids and their schools.”

The meeting underscores the task at hand for Minnesota’s union members and their community allies in this election year. The 2011-12 legislative sessions produced unprecedented attacks on workers from newly elected Republican majorities in the House and Senate, including a so-called “Right to Work” constitutional amendment.

Electing pro-worker majorities to the Legislature this November will require unions, through their Labor 2012 campaign, to make gains in places like Burnsville and Eagan, communities that have suffered from the state’s failure to fund local schools and public services adequately.

Residents like Adair, a member of the AFL-CIO community group Working America, are ready to work for candidates committed to raising revenue fairly to balance the budget in 2013.

“This is not the Minnesota I envisioned my kids growing up in,” said Adair. “Simply putting band-aids on the wounds every school year is not going to help. We need to think long-term.”

Metro-area unions will kick off in the Labor 2012 campaign with a rally May 17 in Minneapolis, where union leaders and volunteers plan to “celebrate our victories – and talk about what’s next, so these attacks don’t come back in 2013.”

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Bobby Kasper: Let’s make sure the next Legislature stands with workers

May 16, 2012 by

I breathed a sigh of relief when the Minnesota Legislature finally adjourned the 2012 session. It meant an end to the seemingly endless string of Republican attacks on Minnesota’s working families – attacks on our union rights, attacks on our wages and pensions, attacks on our voting rights and more.

I’m writing today to say “thank you” to everyone who helped us fight these right-wing attacks at the Capitol over the last three months.

Some of you volunteered to staff our phone banks, where we called union members and asked them to talk to their legislators about the irresponsible “Right to Work” constitutional amendment. Others of you joined us at the Capitol, where we maintained a visible presence advocating on behalf of good jobs, safe workplaces and a strong middle class.

By putting aside our differences and working together as union brothers and sisters, we kept “Right to Work” off the ballot this November. We also helped pass an infrastructure-jobs bill and a stadium bill that, together, will succeed in putting thousands of Minnesotans back to work in high-paying, construction-industry jobs. That’s a good start toward getting Minnesota’s economy going in the right direction again.

I’m proud of what we accomplished together during the 2012 session. And I know I can count on union members to join us again this summer and fall, as our staff at the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation puts our Labor 2012 political plan into action.

Together, we can make sure that when the Legislature reconvenes in 2013, we’re not fighting the same battles we fought over the last three months.

The 2012 legislative session found Minnesota unions in a collective panic, and it is simply because we did not have enough labor friendly legislative allies at the Capitol. The upcoming Fall elections give us a valuable opportunity to reverse that.

Working together, we will win seats for political allies who will work arm-in-arm with labor as partners to drive toward a better tomorrow – a tomorrow in which preserving our state’s middle class is once again the top priority of our elected officials. Over the last two years, we’ve learned that for too many state legislators, workers and jobs do not rank among the top priorities. This Fall we will change that.

We will win this fall because the strength of labor is unmatched and because our brothers and sisters will fight for our present and fight for our future.  We will win because we have the strength.

We will win because there is no other way.

– Bobby Kasper is president of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, and a member of Laborers Local 132. Reach him at rkasper [at] stpaulunions [dot] org.

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