Peterson: Support candidates who will listen to workers, not billionaires

October 30, 2026 by Leave a Comment

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

Things are too expensive. That’s not breaking news to anyone who’s shopped for groceries or filled their gas tank lately. This economy is putting the squeeze on working people. Too many of us are living on the edge, working longer and harder for less in return and stressing over every bill, every purchase, every paycheck.

It shouldn’t be this way. The U.S. economy is growing. Corpo-rate earnings are up and so is the stock market. The S&P 500 hit an all-time high last month. American workers are more productive than ever, but our share in the economic growth that labor creates is at historic low point. An NBC News report found that the share of economic output going to workers’ pay and benefits has sunk to its lowest level since the Department of Labor started tracking it in 1947. The pie is getting bigger, but our slice is getting smaller.

None of this is happening by accident. It’s the direct result of policy choices – tariffs, healthcare cuts, foreign wars, attacks on collective bargaining – made by politicians who answer to billionaires and CEOs instead of working people. That’s why our federation of local unions is working to elect labor-endorsed candidates Nov. 3 who will put us first and hold corporations and billionaires accountable.

Here in Minnesota, we know firsthand what’s at stake in this election. We’re less than a year removed from the federal government’s shockingly violent and lawless occupation of our state in the name of immigration enforcement. Operation Metro Surge trampled on our rights, tore families apart and disrupted life in our neighborhoods, schools and workplaces. The occupation dealt an economic blow, too, costing our state 32,000 jobs, reducing economic activity – especially in the hospitality sector – and increasing security costs for local communities by an estimated $700 million.

The tragic failures of Metro Surge reflect a pattern that has repeated itself throughout Trump’s second administration. Bad ideas go unchecked by enfeebled congressional majorities and a compliant Supreme Court, and the American people pay the price – literally. Trump’s tariffs raised our cost of living, and his war in Iran has only made it worse. Minnesotans’ real wages, adjusted for inflation, fell 1.4% in the first seven months of this year. And as predicted, the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” has forced more Minnesotans to go without healthcare coverage and increased premiums for those who remain insured.

This election is our opportunity to begin putting an end to the chaos, and union members are, unsurprisingly, stepping up to the challenge. Internal poling by the AFL-CIO shows that 83% of union members are “extremely motivated” to vote in the midterms – a 10-point increase from 2022. In Minnesota, union volunteers are talking with their neighbors and co-workers, encouraging them to make their plan to vote. (You don’t have to wait until Nov. 3 if you vote early; go to mnvotes.org to learn how!) Others are signing up as election judges or training to serve as election protection volunteers.

If the challenges ahead feel overwhelming, I empathize. Instead of becoming demoralized, though, let’s focus on what is possible when after Election Day if we make our voices heard. Together, we can help deliver majorities for pro-worker candidates up and down the ballot who will support our right to bargain for better pay and benefits, fight for affordable healthcare and stop the squeeze on working families.

– Kera Peterson is president of the Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. 

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Union members say Ellison has stuck up for workers as Attorney General

October 28, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Attorney General Keith Ellison speaks before a door-knock with SEIU President April Verrett in Minneapolis.

Locked in a tight re-election campaign, Attorney General Keith Ellison deserves working Minnesotans’ vote because he puts the power of his office to work for them, union members and labor leaders say.

And they have the receipts to prove it.

Hospitality workers at Target Field, members of UNITE HERE Local 17, have long raised questions about nonprofits that the stadium brings in to operate concession stands, purportedly raising funds for their charitable organizations.

When union members entered contract negotiations with Target Field’s concessionaire, Delaware North, earlier this year, they proposed limits on the practice. The employer showed no interest, Local 17 President Sheigh Freeberg said.

But in July, Ellison announced that his office had reached a civil settlement to shut down one of the nonprofits operating Target Field concession stands, MN Fundraising Initiative (MNFI), after investigating allegations that it was not operated for any charitable purpose. Instead, MNFI was operating as a staffing agency to misclassify hundreds of employees as “volunteers” and deploying them to work in concession stands at venues across the Twin Cities.

Freeberg called it a validating moment for Local 17 members.

“This is a thing that workers have been talking about for years,” Freeberg said. “It’s not right that these sham charities undercut union wages, undercut union labor and take away hours from union workers. It’s hard to overstate how important this settlement was.”

It’s just one of several cases Ellison’s office has built against bad bosses in recent years, seeking justice for victims of wage theft, misclassification or predatory employment practices.

The Attorney General’s Office secured $250,000 in back pay for dairy workers, won $800,000 in restitution for delivery drivers with the gig-economy firm Shipt and, earlier this year, won an important decision that keeps alive efforts to recoup wages allegedly stolen from cleaning workers at Madison Equities’ former holdings in downtown St. Paul.

Fighting back against Trump

Union leaders also point to Ellison’s work since January 2025 to defend Minnesota against attacks from the Trump administration, filing or signing onto over 50 cases against the executive branch.

Ellison’s office filed one of those cases in July, after Trump’s Department of Education abruptly announced it would withhold funding appropriated to local school districts across the country. Minnesota districts stood to lose a combined $74 billion.

“Two months before fall classes, before school was supposed to start, school leaders all over the state scrambled to see what they would have to cut if no one stepped in for students and no one stepped up for the Constitution,” Brian McCarthy, president of the West St. Paul Federation of Teachers, said. “Fortunately, someone did.”

Trump relented, and the federal government released the funding. But McCarthy wondered whether Ellison’s opponent, corporate attorney Ron Schutz, would have sued his own party’s president.

“Lawsuits like that tell me that Keith will continue to work for our kids and our communities,” McCarthy said.

Keeping an eye out for workers

For healthcare workers and advocates, meanwhile, Ellison’s leadership in the Attorney General’s Office is critical to navigating an unprecedented period of upheaval in the sector, with three pairs of health systems seeking the office’s approval for sales or mergers in the last year.

Unions say Ellison understands the importance of maintaining their collective bargaining rights as part of that process.

North Memorial and Sanford made that guarantee as part of a binding community benefits agreement that paved the way for approval of their merger earlier this year, but advocates are still pushing Allina and California-based Sutter Health, as well as HealthPartners and Essentia, for similar agreements.

Allina hospice nurse Susie Smerz said she’s grateful for the work Ellison did to get their newly organized bargaining unit a first contract – without having to go on an open-ended strike. Representatives of the Attorney General’s Office, she said, were directly involved with last-ditch talks to avoid a strike, doing “shuttle diplomacy” to get a tentative agreement between Allina Health and her bargaining unit with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa.

“The hospice nurses began feeling like an open-ended strike had become the only tool in our tool belt,” Smerz said. “I don’t know how, but the Attorney General’s Office got wind of it and, I think, was like, ‘Oh no, Allina.’ They really got us to the finish line.

“It really seemed like they cared about us – about the little people. We’re a unit of 55 to 60 nurses, and that’s a drop in the bucket for Allina. They were willing to wear us down. But the Attorney General’s Office wanted to be sure we didn’t get left in the dust.”

UNITE HERE’s Freeberg said he tells people Minnesota has the best Attorney General for workers in the country. But that comes with a target on Ellison’s race each time he’s on the ballot.

“He didn’t have to take on cases like ours,” Freeberg said. “These sham charities exist in all 50 states. But that’s who Keith is. He’s someone that workers can always count on, and his opponent is someone that their bosses can always count on. I really don’t think the stakes could be higher than that.”

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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Labor-endorsed ballot question would deliver funding for schools without raising taxes

October 27, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Minnesota voters have an opportunity in the Nov. 3 election to send more funding to the state’s public schools – without raising taxes – by voting “yes” on a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution.

With high-profile races for governor and U.S. Senate dominating the media cycles and control of the statehouse up for grabs, the ballot question is, perhaps, flying under the radar this fall.

But its potential impact is significant, with benefits extending to every public school district in the state.

Education Minnesota, representing about 80,000 educators and school employees statewide, has endorsed a “yes” vote, as has the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

The amendment, if passed, would increase distributions from the state’s Permanent School Fund, a trust created in 1858 that pays public schools each year using revenue from timber sales, mineral leases and investment returns on public land.

Since 2010, the fund has grown from about $675 million to more than $2.3 billion, but a law passed in the 1800s still governs how the fund’s investment gains are distributed.

Last year, districts received a combined $58 million from the fund, or about 2.5% of its value. The proposed amendment would increase distributions to 4.5% of the fund’s three-year rolling average value, a rate agreed upon by a non-partisan task force of investment, trust, legal and education experts appointed by the Legislature in 2024.

The proposed rate is more in line with practices used by university endowments and charitable foundations across the country, supporters say.

The immediate impact depends on investment returns, of course, but had the amendment passed last year, school districts would have seen an increase of about $33 per pupil from the fund.

For example, in the White Bear Lake School District, it would have meant nearly $275,000 in added revenue. For Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan, it would have drawn nearly $1 million in added funds.

The change won’t impact the state’s general fund or require any new taxes.

Votes in the Legislature to put the amendment on the Nov. 3 ballot drew bipartisan support, including a 134-0 vote in the House. Sen. Mary Kunesh, a DFLer and chief author of the amendment, called it “a responsible path forward.”

“As a former public school educator and chair of the Senate Education Finance Committee, I know how vital it is to secure additional funds and support for our public schools, and this is one way to provide that support without asking taxpayers to pay one penny more,” Kunesh added.

DFL and Republican leaders have voiced support for the ballot question, but advocates remain concerned on two fronts.

First, voters need to locate the proposed amendment on their ballot – it could be on the back side – and cast a vote. Minnesota constitutional amendments require a majority of all voters to mark the “yes” box, which means leaving the question blank counts as a “no” vote.

And educators, in particular, are concerned that the presence of the amendment question, which makes clear that the outcome will not raise taxes, could hurt the chances of local school funding questions that might also appear on the ballot, like a levy or bonding request.

While increased funding from the Permanent School Fund will help schools, Education Minnesota Vice President Marty Fridgen said, it won’t solve all their financial struggles. Many districts will still need to pass levies this fall to avoid cuts.

“For some people, they’re going to be going into the booth and also have an operating levy for their district,” Fridgen said. “Thirty dollars extra from this fund is not enough for some of our school districts to alleviate the other needs they have. So we’re nervous that people will vote yes on the amendment because it’s not going to raise their taxes, but on the other question they’re going to say no.”

Public school districts received, on average, $13,333 per pupil in state funding in the 2025 fiscal year, but a report issued by the nonpartisan North Star Policy Action in August found that, when adjusted for inflation, state funding continues to lag 2003 levels.

A historic investment during the 2023 legislative session cut the per-pupil aid gap by 56%, according to researchers. But 2025 funding remained 8.6% lower than the inflation-adjusted amount from 2003, a difference of about $1,249.

Learn more about the constitutional amendment at voteyesmnstudents.org.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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Kera Peterson: On this Labor Day, let’s commit to stopping the billionaire takeover

September 4, 2026 by

Kera Peterson, shown speaking at the 2026 AFL-CIO Convention, is president of the Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation. (Photo courtesy Jay Mallin)

You might think of Labor Day as the unofficial end of summer or the last day before school starts. Maybe it’s just a welcome three-day weekend. But in the labor movement, Labor Day is a celebration of the power that we, as workers, have when we join together in unions – the power of solidarity. When working people come together and fight for each other, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish. We can stand up to the wealthiest CEOs and the most powerful politicians. We can topple corporate greed and rewrite the rules.

Of course, Labor Day also brings us closer to Election Day, and our unions are already working hard, both here in Minnesota and across the country, to power a campaign that takes back our country for working people. We’re mobilizing to elect pro-worker candidates who will be on our side, not for the elites.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen what a billionaire-first government looks like ever since President Trump and his allies in Congress took power last year. Their “big, beautiful bill” gave record tax cuts to billionaires and corporations – paid for with cuts to healthcare, food assistance and other services that working families rely on. Before the bill passed, unions joined a chorus of voices warning that the measure would leave more Americans uninsured, increase costs for local providers and raise premiums for the rest of us. Now it’s happening, making it harder than ever for working families just to make ends meet.

Healthcare isn’t the only thing more expensive in Trump’s economy. From gas and groceries to rent, families’ costs are skyrocketing. Too many of us feel like we’re falling behind or just barely getting by, whether we’re working longer and harder than ever for less in return or attempting to retire. Too many working people are living on the edge, stressing over every bill, every purchase, every paycheck.

It doesn’t have to be this way. And it shouldn’t. Working people built this country, yet every day we seem to matter less to the wealthy elites in power.

It’s past time that elected officials, from the Capitol in Washington to our city halls, prioritize working people by creating good jobs with better pay and affordable health care, and by protecting the programs we all depend on like Social Security and Medicare. We also need leaders who will fight to remove barriers workers face when they try to organize a union and bargain a first contract. More than 70% of Americans and nearly 9 in 10 people younger than 30 support unions, and polls show that millions of workers would join a union tomorrow if they could. Yet less than 12% of the workforce enjoys union representation on the job.

So on this Labor Day weekend, let’s take a moment to celebrate our solidarity, and then let’s recommit ourselves to fighting for worker power. Because the stakes have never been higher. Our labor movement is ready to fight for an economy, a government and a country for the people, not the billionaires. We’ll knock on doors, we’ll make phone calls and send texts, we’ll rally and we’ll fight to elect the candidates who share our vision for the future. We’ll share volunteer events on our website and social media. We hope you’ll help us win for working people on Election Day!

– Kera Peterson is president of the Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. Her column appeared in the September 2026 issue of The Saint Paul Union Advocate, which is the SPRLF’s official publication.

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