Ramsey County workers fight to save detox services: ‘It’s life or death’

October 23, 2025 by

Community members rally outside the Ramsey County Detox Center.

Workers and community members staged a demonstration outside the Ramsey County Detoxification Center in St. Paul on Tuesday, protesting the county’s plan to wind down operations by the end of this year.

Members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) criticized county leaders for scrapping the Detoxification and Withdrawal Management program during a substance-abuse crisis in the community.

“It’s life or death,” said Randy, a peer support specialist at the facility who asked that his last name not be published. “I know for a fact that there are people, if we do close, that have less of chance of just surviving. That’s not to be dramatic, but there are people who are really going to be in dire straits without our program.”

[Sign AFSCME’s petition to save Detox Services here.]

Shutting down the detox program will trim about $2 million from the annual budget, according to the county, which plans to partner with community providers to deliver detox services moving forward.

Counties are required to ensure detox services are available, but not to run their own facilities.

But workers at the rally voiced concerns about what those partnerships look like in practice – and whether community agencies are ready to absorb the clients Ramsey County begins turning away Jan. 1.

“They continue to push the narrative that there will be plenty of community providers out there, but all of the community providers are still asking us, what are they going to do when this is done?” nurse supervisor Channa Peters said.

There are no other detox facilities in the east-metro area, Peters added, and surrounding counties already steer their residents in need of services to the St. Paul site, located near Regions Hospital. After it closes, the nearest detox center will be at 1800 Chicago Ave. S. in Minneapolis.

Randy, a steward with AFSCME Local 151, said he worries that potential privatization of the services Ramsey County currently provides could jeopardize access for unhoused, uninsured and underinsured people in the community.

“If you get somebody that’s for-profit to come in and do these services, where’s their motivation to serve those most vulnerable people?” he asked.

The closure will eliminate about 43 positions at year’s end. The layoffs are poised to hit about a year after the detox program ramped up hiring to confront the opioid epidemic.

Already this year, the program has made contact with 1,700 clients, and it is on pace to serve about 1,900. That’s up from 1,567 last year and 1,269 in 2023.

Still, the county says its in-house program “has underperformed expected financial targets year-over-year and has had significant deficits for several years.”

But staff members say those targets were never laid out clearly by management, while the county’s inability to hire nurses has forced it to pay contractors at a much higher rate, inflating the program’s expenses.

“We know that we’re not going to be a moneymaking program, but we’ve saved people’s lives,” Peters said. “We had people stand up at the last board meeting and talk about how  having a detox here has opened the door to becoming a homeowner in this county.”

Randy said he understands the financial challenges Ramsey County faces, “particularly with the cuts that we know are coming down from the federal level.” But he disputed the county’s characterization of detox services as ineffective or inefficient.

His message to county commissioners: “We probably are your best effective bet to do this if you can figure out a way to fund us. Have you done everything you can to figure that out?”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Science Museum workers appeal to public as cuts threaten programs, access

August 21, 2025 by

Paleontologist Nicole Dzenowski says the Science Museum backtracked after eliminating her position in violation of her union contract.

Nicole Dzenowski, a paleontologist with the Science Museum of Minnesota, was on a field expedition in Montana when she received the news that her position managing Minnesota’s only active fossil-preparation lab was being eliminated.

In a virtual staff meeting that followed, Dzenowski learned her lab, which maintains a collection of hundreds of thousands of fossils, would remain open with support from volunteers – in direct violation of the newly negotiated contract covering over 200 Science Museum workers, members of AFSCME Council 5.

Within weeks, management had offered Dzenowski the position back on a part-time basis, but she and other union members say that her experience epitomizes the museum’s indifference to frontline workers and their union contract – and to the organization’s mission – as it plows ahead with a plan to eliminate 43 full-time positions.

“I am grateful that I will, in part, get to keep my job,” Dzenowski said. “I am grateful that the scientifically significant fossils that our collection houses will get taken care of…

“I can be grateful for all of those things while also still recognizing that the way these layoffs have unfolded does not feel like management has followed our contract and considered any alternatives to these layoffs – let alone any and all.”

Dzenowski and other Science Museum workers – some impacted by the layoffs, some not – laid bare their frustration with the process and their concerns about the institution’s future during a press conference July 29 outside the museum’s Kellogg Boulevard entrance.

Museum management announced plans to shrink its operating budget from $38 million to $31 million July 9, pointing to “fundamental shifts in consumer behavior following the pandemic” that have resulted in lower attendance at museum’s across the U.S. The Science Museum also saw federal grant funding pulled back by the Trump administration earlier this year.

But rather than taking a collaborative approach to navigating the new industry landscape, Science Museum union members said, management has shut them out of the planning process.

“We wouldn’t be here today if Science Museum management wasn’t too afraid to actually listen to their workers, who have brought forward ideas of building a better Science Museum but have been ignored,” Council 5 Director Bart Andersen said.

Decisions behind closed doors

Workers’ requests for information about how leadership arrived at decisions, like eliminating programs or consolidating departments, have gone mostly unanswered.

Sheridan Small, a program specialist, questioned the museum’s plans to discontinue camps – her area of focus – after this season. Small, who accepted the year-round position last March and will be laid off effective Aug. 22, said the move will eliminate a program that brings families – and revenue – to the museum.

“This is one of the museum’s strongest membership drivers,” she said. “Families join to get early access and discounts (on camp registration). Even with the materials and staffing costs, this program pays for itself. It doesn’t drain resources, it generates them.”

Jennings Mergenthal questions the organization’s decision to eliminate every position dedicated to its access and equity program.

Small isn’t the only one struggling to understand management’s reasoning. Grace Richter, who works on the museum floor, said union members in her department have asked how this round of layoffs will be different from last year’s, which eventually forced management to address staffing shortages.

“They have refused to be transparent with my team or grant information requests from the union, and have not engaged in any dialogue,” she said.

“In the 2023-24 fiscal year, our CEO Alison Brown made $572,000 – a huge jump from the previous year,” Richter added. “If our leaders are going to make that much money while I barely make $35,000 a year, shouldn’t they be able to provide us with a bare minimum of transparency on why crucial museum staff are losing their jobs?”

Betrayal of values

Other workers worried the layoffs signal the Science Museum is walking away from its commitment to inclusion and community access.

Ashley Hausch said her entire department dedicated to evaluation and research will be eliminated, and so will the museum’s ability to track visitors by zip code – a critical piece of determining how diverse the museum’s visitor population is.

Jennings Mergenthal, a community engagement specialist, said his department, which seeks to build relevant connections between community members and the museum’s offerings, had been eliminated, too. The move, he said, will increase the distance between museum leaders and the communities the Science Museum claims to serve.

“If the museum wants to act like a business, it should be honest about that,” Mergenthal added. “But if it wants to keep saying that it’s a public good and receive state grants and appropriations in service of the public, then it needs to listen to the community feedback it receives.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Historical Society’s plan to close sites, lay off staff needs scrutiny, union says

August 15, 2025 by

Workers rallied outside the History Center in Saint Paul on Thursday. (AFSCME photo)

Union members are demanding answers from Minnesota Historical Society executives after a shakeup that will result in 36 layoffs and reduced access to sites and materials maintained by the organization.

“We want to see the receipts,” AFSCME Local 3173 President Jacob Rorem said.

The layoffs, announced July 28, impacted 28 members of the bargaining unit, which covers about 80% of MNHS’s workforce. A few members will be able to continue their employment with MNHS by transferring to open positions.

MNHS laid off seven workers in June 2024, and management had been hinting at deeper cuts to come. They cite a structural deficit, as revenues from membership sales and site fees, state allocations, grant funding and other sources have not kept up with rising costs.

While the layoffs did not come as a shock, Rorem said, the lack of transparency about what factored into the decision-making process has left union members frustrated with management – and anxious about MNHS’s future.

“It’s been a hard week and a half as people try to process the news,” Rorem said. “We know there’s a budget problem, but there hasn’t been a clear explanation as to how these cuts are going to help address that – what the decision-making process was, what the evidence or data they were using to make these decisions was.

“It’s something we are continuing to press because even if we … don’t necessarily agree with those decisions, we have a right to understand them and understand how (management) is stewarding the resources of our organization and of the state.”

One thing is clear: the restructuring will reduce public-facing services offered by MNHS.

The plan will eliminate regular summer programming – and most staff – at three sites: the Charles Lindbergh House in Little Falls, Historic Forestville in Preston and the Snake River Fur Post in Pine City.

All three sites will offer visitors free, self-guided tours instead.

Lacey Fontaine, a program associate at the Lindbergh House, said she and all but one of her co-workers, the site manager, will lose their jobs when the season ends Aug. 31.

“We’re eliminating positions that actually help the public,” Fontaine said. “We are the face of the Historical Society, not necessarily the people making these decisions in the background.”

Visitors, meanwhile, will lose the opportunity to engage with staff members like Fontaine, who holds a master’s degree in public history, about issues that still resonate today.

“As complicated as Charles Lindbergh was, he was good at one thing, and that was initiating dialogue with the public,” she said. “We’re losing all that important dialogue, that education and the discussion about where historic figures fit into our lives today.

“In today’s political climate, I don’t think that’s the best thing.”

Layoffs also targeted four workers in the Gale Family Library at the History Center in St. Paul.

As a result, the research library will no longer hold public visiting hours and, instead, will require visitors to schedule appointments.

Rorem said the change would impact historians, people doing ancestry and genealogy projects and journalists working on a deadline. “Most of the time they do not want to plan that far ahead,” he said.

Many challenges facing MNHS are also playing out at museums and cultural institutions nationwide, like falling attendance levels since the pandemic and a decline in philanthropic giving.

The union drive, too, may have played in a role, Rorem acknowledged, by forcing MNHS leadership to reckon with “a business model that existed for a long time that relied on low wages, on people dedicating themselves to the mission of an organization and sacrificing in terms of wages and benefits.”

MNHS workers voted overwhelmingly to form their union in November 2021 and ratified their first contract in March 2023. The bargaining unit, affiliated with AFSCME Council 5, brings together over 200 workers.

“We’ve been able to raise wages for a big chunk of our bargaining unit by a huge amount,” Rorem said. “We have six weeks of paid parental leave that we didn’t have before. We have protections from arbitrary or unfair discipline.

“It’s been really valued by our membership.”

Rorem called it a “disheartening and scary” time for workers at institutions like MNHS, and he said the union would appeal to the public, including state lawmakers, to step up support for the organization and its mission – and to hold its leadership accountable.

“We have a mission to serve the public,” he said. “The resources we take care of are the resources of the people of Minnesota. We’d love them to continue to visit us and utilize what we have.”

Fontaine said she’s already on the hunt for a new job where she can continue engaging people in conversations about how the past influences the present.

“If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out, but I’m hoping things will shift in the future where I can rejoin this business,” she said.

“We’re losing that connection to history, and it’s really sad.”

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

Unions decry state lawmakers’ move to close Stillwater prison

May 23, 2025 by

Corrections officers and other Stillwater prison workers are demanding that state leaders reconsider their plan, announced as part of a bipartisan budget agreement earlier this month, to close the facility by 2029.

That is, if they have a plan.

Members of AFSCME Council 5 and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees say the state should have consulted them before making the announcement, which impacts about 560 workers and 1,200 offenders housed at the Washington County facility, which is actually located in Bayport.

Instead, union leaders said, they got a call about 15 minutes before the news became public May 15.

“I find it hard to believe that this chip that was put on the table at the 11th hour wasn’t discussed thoroughly before it got put on the table,” Council 5 Executive Director Bart Andersen said. “There had to have been various conversations about what could the implications of this be. Did anybody think about that? Because if they would have asked us, we would have had a laundry list of concerns.”

Those concerns include how the state’s other prisons will absorb inmates from Stillwater – and do it safely.

“If there are 1,200 beds within the Minnesota Department of Corrections, we would like to see where those are,” Dan Gorman, who has worked as an officer in Stillwater for 20 years, said during a Capitol press conference the day after state leaders’ announcement.

Gorman added that the roughly 450 AFSCME members who work at the facility had been told by management that the prison’s population would reduce by half over the next “two or three years” before closing in the fourth year. Stillwater’s level-four security designation means that it can house the state’s most serious offenders.

“Now you start sending those (offenders) to other facilities, overpopulating those facilities, and it makes it very dangerous for the inmate population and for the staff that work in those facilities,” Gorman said.

Jeff Larson, chair of Council 5’s corrections officer council, said workers across Minnesota’s prisons were bracing for the impact of closing the system’s second-largest facility.

“Moving hundreds of staff and offenders across the state with no clear-cut plan?” Larson said. “That’s dangerous.”

Prison workers also expressed concerns for their careers, their families and the local community.

“I’ve had co-workers in tears,” Gorman said. “I’ve had seasoned officers coming to me and telling me they don’t know how much more of this they can take. And I’ve had new officers questioning whether they made the right choice joining this department at all.”

MAPE President Megan Dayton, whose union represents caseworkers and other workers in the DOC, said the community members deserved transparency and a chance to offer feedback before lawmakers arrived at the decision. Instead, they got “another behind-closed-doors decision.”

“That is not planning; that is scrambling,” Dayton said.

State officials argued that the prison has become less safe as it has fallen into greater disrepair. Its backlog of deferred maintenance projects would cost an estimated $700 million to address, according to a state analysis issued five years ago.

But Gorman pointed to a list of low-cost security improvements rejected by the agency in recent years, and Andersen said the state could invest in keeping the 111-year-old prison, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

“This Capitol is not brand new,” Andersen said. “The Governor’s Mansion is not brand new. There’s a brand new Senate building. There were capital investments to make sure all those facilities are up and running and renovated and maintained. Why can’t that happen with Stillwater?”

The news about Stillwater prison came as Walz’s administration was negotiating new union contracts with MAPE and Council 5’s state-employee locals, covering over 40,000 employees.

Those talks got off to a contentious start this spring after the governor unilaterally changed the state’s policy on remote work, giving thousands of workers mere months to plan for a partial return to the office.

Union leaders said they expect better from Walz and other elected officials who claim to support labor and law enforcement, but hope there’s still time to reverse course.

“You love to stand next to us when we have our uniforms on and take pictures with us and claim you support us,” Gorman said. “This is a moment to have your vote match your words or your social media posts.”

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , ,

As hospital cuts loom in St. Paul, workers demand accountability, engagement from M Health Fairview

October 22, 2020 by

MNA member Melanie Timpano (L) and SEIU Healthcare Minnesota member Cleveland Donazal tape a list of demands to the Ramsey County Court House door, warning county board member to proceed with caution as they partner with M Health Fairview on using Bethesda Hospital as a temporary shelter for people experiencing homelessness.

With hundreds of jobs at stake, union nurses and health care workers are sounding the alarm on M Health Fairview’s plan to slash services at two St. Paul hospitals and close 16 clinics across the region.

The health system announced plans this month to close Bethesda Hospital, the only COVID-19 specialty hospital in the area, and reduce services at St. Joseph’s. Workers accused management of using the COVID-19 crisis as cover to justify eliminating services on which St. Paul community members rely.

“It is unthinkable that an urban center like St. Paul stands to lose so many patient services at once,” said Rose Roach, executive director of the Minnesota Nurses Association.

The announcement came just two weeks after Children’s Hospital announced plans to limit services on its St. Paul campus. Roach noted that, combined, the announcements threaten patients’ access to “operating rooms, pediatric ICUs, cardiac, epilepsy, chemical dependency, and diabetic services.”

“The loss of resources will again force patients, especially among communities of color, to have to travel to health care, instead of finding it available to them,” she added. “This is not health equity. This is tragic.”

Jamie Gulley, president of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, with 200 members at Bethesda and St. Joseph’s, called the likely damage to health care access in St. Paul “insurmountable.”

“This move is incredibly shortsighted, and we know it will have long-lasting effects to both healthcare workers and patients,” he said. “Our state cannot afford to have this plan move forward without a much deeper analysis on the impact to our community.”

The unions planned to lobby state and local lawmakers, including Gov. Tim Walz, to put the rapidly approaching closures on ice until community members have an opportunity to provide more feedback.

M Health Fairview this week finalized an agreement to lease Bethesda to Ramsey County as a transitional shelter for people experiencing homelessness. But unions urged county officials to push for transparency and accountability in their agreement with the health care system.

“We support any real effort to provide housing for the homeless,” MNA member Melissa Kadrmas, a registered nurse at St. Joseph’s, said. “However, we don’t trust M Health Fairview, and we worry that their ill-thought-out plan is to provide them cover for closing a facility, laying-off nurses and eliminating key services. We are interested in seeing long term results, not just a bandage.”

The Ramsey County Board of Commissioners approved the Bethesda lease during a meeting Monday, after union members marched from the hospital to City Hall with a list of demands, many focused on meeting health care needs in the urban core.

Speaking during an outdoor press conference, Roach called for a statewide moratorium on health care cuts during the pandemic, and said pitting a health care crisis against a housing crisis creates a “false choice.”

Workers also had a warning for county commissioners: M Health Fairview “has not been a responsible employer or a trustworthy community partner,” Roach said. Cleveland Donazal, a lead storekeeper at Bethesda and SEIU member, added: “We want M Health Fairview to be held accountable.”

Health care workers from St. Joseph’s at the press conference called for deeper analysis of what M Health Fairview’s cuts will mean for people seeking care in St. Paul. That means doing more that just paying “lip service” to community engagement, St. Joseph’s nurse Melanie Timpano said.

“These closures will have an impact metro wide at a time when we already don’t have enough beds, when we already don’t have enough staff and at a time when nurses are exhausted,” she said.

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

HealthPartners workers picket, warn clinic closings will hurt local communities at worst possible time

July 30, 2020 by

Workers picket outside HealthPartners Riverside Clinic in Minneapolis.

By moving forward with plans to close nine facilities in Minnesota and eastern Wisconsin, HealthPartners is turning its back on local communities at the worst possible time, clinic workers say.

Members of two unions impacted by the closings, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and OPEIU Local 12, held informational picketing in Minneapolis tonight outside HealthPartners Riverside Clinic, which suspended operations April 25 and will not reopen, the provider has since announced.

Riverside serves some of Minnesota’s most racially diverse neighborhoods, including areas of concentrated poverty. The clinic’s closing caught many patients dangerously off-guard, said Holly DeSouza, a registered nurse who coordinates care for chronic and high-risk patients.

“I get regular calls from our patients who have high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and they can’t get into this clinic,” DeSouza, a member of SEIU, said. “They said they were outside, they knocked on the door and no one came. And they can’t get out to the suburbs where their providers were displaced. They don’t have the transportation.”

Minnesota’s troubling racial disparities have drawn worldwide attention this summer, and health care is among the areas where those disparities are most stark. According to the Department of Health’s 2017 Statewide Health Assessment, “race and ethnicity are powerful indicators of the opportunity people have to be healthy” in Minnesota.

Rep. Mohamud Noor, a DFLer whose district includes the Riverside Clinic, told workers he worries its closing will only heighten barriers people of color and indigenous people face in getting the care they need.

“To walk away from this clinic is what I see as the structural racism that exists in our society,” Noor said, adding he and his family consider Riverside their primary-care clinic. “Closing this clinic is a shame to HealthPartners.”

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Riverside is just one of eight clinics slated to close, along with the Regions Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program in St. Paul. Other communities impacted by the closings include St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood, Cottage Grove, and Mahtomedi.

Since announcing the cuts, HealthPartners has laid off 90 SEIU members and about 30 members of OPEIU Local 12, as well as non-union employees. More layoffs could be coming, union leaders said.

Linnea Forsline, an SEIU member and physician assistant at Riverside, speaks on the picket line. “We don’t bail on our patients,” she said.

For workers, the layoffs are particularly difficult to stomach after a difficult round of contract negotiations this winter – and a year after the “nonprofit health care organization” bumped CEO Andrea Walsh’s compensation past the $2 million mark.

In a petition circulating online, union members are demanding Walsh and HealthPartners “stop clinic closures and protect health care workers – and protect the health care of the communities those workers serve.”

“We hear talk about the future of video visits, but we know that people want to be with a real person and talk to their health care providers,” Local 12 member Kelsie Anderson said. “We also know that many people may not have proper technology for that.”

Rushing forward with virtual care and closing clinics like Riverside are part of a “destructive pattern” of moves, physician assistant and SEIU member Linnea Forsline said, that impact patients dealing with chronic illnesses and barriers to care the most.

“I’m here because we need this clinic,” Forsline told fellow picketers. “We don’t bail on our patients, not during a pandemic, not after the murder of George Floyd, not ever.

“We need this clinic.”

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

Resources for workers impacted by COVID-19 response

March 30, 2020 by

Efforts to halt the spread of COVID-19 are creating immediate economic hardship for many working families.  

Minnesota employers slashed payrolls after Gov. Tim Walz issued emergency orders temporarily shutting down restaurants, schools, movie theaters and other spaces where contagion was likely to occur.

As of last Friday, over 204,000 Minnesotans had applied for unemployment insurance benefits, flooding the state’s website with such a high volume of traffic that the agency today rolled out a new process limiting who can apply on certain days of the week based on Social Security number.

Unions, meanwhile, have been busy advocating for broad health and economic protections for workers during the pandemic response, while also scrambling to connect impacted members with support they need.

Twin Cities worker center CTUL, which advocates for people working in low-wage industries, has compiled a “Know Your Rights” list with information on access to safety equipment, earned sick time and other protections during the COVID-19 emergency.

The Saint Paul Labor Studies and Resource Center, the nonprofit arm of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, has compiled a evolving list of resources that may be available to help people make ends meet during the public-health crisis. 

Unemployment Insurance can provide immediate, emergency relief for many workers impacted by COVID-19, including people who have been laid off or who have seen their hours reduced. Gov. Tim Walz moved quickly to streamline UI benefits during the crisis.

People seeking health insurance during the COVID-19 outbreak can shop for coverage on the state’s health exchange, MNsure.org. 

Greater Twin Cities United Way is a longstanding partner in the AFL-CIO Community Services program, and the nonprofit is stepping up to help working families during the COVID-19 response in several ways. 

Evictions have been suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, but resources remain are available to working people concerned about keeping their homes. 

Financial assistance may be available through your county. Call to arrange an intake interview. 

Xcel Energy has announced it will not disconnect any household’s utilities during the pandemic. Learn more about the company’s response here. 

Some schools are giving students free meals while schools are closed due to the COVID-19 virus. 

The deadline for filing state and federal income taxes has been pushed back to July 15, 2020. 

Student loan borrowers may be able to suspend payments during the pandemic response. Click here for more information. 

The American Red Cross has a “critical need” for blood donors right now. To schedule an appointment call  651-291-6789, or click here to find a drive. 

Be on the lookout for scams! Here’s a list of tips from the Federal Trade Commission on how to avoid scams related to the coronavirus. 

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

Proposal to slash special ed stuns Cambridge-Isanti parents, staff

March 21, 2018 by

(SEIU Local 284 photo)

Paraprofessionals in the Cambridge-Isanti Schools are mounting a last-ditch fight for their jobs and the special education students they serve after the district unexpectedly revealed plans Friday to slash staffing by 25 percent.

“It was shocking,” Melanie Custer, in her fifth year as a special-ed paraprofessional in District 911, said of learning her job is on the chopping block. “It was basically a slap in the face to us, that we don’t mean anything.”

The proposal, outlined in the school board’s Thursday meeting agenda, would reduce special-ed staffing at seven schools next year by roughly 230 hours per day. That adds up to between 50 and 60 jobs, according to the union that represents Cambridge-Isanti paraprofessionals, SEIU Local 284.

Union members plan to speak against the proposed cuts at the board meeting tomorrow, and they anticipate strong backing from parents and community members. [View the Facebook event.]

“I’ve seen Facebook posts, and I’ve talked to a couple of (special-ed students’) parents,” Custer said. “It stresses them out, and it makes them worried about what kind of care their children are going to be getting.”

The district did not respond to a request for comment, but the agenda item cites “changes in enrollment and staffing needs” as reason for the cuts. A separate budget document estimates savings of $770,000 next year from an “adjustment to special education staffing.”

But Custer, who provides one-on-one support to students with special needs, warned that any savings would come at a steep price for students, their families and teachers in the district.

“Our students will suffer,” she said. “These are students with emotional and behavioral disorders, autistic students and students with learning disabilities. If you cut out the people who give them help, they’re going to get lost in the system.”

Already, special-ed paras and the teachers they work alongside feel shorthanded, Custer added. Any time a para calls in sick, “it generally results in the teacher having to do a lot more than anyone’s capable of doing,” she said.

Custer, whose husband works in the construction industry and struggles for hours in the winter months, would have to find another job if she’s laid off by the district. But she doubts she could find anything as rewarding as her work with students.

It’s a message she hopes will resonate with board members tomorrow.

“We give day in and day out helping these kids,” she said. “We’ll never get rich doing this job; we’re all there for the kids. It seems like the district doesn’t care about us, they don’t care about the kids.”

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

Staff cuts at embattled St. Paul charter school target union leaders

June 8, 2016 by

Community School of Excellence is a charter school focused on Hmong language and culture in St. Paul's North End.

Community School of Excellence is a charter school focused on Hmong language and culture in St. Paul’s North End.

A St. Paul charter school’s campaign to deny employees a voice on the job reached a new low yesterday, when administrators announced a wave of staff cuts eliminating several key areas of classroom programming and decimating the union’s bargaining team.

The number of teachers and support staff let go remains in flux, union leaders said this morning, but at least 22 teachers and all 30 aides at the Community School of Excellence have been told they will not return next school year. Among them are four members of the union’s five-person negotiating team.

“We had finally been making some progress at the negotiating table, with a number of (issues) tentatively agreed upon,” said Blythe Inners, president of the bargaining unit, whose job teaching English language learners was among the cuts. “But this move by the administration certainly appears aimed at slowing that down.”

Inners said teachers and staff members are holding out hope that administrators will reverse the cuts and do what’s necessary to save the school they helped to establish. Staff and supporters plan a show of solidarity at tonight’s school board meeting, scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m. at 170 Rose Ave. W. 

“The educators of CSE have been working for years to build a school that serves the special needs of its community,” Inners said. “More than three quarters of our students are English language learners and we’re proud of their progress. We’re willing to keep fighting to provide the education our students need to thrive.”

CSE, located in the North End, delivers a curriculum focused on Hmong language and culture. About 100 teachers and other staff members voted two years ago to join the Federation of Charter School Employees, an affiliate of Education Minnesota.

Since then, school administrators have dragged out negotiations of a first contract and refused to respect employees’ decision to unionize.

The school drew a stiff rebuke from the National Labor Relations Board last year for retaliating against union supporters with disciplinary actions, and in January the NLRB’s regional director dismissed an attempt by CSE to decertify the union, citing a “tainted” atmosphere.

The current wave of layoffs, Education Minnesota President Denise Specht said, is an indication that CSE hasn’t changed its ways.

“We’re shocked a school would decimate its curriculum to punish its employees for exercising their right to bargain collectively,” Specht said. “It’s appalling that a school for an immigrant community would deny its students access to dedicated teachers of English language learners, gifted and talented programs, educational support staff and media specialists.”

CSE’s troubles prompted its original authorizing organization, Concordia University, to drop the school. All Minnesota charter schools must have the backing of a legal authorizer, and if CSE does not find a new one by July 1, it will be forced to close.

Ironically, CSE’s best hope for opening at all next year may be with the Minnesota Guild, a charter-authorizing organization sponsored by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. The Guild’s governing board includes current and former local union presidents, who are unlikely to look kindly on layoffs targeting union activists.

“We urge the administrators of the Community School of Excellence to reconsider these foolish and vindictive staff cuts and save their school,” Specht said. “The more than 86,000 members of Education Minnesota are standing behind the educators of CSE today. We will help them save their school, which they helped build with dedication and caring. But if the school cannot be saved from the destructive decisions of its current leaders, we will be there to assist our colleagues in the next stages of their careers.”

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House Republicans play politics with unemployment extension for steelworkers

March 4, 2016 by

capitolSteelworkers pleaded with members of a House committee yesterday to pass a clean bill extending unemployment benefits to workers impacted by the Iron Range mining slowdown, but they couldn’t convince Republicans, who continued holding the relief package hostage for $271 million in tax cuts for businesses.

“Believe me, this is not an easy thing for us proud Iron Rangers to do,” Cliff Tobey, president of United Steelworkers Local 2660, told members of the House Job Growth and Energy Affordability Committee.

Tobey and another laid-off Steelworker traveled to St. Paul to testify in favor of extending benefits by 26 weeks for workers impacted by the crisis, which was triggered by an influx of cheap foreign steel that flooded the U.S. market and left ore prices at a 10-year low.

Most of the region’s 11 mining outfits have issued layoffs in the last 12 months, and by the time the legislative session starts Tuesday, about 1,200 Iron Range workers will have exhausted their unemployment benefits.

Toby urged committee members to pass the extension “without attaching unnecessary demands,” but Republicans couldn’t resist including a tax rebate for businesses that pay into the state’s unemployment insurance fund.

The bill passed the committee over objections from members of the DFL minority, who said the two issues – extending benefits for steelworkers and reforming the state’s unemployment insurance system – deserve separate consideration.

Rep. Jason Metsa, whose District 6B includes the heart of taconite mining country, choked up as he appealed to his Republican colleagues.

“These guys gotta go back to their families and their friends and tell them we didn’t get it done,” Metsa said of the Steelworkers who testified. “Let’s do the right thing and set these (issues) on two different tracks.”

The committee’s vote cast doubt on whether lawmakers will be able to pass an extension of benefits during the first week of session, a goal set by Gov. Mark Dayton and legislative leaders.

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development estimates mining companies have laid off 2,000 workers since March 1, 2015, and the slowdown has impacted an additional 4,700 Iron Range workers in mining-related jobs.

DEED has crafted a relief package to extend benefits for about 2,750 workers at a cost to the unemployment insurance trust fund of $29.7 million. The Republican tax break would siphon nearly 10 times that amount from the state’s unemployment trust fund, leaving its balance below federal guidelines, DEED Commissioner Katie Clark Sieben said.

“We know that a recession can deplete reserves quickly,” Sieben warned.

In 2009, for example, the unemployment fund paid out $1.7 billion – more than its current $1.57 billion balance. Faced with $1.4 billion in claims in 2010, the fund was forced to borrow from the federal government to meet its obligations, a debt that took almost three years to pay back.

“Putting the future solvency of our unemployment insurance trust fund at risk is unconscionable,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy told the committee.

But with each additional day Republicans play politics with the issue, more Iron Range families see their benefits disappear.

Tobey, a third-generation miner, said his local has 360 members “out on the street right now trying to feed their families, trying to pay their mortgages, trying to get by.” He questioned whether Republicans would insist on business tax cuts before providing flood relief or assistance in the wake of a bridge collapse.

“We have no more control over other countries flooding our market (with cheap steel) than the people of Minnesota have over falling bridges and flooding rivers,” he said.

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