Peterson: Our movement won’t back down from challenges ahead in 2025

December 13, 2024 by

St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Kera Peterson is pictured speaking at the 2022 MN AFL-CIO Convention.

While our Labor 2024 political program saw some positive outcomes locally, there’s no way to sugarcoat the Nov. 5 election results nationwide. A second Trump presidency represents a threat to every worker with a union contract, every worker who depends on our elected leaders to support good jobs, workplace safety, prevailing wages and the right to bargain collectively. President-elect Trump courted working people on the campaign trail while cozying up to CEOs and billionaires like Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. Together, they laughed at the prospect of firing workers who went on strike for better treatment on the job. Now Musk is an appointee to Trump’s White House team, and he’s pledging to “send shockwaves” through the federal workforce – a terrifying notion to anyone working in government service.

As union members, we know the meaning of solidarity, that an injury to one is an injury to all. We’ve seen solidarity in action a lot lately, as working Americans have joined together to fight for fairness – and won. We’ve seen autoworkers, delivery drivers, retail clerks and manufacturing workers across the country demand fair wages from their corporate bosses. We’ve seen local educators, health care workers and public employees fight for investments in better staffing for the services they provide. Our movement will need to tap into that well of solidarity now, with Trump and Republican majorities in Congress ready to implement Project 2025, more than ever. Our movement has shown the power to take on the biggest, richest bosses on the planet, and we will need to do the same when powerful, extremist politicians come after members of our union family. We cannot be divided, and we must fight like hell.

Dividing people is, of course, what Trump and his allies want to do. It’s what they tried to do during his first term in office. And the lessons they took from that first administration are what informed Project 2025, the 900-page playbook for Trump’s return to the White House. Trump attempted to distance himself from the document during his campaign, but many of his cabinet nominees have strong ties to Project 2025, which would strip overtime pay, weaken health and safety standards, give bosses new powers to wiggle out of their union contracts and make collective bargaining illegal in the public sector. These are the fights coming in the months ahead, and we will need all the support and solidarity we can get.

Fortunately, our movement has powerful supporters in Washington, D.C., including labor-endorsed lawmakers who were re-elected Nov. 5. They include Sen. Amy Klobuchar and U.S. Reps. Angie Craig and Betty McCollum. Minnesota’s Labor 2024 political program also helped keep Minnesota “blue” in the Electoral College count, with union volunteers attempting over 200,000 contacts with fellow union members by phone or at the doorstep. Nationally, union members favored Vice President Kamala Harris by nearly 17%.

But it wasn’t enough. Polling shows Trump and Republican congressional candidates won over working-class voters, including many union members. That may have contributed to Trump’s decision to nominate Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, a rare pro-labor Republican, to serve as Labor Secretary. She co-sponsored the Protecting The Right To Organize (PRO) Act and a bill to ensure public-sector bargaining rights. But as AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in her response to the nomination, Trump is the president-elect, and his record is clear. “You can stand with working people, or you can stand with Project 2025,” she said, “but you can’t stand with both.”

On behalf of the Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation, I want to thank every volunteer who participated in our Labor 2024 political program. Thank you for taking the time to talk with coworkers at the jobsite, and with members of our union family on our phones and at our homes. There will, undoubtedly, be much work that we need to do to protect our freedoms in the coming months. As we reflect on the possibilities that the new year brings, I hope we will consider the many ways our lives are better in a union, and that we will re-commit to solidarity in action.

– Kera Peterson is president of the Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, with over 100 affiliated unions in Chisago, Dakota, Ramsey and Washington counties.

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Unions vow to lead with solidarity as second Trump administration looms

December 12, 2024 by

This article appeared in The Union Advocate’s January 2025 print edition, which can be viewed on the Recent Issues page.

Three weeks after Election Day, members of more than 25 local unions gathered at the St. Paul Federation of Educators’ offices. After sharing a meal and making introductions, they began discussing ways to support each other and fight back during a second Trump administration.

The event, SPFE President Leah VanDassor said, gave union members an opportunity to cope with fear and uncertainty by building community and solidarity. But she acknowledged very real threats ahead.

“They’re going to come after labor, it’s just a matter of time,” VanDassor said. “At SPFE, we feel like we can’t sit still for two years and hope it will change if we get better people back in office. Education is on the chopping block. Public unions are on the chopping block. Let’s figure out ways to be proactive.”

Similar meetings are surely taking place in meeting halls across the state and country after an election that produced mixed results locally but a devastating outcome on the federal level, with an incoming president and congressional majorities that are hostile to workers’ bargaining rights, committed to slashing public services and bent on settling scores with their perceived political opponents.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, the nation’s highest ranking labor leader, called the election results “a blow for every worker who depends on our elected leaders to fight for our jobs, our unions and our contracts.”

In the months before the election, Shuler and other labor leaders tried to sound the alarm about Project 2025, a 900-page document drafted by staffers in Trump’s first administration that outlined plans for a return to power. Proposals would undermine unions’ bargaining power, gut federal agencies and replace federal civil servants with Trump loyalists.

“The Project 2025 agenda promises to dismantle labor unions because we are a pillar of democracy and a check on power,” Shuler said. “We’ve seen assaults on our fundamental rights before. In the days, months, and years ahead, labor’s task will be to defend working people when it happens again.”

Minnesota unions, meanwhile, will find a changed landscape at the Capitol in St. Paul when the 2025 legislative session begins Jan. 14. While labor-endorsed DFLers maintained their majority in the Senate, the two parties are arranging to share power in the House, with 67 Republicans and 67 Democrats.

The Minnesota AFL-CIO, which led the Labor 2024 political campaign, had hoped to return labor-friendly majorities to both chambers.

The nine-week campaign mobilized more than 550 union volunteers, who engaged fellow union members in thousands of conversations during door-knocks and phone banks across the state. The campaign also included worksite visits, election mail, digital ads and more.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham credited union volunteers with helping “buck the national trend” and deliver Minnesota’s electoral college votes to Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The labor-to-labor campaign also worked to re-elect Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Angie Craig in Minnesota’s most tightly contested congressional district.

As for the change in power coming to Washington, D.C., Burnham pledged that Minnesota’s unions will “refuse to be divided” no matter what comes their way.

“Like we have for generations, we accept this election’s results,” she said. “However, if the incoming administration attacks the rights of workers – no matter where they were born, what they look like, how they pray, who they love, or how they identify – Minnesota’s labor movement will continue to stand in solidarity and fight like hell.”

What, exactly, that fight will look like is still taking shape in union halls like SPFE’s.

“At the end (of the meeting), everyone kind of came to the same conclusion,” SPFE’s VanDassor said. “We need to have one-on-one discussions with our union siblings, figure out where we’re at, keep in contact and plan our next steps.

“It’s not like, ‘Here’s the plan, here’s the magic bullet.’ But we can’t hunker down either.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Peterson: Support candidates who support union workers

October 23, 2024 by

When Vice President Harris chose Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate this summer, it put Minnesota in the spotlight. Americans digging into Walz’s record are getting a fresh look at what the governor and labor-endorsed majorities in our Legislatures – the so-called “trifecta” – have accomplished in just two years. They are seeing what can happen when elected leaders like Gov. Walz, leaders who share our union values, put working people and their families first: historic investments in infrastructure and public education, expanded family leave benefits, and the programs that help crack down on wage theft. And they’re inspired to see a state moving forward, not backward.

And make no mistake about it, Donald Trump and JD Vance want to take the country backward. It’s all spelled out in their Project 2025 Agenda, which would threaten our union contracts, limit our freedom to join a union and undercut our wages. Trump and Vance may claim to be on workers’ side, but Trump proudly stands with greedy, union-busting CEOs like Elon Musk – and he even praised Musk for firing striking workers. Trump and Vance claim to care about union members, but they are really just in it for themselves and their rich friends. They want to cut our pay, eviscerate our retirement, take away our health care and destroy our unions, just so they can dole out more tax giveaways to the wealthy and well-connected. Harris and Walz have walked on picket lines with workers. Trump crosses them.

Under Gov. Walz’s leadership, our state has become the gold standard for state governments aiming to do right by workers, and it’s exciting to see the governor celebrate his pro-worker, pro-union agenda on the campaign trail. The governor and labor majorities in the Legislature have been bold since taking power in 2023, delivering on campaign promises to guarantee workers have paid family and medical leave benefits and expand access to earned sick and safe time. Minnesota has banned anti-worker noncompete clauses and anti-union captive audience meetings. New laws have strengthened protections for meatpacking and warehouse workers, improved wages and working conditions in nursing homes and expanded collective bargaining rights for educators, university workers and others.

Now, many of the legislators who helped put Minnesota on the path to being the best state for workers are on the ballot. Labor’s majorities in the State House and in the State Senate, thanks to a special election, are at stake on Nov. 5. Lawmakers who had our back at the Capitol need union members to have their backs at the polls. That’s why union volunteers across the state, working through our regional labor federations and the Minnesota AFL-CIO, are leading the way to mobilize tens of thousands of voters. We’re knocking doors, making calls and talking to co-workers about the need to defend the progress we’ve made in Minnesota – about the need to elect labor-endorsed candidates up and down the ballot.

With so much at stake, it truly is one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime, and union members are well positioned to make a difference. People all over the country are realizing unions are the single best tool we have to stand up to the historic inequity and corporate greed we are up against. Every day, more workers are seeing past the lies and the well-funded anti-union campaigns from corporate America and deciding to come together. Unions are more popular with the public now than at any time since the mid-1960s. By talking to friends, family members and co-workers, union members can cut through all of the misinformation and focus on what matters this election – our freedoms, our union rights, racial and economic justice, and our democracy. So please vote on or before Nov. 5, and find out how you can get more involved in the Labor 2024 campaign at aflcio.mn/labor2024.

– Kera Peterson is president of the Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, which brings together over 100 affiliate unions representing members in Chisago, Dakota, Ramsey and Washington counties. 

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Unions warn Trump-aligned ‘Project 2025’ puts target on workers’ rights

October 2, 2024 by

Bart Andersen, executive director of AFSCME Council 5, speaks during a rally against Project 2025.

Project 2025, the 920-page playbook for former President Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House, spells disaster for union members, Minnesota labor leaders and activists warned yesterday.

“Project 2025 is about one thing; it’s about dismantling the rights we’ve fought for, taking away our power and leaving us vulnerable,” AFSCME Council 65 Executive Director Shannon Douvier said during a rally outside the Capitol in St. Paul. “We cannot afford to let this happen.”

Written by a team of former Trump administration officials and funded by the conservative Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 provides a sprawling but detailed blueprint for how a second Trump presidency would wield power.

Unions, labor standards and collective bargaining would be targets of that power, according to an analysis of the document by the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation.

The AFL-CIO highlighted several objectives that would undercut workers’ power at the bargaining table and stifle their voice in the workplace, including a complete ban on public employee unions like AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), Education Minnesota and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which organized the rally in St. Paul.

“The tools we use to keep our workplaces safe, our families healthy, our standard of living and … the equipment we need to get home at night to our families safe and sound are all at risk,” AFSCME Council 5 Executive Director Bart Andersen said. “Our unions and our contracts bring us stability and peace of mind, and right now it’s all on the chopping block with Project 2025.”

The document calls on the Trump administration to defund federal services, eliminate agencies like the Department of Education and scrap civil service rules so that federal workers could be more easily replaced with MAGA loyalists.

Mechell Snider, a member of AFGE Local 899 who works as a TSA agent at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, said voters need to “stop Project 2025 in its tracks” to “protect an apolitical federal workforce” that is loyal to the Constitution, not to Trump.

“We need a federal workforce that has the right to unionize, to bargain in good faith and to show up to do a job safely, for the sole benefit of the American people,” Snider added.

Project 2025 takes aim at private-sector workers’ rights, too, calling for a ban on union organizing by card check, which speeds up organizing drives by allowing employers to recognize majority support for a union voluntarily, without a National Labor Relations Board election.

Project 2025 also supports allowing employers to push decertification campaigns at any time, making it easier to wiggle out of their obligations to workers in the middle of a contract.

Project 2025 also takes aim at union workers’ wages – Building Trades workers, in particular. It calls for a repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires construction companies to pay prevailing wages to workers on federally funded projects.

Additionally, the document calls on federal agencies to stop bargaining project labor agreements – so-called “PLAs,” which set the terms and conditions of employment for construction projects before bidding begins – with unions. That would open the federal bidding process to low-wage, low-road contractors.

Other provisions in Project 2025 would be bad for union and non-union workers alike, from eliminating overtime protections to allowing states to set their own minimum wage below the federal rate. Child labor laws, unemployment insurance programs, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration – Trump’s allies aim to weaken them all, according to Project 2025.

Education Minnesota Vice President Monica Byron, an elementary-school teacher, said Project 2025 is a game plan for making it harder for workers to get ahead and stacking the deck in favor of Wall Street and wealthy CEOs.

“We have a choice to make in this election,” Byron said. “We can support the freedom to come together in union and bargain for better lives and better schools, or we can choose the MAGA agenda of Project 2025 that would give greedy corporations even more control over our lives and decimate unions and public education.”

Learn more about Project 2025’s impact on workers at betterinaunion.org.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Peterson: Let’s re-commit to keeping unions strong

September 3, 2024 by

St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Kera Peterson is pictured speaking at the 2022 MN AFL-CIO Convention.

Unions are more popular this Labor Day than they have been in almost 60 years, and we’re seeing exciting labor organizing across Minnesota and the United States. Workers in both the public and private sector are coming together in union to fight for better wages, safer workspaces, and dignity and respect on the job. Union organizing has swept across the U.S. in recent years, as workers in every sector of our economy continue to exercise their freedom to join together in unions – at auto manufacturing plants, health care facilities, bars and restaurants, white-collar offices and beyond. Here in Minnesota, we are 356,000 union members strong and growing!

This momentum is the product of decades of worker frustration, driven by unsafe workplaces and a lack of respect and dignity on the job. It’s also driven by wages that are outpaced by the increased costs of food and housing, child care and health care. Union members know that collective action can improve things for ourselves and our families, and that our union contracts help build a stronger and more fair economy by raising standards for all workers. More than half a million U.S. workers went on strike last year, and recently negotiated collective bargaining agreements have secured large wage increases for workers in industries including construction, education, health care, manufacturing, and transit and transportation, as well as meaningful breakthroughs on non-wage issues.

Working people are actively trying to unrig the economy, which for too long has been stacked in favor of corporations and the wealthy. Meanwhile, corporate special interests are lobbying for massive tax breaks and deregulation, financing legal attacks on workers’ rights and protections, and financing candidates who will help them maintain the status quo by restricting our freedoms.

We’ve seen Project 2025, what these lobbyists are referring to as their 180-day playbook. Project 2025 includes proposals to make it easier for employers to get rid of workers’ unions mid-contract and to ban all public employee unions. It would allow states to ban labor unions, eliminate overtime protections and choose not to follow the national minimum wage. And it calls for the elimination of child labor rules that protect children from working in mines, meatpacking plants and other dangerous worksites.

They’ve shown us what they want to do to workers, and we should believe them. As a labor movement, it’s imperative that we mobilize union members to get to the polls and vote in our general election on or before Nov. 5. The progress that we’ve fought for and our future and freedom as workers are on the ballot this fall, and we should get out and vote for our labor-endorsed candidates up and down the ticket. The power of organized labor can combat the power of organized money, corporate special interests, the billionaire CEOs and anti-worker politicians who aggressively attack our fundamental freedom to have a voice on the job.

We’re excited to take on that work here at the Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation. Between now and Election Day, union volunteers will be reaching out to fellow union members on the phone and at the doorstep to connect about what’s at stake in this election and which candidates share our values. Our federation will coordinate dozens of phone banks and door knocks – opportunities for union members and retirees to make a real difference this election cycle.

Organizing gives us a chance to have our voices heard and to call out the powerful both at work and at the ballot box through our free and fair elections. This Labor Day, I hope you’ll re-commit yourself to showing up for our freedoms and democracy, and that you’ll join me in this work.

– Kera Peterson is president of the Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, which publishes The Union Advocate newspaper. The SPRLF brings together nearly 150 local unions representing over 50,000 union members who live or work in Ramsey, Washington, Dakota and Chisago counties.

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A former union member, Walz is perfect VP choice, MN labor leaders say

September 3, 2024 by

Gov. Tim Walz greeted delegates to the 2021 State Building and Construction Trades convention. (UA file)

Vice President Kamala Harris picked Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, and Minnesota labor leaders called it the perfect choice.

“The rest of the country is about to find out what working Minnesotans have known for years – Tim Walz is one of us who fights for working people like us every single day,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said.

Burnham, who leads the state’s largest labor federation, was among dozens of elected union officers who signed a letter to Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, touting Walz’s credentials for the job of vice president.

Several also joined a Capitol press conference July 30 in St. Paul to make Walz’s case.

“What better way to continue the most pro-worker administration than to have the most pro-worker governor in the nation serve as our vice president?” Burnham said.

Labor leaders ticked off a list of legislative accomplishments in the state since Walz, a former teacher turned congressman, won the state’s governorship in 2018. Most came after he won re-election in 2022, when DFLers also won control of both the House and Senate.

The governor did not back down from an opportunity to be bold, signing legislation long sought by unions and worker advocacy groups, including:

  • New benefits like paid family leave and earned sick and safe time, covering most workers in the state.
  • Expanded collective bargaining rights, making it easier for workers at the University of Minnesota to unionize and for educators to bargain for student-centered priorities like lower class sizes. Walz also signed a ban on anti-union “captive audience” meetings.
  • New enforcement tools to crack down on wage theft, including tougher penalties.
  • A first-in-the-nation Nursing Home Standards Board that will improve wages and working conditions to address short staffing in the industry.
  • Historic investments in public education and infrastructure.

Joel Smith, president and business manager of LIUNA Minnesota and North Dakota, representing over 14,000 laborers in the state, credited Walz’s pro-infrastructure policies with delivering “tens of thousands of construction jobs fixing our roads and bridges and water infrastructure.”

Tim Walz talked with union members at a Helmets to Hardhats event in Duluth during his first campaign for governor. (UA file)

Smith also noted Walz’s strong support for prevailing wage, which the state recently expanded to cover developments that tap into low-income housing tax credits. That means more opportunities for union tradespeople, he said.

“With Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, your paycheck is safe, your health care is secure and your pension is protected,” Smith said.

Walz’s record isn’t the only reason he makes the best pick for vice president, labor leaders said. The governor, who was a member of Education Minnesota when he worked as a Mankato teacher, also brings a middle-class perspective and work ethic to Harris’ campaign, which has been endorsed by the AFL-CIO and the vast majority of unions.

“We all want Kamala Harris to win, and we believe having Gov. Walz on the ticket will help her win,” Education Minnesota President Denise Specht said.

“At his core he is still a teacher, and teachers get things done,” Specht added during the Capitol media event. “When you have a classroom full of students and they need your help, you know you can’t kick that can down the road. The children need you now. Every educator feels that powerful mix of urgency and responsibility, and Tim took that feeling from the classroom to Congress to his office upstairs.”

Harris quickly picked up the AFL-CIO endorsement after President Joe Biden announced his decision to end his reelection campaign July 21. Electing the Harris-Walz ticket will be the Labor 2024 campaign’s top priority this fall.

“We know that Gov. Walz will be a strong partner in the Harris White House, fighting every day to improve the lives of workers in communities across America,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement. “Gov. Walz isn’t only an ally to the labor movement, but also our union brother with a deep commitment to a pro-worker agenda.”

Walz leaned into his labor roots during his first solo campaign appearance after joining the presidential ticket Aug. 6. After a week of rallies with Harris in battleground states, including Wisconsin, Walz addressed delegates to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ national convention in Los Angeles on Aug. 13.

The governor highlighted Harris’ working-class background, and he praised her work ethic and support for organized labor. Those qualities, Walz said, stand in sharp contrast with her opponent, former President Donald Trump, who crossed a Stagehands’ picket line while filming his reality TV show.

“I saw our friend (Autoworkers President) Shawn Fain at the UAW had a name for that, he called him a scab,” Walz said. “That’s not name-calling, it’s an observation in fact, just to be clear.”

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Volunteers key to Minnesota unions’ election-year goals

July 19, 2024 by

The Minnesota AFL-CIO made its first round of legislative endorsements in June, bringing into focus the statewide union federation’s objectives in the 2024 election cycle.

The 79 endorsed candidates would preserve a pro-worker majority in the Minnesota House of Representatives, one-third of the political “trifecta” responsible for delivering a historic package of investments and policy changes that, Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said, have “set Minnesota on its way to becoming the best state for working people.”

“We can’t afford to go backwards,” she said.

But protecting the labor-endorsed majority in the Legislature – only House races are on the ballot this year, aside from special elections – is just one outcome that Burnham and other labor leaders hope to see from the Nov. 5 election.

Other goals include sending endorsed candidates to Congress, including Rep. Angie Craig in the state’s tightly contested 2nd District, and delivering the state’s electoral votes to the Biden-Harris ticket, endorsed by the national AFL-CIO over a year ago – and reaffirmed by the federation’s Executive Council after a meeting with President Biden on July 10.

“No president has been more invested in expanding the labor movement and empowering workers than President Joe Biden,” council members said in a joint statement afterward. “The AFL-CIO welcomed President Biden back to the House of Labor, and national leaders reiterated their strong solidarity with the Biden-Harris ticket.”

While narrowly-contested races like Biden’s and Craig’s are sure to dominate the airwaves and social media, the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s political work happens closer to the ground.

At the heart of the “Labor 2024” campaign, Burnham said, will be conversations between union members – in the break room, on the doorstep or over the phone – about what matters to them.

“It’s an opportunity for union folks to talk to and show their fellow union members that when we win collective power, we win tangible improvements for working people,” Burnham said. “It’s making sure that folks know that their voice counts and the more we stick together the better off we’re going to be.”

The Minnesota AFL-CIO’s member-to-member approach has a track record of success.

Labor’s unified political effort every two years represents the largest campaign in the state not affiliated with a party or candidate. In 2022, more than 450 union volunteers knocked on 62,000 doors statewide and had more than 30,000 conversations with union voters.

Unions focused their work on 34 “targeted races,” and their endorsed candidates won 25 of them.

Volunteers will need to bring the same energy to Labor 2024, Burnham said. The campaign’s phone banks, rallies and door knocks are likely to begin later this month, after the Aug. 13 primary election.

“Pretty quick here, we’re going to be on the pavement pounding it pretty hard up until Election Day,” she said. “This program is only going to do well if we have members out on the doors, have members making phone calls.

“There are really any number of ways to make a difference. Just get out and be a part of the program.”

The Minnesota AFL-CIO is expected to make additional endorsements this summer as candidates continue to screen with their area labor councils.

To learn more about volunteering, or to receive invites to Labor 2024 campaign events, go to mnaflcio.org and click “Get Updates.”

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