Bargaining moves slowly for Macalester’s newly organized unions

September 25, 2026 by

Macalaster student workers held a union rally on campus in May 2025.

First, it was the undergraduates at Macalester who unionized with the United Auto Workers (UAW). Then the non-faculty staff followed suit, unionizing with the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE).

So why is Macalester dragging their feet on hammering out the needed contracts?

Undergraduate cafeteria workers get fed up

“It started with a group of cafeteria workers,” student Luca Schira explained. “That was the place with the most issues for student employees. It was unsafe, and students weren’t trained on most things. And then the demand (for unionization) quickly spread to all the student workers.”

After connecting with students from as far as Oregon and as close as the U of M graduate students, the Macalester students decided to unionize with the United Auto Workers (UAW). They formed Macalester Undergraduate Workers Union (MUWU), the first union of undergraduate workers in Minnesota.

“UAW had the reputation for being a progressive, fighting union, and they had a high-profile strike at the time,” student Xavier Honer said. “Also, we looked at Grinnell as a model: A small liberal arts college that also started as cafeteria workers and branched out.”

The hard part

The successful vote to unionize the student workers took place Feb. 25 and 26. After the initial relief and celebration came the hard part: Negotiating a contract.

Said Honer: “It started slowly, and the ICE invasion forced us to cancel one or two of our meetings. The bargaining sessions were scheduled for every other week. Beyond scheduling, there is a lot of resistance. We joke that their favorite phrase is ‘the employer is not interested in hearing this proposal,’ and they would only put into writing that they would follow the current law, basically doing the bare minimum already required of them.”

In the meantime, MAPE at Mac was born, representing non-faculty, non-supervisory staff. They also began negotiating with the college administration over benefit and wage disputes.

How a storied liberal arts college responds

The ball was in Macalester’s court. This is Macalester, the storied liberal arts college, whose mission reads: “Macalester is committed to being a preeminent liberal arts college with an educational program known for its high standards for scholarship and its special emphasis on internationalism, multiculturalism, and service to society.”

Macalester’s response? They hired Felhaber Larson, which has a reputation for advising corporate clients on how to fight unionization. They have provided counsel with companies like Starbucks, for example, and are often viewed as legal defenders of anti-union policies.

Next steps

Now that summer is over, there is a break in the action as school gets rolling into the fall semester. The negotiations are expected to begin again in earnest. What will happen next?

“We need people in the community aware of what’s going on and how slow Macalester is making the bargaining process,” Honer said. “Joining our mailing list to keep up with our events and bargaining updates is the best place to start.

“We always appreciate anybody showing up to our events whether they’re students, alumni, or just community members wanting to support us.”

Show your solidarity

Find links to support student workers and their union at region4.uaw.org/local5105.

– Joel Haskard, Special to The Union Advocate

Filed Under: Organizing Tagged With: , , ,

Feds spied on local unions during Operation Metro Surge

August 27, 2026 by

Communications Workers (CWA) Local 7250 President Kieran Knutson speaks during a demonstration outside Target’s corporate offices in Minneapolis. Federal agents issued administrative summons to obtain information on the union’s recent political spending.

Minnesota’s largest labor federation accused the Trump administration of “bringing back McCarthyism” after court filings exposed wide-reaching federal surveillance of local unions during the deadly and chaotic immigration dragnet last winter.

While purportedly investigating a criminal conspiracy to impede Operation Metro Surge, Department of Homeland Security agents infiltrated a meeting at the United Labor Center in Minneapolis, demanded one local union’s transaction log from U.S. Bank and dug into the political spending of another.

DHS investigators dubbed the spying campaign “Operation Puppet Master.”

Undercover agents, posing as protesters, also surveilled meetings at churches, parks, libraries and schools, “at times working to entice people into discussing or committing crimes,” according to court documents filed Aug. 13 by an attorney for one of 15 Minnesota protesters facing federal charges stemming from Metro Surge protests.

The filings also unearthed a diagram produced by DHS to show 18 organizations allegedly leading “The Conspiracy.” They include the Minnesota AFL-CIO, the Service Employees, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE).

Attorney Kevin Riach, who filed the motion, said DHS investigators “conjured up a vast and irrational conspiracy” without any criminal predicate.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham and other labor leaders called it an attempt to criminalize dissent.

“The Minnesota AFL-CIO and several of our affiliated unions are being targeted simply because our state’s labor movement stood in solidarity with our immigrant union members and neighbors when our state was under siege this past winter,” Burnham said.

“Minnesotans and most people across our country have rejected this administration’s attempts to demonize immigrants. They are now bringing back McCarthyism to paint unions and organizations that advocate for workers and families as threats to the nation.”

MAPE member Alec Stewart, one of 15 ICE protesters facing charges, says DHS surveilled unions “because our community connections and solidarity were so effective.”

The motion for discovery exposing the surveillance measures used here last winter seeks to compel DHS to provide a fuller picture of how its agents spied on Minnesota unions, nonprofits and activists.

Riach filed the motion earlier this month on behalf of Isaac Sant, one of 15 Minnesotans, including some union members, charged in June with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer as part of a coordinated Justice Department operation. Sant also faces interstate stalking charges for allegedly following an ICE vehicle to Hudson, Wis.

Unions and civil rights groups roundly condemned the charges.

In a public statement, 50 organizations accused the Trump administration of weaponizing the Justice Department to punish a few activists for a historic campaign of popular resistance to Metro Surge.

The statement, signed by the Minnesota AFL-CIO, Education Minnesota, the Minnesota Nurses Association and 13 other union groups, decries that the charges come from “the very same (agency) that refuses to investigate or press charges in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.”

The 15 protesters charged were among thousands of Minnesotans who rose up to defend their neighbors – tracking ICE agents, alerting communities to their presence, documenting their actions and demonstrating in the streets.

Organized labor lent critical support to those efforts – and federal agents clearly took notice, MAPE member Alec Stewart, one of the activists facing charges, said.

Stewart, a forestry worker for the State of Minnesota, joined a press conference last month outside Target headquarters in downtown Minneapolis, where labor, faith and immigrant organizations called on Minnesota’s large companies to publicly reject political surveillance and retaliation.

“The revelation of Operation Puppet Master exposes that while the government was targeting immigrant communities, tearing families apart, abducting children and murdering folks in the street, they were also attempting to disrupt and dismantle one of the facets of Minnesota that makes us so unique,” Stewart said. “That is our strong and unified labor movement.

“They were doing this simply because our connections and our community solidarity were so effective.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

For Macalester staff, union drive gained urgency after Nov. 5

July 24, 2025 by

Macalester staff members celebrate their successful organizing drive. (MAPE photo)

Macalester College staff members voted to unionize this summer in an organizing drive that gained urgency after the 2024 presidential election.

The bargaining unit brings together over 200 non-faculty, non-supervisory employees – both full- and part-time – at the liberal-arts college in St. Paul. They voted to join the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) by a 99-84 margin.

Talk among co-workers about forming a union shifted to serious organizing last November, organizers said, after President Donald Trump’s victory.

Trump’s campaign rhetoric was hostile toward higher education, and since taking office his administration has sought to bully colleges and universities with executive orders, legal threats and funding clawbacks.

For many non-faculty workers at Macalester, their jobs suddenly felt a lot less secure on Nov. 6.

“We sort of figured we had to act now or never,” Jeremy Meckler, a self-described “staffulty” member in the school’s Media and Cultural Studies department, said.

“Faculty typically have some type of contract protection, whether a yearly contract for contingent faculty or tenure,” Meckler added. “But if financial cuts come to an institution of higher education, often the easiest people to pick off are the staff who are at-will employees.”

With support from MAPE, Macalester workers began circulating union cards in December. By May, they had enough support to request voluntary recognition from the school, but administrators declined, prompting workers to petition the National Labor Relations Board for an election.

Workers voted June 10, and the NLRB counted ballots June 23 at the agency’s offices in Minneapolis.

Meckler, a Macalester alum who lives in Minneapolis, was among several union supporters on hand to observe the count. He said their emotions ran the gamut, from “shock and disbelief and excitement” to “relief that we’d really done it.”

“Mostly, I’m just really excited that we won – that a majority of staff, even despite this election happening in the summer when a lot of people weren’t around, showed up to say that they wanted to be in a union and that we’re stronger and safer together,” he added. “It makes me feel good about the place I work.

“As an alum, I think the values of the institution really are in line with the union. It’s a progressive college that teaches the collective value of working together to make the world a better place, and I think that’s what we’re trying to do with our union.”

The new bargaining unit will survey membership and begin planning for first-contract negotiations when the school year begins in the fall.

Macalester’s student workers – over 1,100 strong – voted to unionize earlier this year after a two-year campaign.

Predominantly a public-sector union, MAPE represents over 1,000 staff in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system.

This article appeared in The Union Advocate’s August 2025 issue.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Community, Organizing Tagged With: , , ,

Unions brace for impact of Medicaid cuts, vow accountability

July 22, 2025 by

Quentin Ocama, a kindergarten teacher at Maxfield Elementary and member of the St. Paul Federation of Educators, spoke during the “Stop the Billionaire Giveaway” bus tour stop.

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans slashed funding for health care, nutrition programs and public schools, repealed tax incentives that create union construction jobs and authorized adding $3.5 trillion to the national debt – all to pay for a tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits corporations and the wealthy.

The tax and spending legislation, signed by the president July 4, did not garner a single Democratic vote, as unions and other progressive groups slammed the bill – arguably the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in U.S. history – as it advanced through the House and Senate.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, head of the nation’s largest labor federation, vowed to continue holding supporters accountable as the so-called big, beautiful bill’s ugly consequences become clearer.

“The AFL-CIO promises to put thousands of people to work canvassing colleagues, friends and families, reminding all, every day, of the Trump-GOP law’s harms,” Shuler said. “Campaigners will beat the drum from now through November 2026, and beyond.”

Union members in the Twin Cities wasted little time in doing just that. Several local unions rallied July 2 in a Minneapolis park, site of a nationwide “Stop the Billionaire Giveaway” bus tour stop.

The tour, sponsored by Fair Share America, aimed to raise awareness of the tax bill and its impact on families, communities and the economy. Health care workers, state employees, public educators and local lawmakers took turns describing the importance of federal funding to their communities and constituents.

“Without Medicaid, I would not be able to survive,” said Ace Taylor, a home care worker whose job caring for her disabled aunt is funded through Medicaid.

Claudia Hochstein, a state employee and member of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, said Medicaid’s burdensome new eligibility requirements serve a “dual goal” of frustrating people into giving up on their benefits – and giving political opponents of Medicaid fodder “to complain about government red tape.”

“They’re trying to break our public systems so they can make money off of privatizing them,” she added.

Accountability was on every speaker’s mind.

Taylor, a member of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, traveled with other Medicaid advocates to Washington D.C. in June to urge representatives not to cut the program. Taylor recalled being told by one Republican congressperson, “You’ll be alright.”

“I guess we’ll just have to be louder,” she said.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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

Member support, stories turned tide for state workers in tough round of talks

July 22, 2025 by

Members of AFSCME Council 5’s contract action team support the bargaining committee before a session with the state.

Negotiators for the State of Minnesota and unions representing nearly 40,000 state workers reached tentative agreements June 27 on new contracts that will raise wages, preserve longevity pay hikes and, in a big win for union members, make no changes to their health insurance.

Union members who served on the bargaining team for AFSCME Council 5, which represents about 18,000 state workers, said the state’s demands from the outset of talks included an overhaul of health benefits that would have increased workers’ share of the costs.

“The plan shifts they wanted to do would have shifted thousands of dollars onto our members,” Council 5’s lead negotiator, Joel Hoffman, said. “It would have been terrible.”

With the state bracing for federal funding cuts and a projected budget shortfall in the next biennium, unions anticipated a difficult round of contract negotiations. But even experienced negotiators like Hoffman, a lab assistant at Moorhead State who completed a fifth stint on the bargaining team, were taken aback by the severity of the employer’s demands.

In addition to the health plan changes, state negotiators balked at wage increases and wanted to pause workers’ step increases, too. Steps are like longevity bonuses, giving workers a pay bump on the anniversary of their hiring date until they reach the top of the pay scale.

“We’ve had challenging cycles before, but not like this,” Hoffman said. “All of it together, it was just unacceptable, untenable. We couldn’t deal with it.”

It took 215 hours at the bargaining table, but union members succeeded in moving the state off its demands for takebacks, preserving their steps and their health insurance – and winning raises of 1.5% this year and 1.75% in 2026.

Council 5 said in a statement that every worker in the bargaining unit will see a net gain on their paycheck, and the bargaining team voted unanimously to recommend members vote to ratify the deal in balloting this month.

AFSCME, MAPE team up

Union negotiators cited two factors as key to securing a contract they could recommend: a visible, vocal pool of support from rank-and-file members and unshakable solidarity with the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE), which reached a tentative with the state covering over 18,000 workers on the same day as AFSCME.

“They were in the same position as us, and we decided we were going to stick together and have solidarity between the two unions,” Hoffman said. “If they tried to divide us, we weren’t going to have it. We would meet periodically to make sure we’re on the same team, and we had rallies together.”

The unity was especially important in negotiations over health benefits, which bring together over 10 bargaining units at the same table with the state.

When those talks bogged down, union negotiators tapped their “Contract Action Team,” rank-and-file members who had signed up earlier in the year to support their bargaining team. They joined union rallies and showed up at negotiations to send a message to the state – and the Walz administration – that workers were watching the talks.

Jes Shimek, an assistant art studio manager at Anoka-Ramsey Community College in Coon Rapids, credited the team with being intentional about member outreach from the start of the contract campaign.

“They were organizing rallies and a gauntlet during push week and all kinds of outreach – phone banking, workplace actions – throughout this process,” Shimek said. “We communicated more with our members. They could see that they needed to help us fight to not go backwards.”

Getting personal

The turning point in bargaining, Local 2829 President Curtis Seelen said, was when Shimek and two other state employees offered up personal stories that drove home the importance of keeping health insurance affordable.

“Jes brought in her medical supplies and showed just how draconian the state’s health insurance would be to the individuals who work every day to make Minnesota a great place to live,” Seelen said. “I think it was putting a face to all the state workers that keep Minnesota functioning that really helped us turn the tide and prompt the state to drop their more egregious proposals.”

“Two other women, Jess Langhorst and Kate Ella, told their stories too,” Shimek, a member of AFSCME Local 4001, said. “The state’s team was always very cordial to us throughout the process, but this was the first time that we saw emotion from them – a crack in that exterior.

“Right after we shared our stories, everybody walked out of the room to this gauntlet of AFSCME and MAPE members standing silently with their signs, and that was the turning point. We started back the next morning and worked all the way through that night until we reached a tentative agreement at 6:10 in the morning.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Community, Organizing, 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: , , , , , ,

State workers fired up over Walz’s telework order as contract negotiations begin

April 25, 2025 by

Members of AFSCME Council 5 lined the sidewalk outside the St. Paul office where their bargaining team held its first negotiations session with the State of Minnesota.

State employees say Gov. Tim Walz’s new return-to-work order, handed down abruptly in March and set to take effect June 1, has galvanized union members just in time for contract negotiations this spring.

Talks covering nearly 40,000 members of two unions, AFSCME Council 5 and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, got underway earlier this month. Both unions, which are bargaining at separate tables with Walz’s team at Minnesota Management and Budget for now, held early-morning actions on their first day of negotiations in St. Paul.

Workers lined the sidewalk outside the office building to welcome their bargaining teams – and put the state on notice that they are paying attention.

The state’s telework policy was top of mind for many workers at the events. Revenue examiner Nico Montas, 23, said Walz’s announcement, delivered without notice to or consultation with MAPE or AFSCME, was a “shocking” call to action.

Although he was covered by AFSCME Local 2829’s bargaining unit, Montas wasn’t even paying dues before the governor announced changes to the telework policy. Within a month, he had signed up to become a union steward, completed the training and organized more than a dozen of his colleagues to join Local 2829, too.

That’s momentum, Local 2829 Vice President Spencer Abbe said.

“We’ve got a bunch of people out here who have never been involved before,” Abbe said at the kickoff event, adding that many state employees consider the governor to be an ally at a time when public-sector workers are facing unprecedented attacks.

“It wasn’t a slap in the face, it was a stab in the back,” Abbe said. “We’re already feeling attacked on all sides, and to have that come from (Walz) felt like a sneak attack. It was really disappointing.”

Union negotiators pledged to hold the governor’s team accountable for its previous commitments to public services. That means respecting and compensating the workers who deliver them.

Members of AFSCME Council 5 formed a “gauntlet” to welcome their negotiators – and the employer’s – to the first day of contract talks covering about 18,000 workers.

“We are fighting for fair wages, fair benefits, fair insurance – and we will stand for nothing less,” Council 5 Executive Director Bart Anderson said.

But while unions came to the table with proposals to address workers’ concerns, MAPE President Megan Dayton said, MMB’s proposals sought to strip them of their union rights and protections.

“MMB’s proposals take aim at the foundations of workplace stability, weaken union representation, undermine due process and, most cruelly, strip away rights that protect employees during layoff,” Dayton said. “At a time when we are seeing hundreds of layoffs and we know more are coming, the employer chose to bring proposals that would accelerate harm.”

At the AFSCME rally, Montas said he is holding out hope that the state’s posture changes as bargaining plays out.

“If we can’t get any sort of wiggle room on being able to work from home, I’m hopeful that we can get better pay, some sort of reimbursement for travel time or parking,” Montas said. “You would expect that would be a minimum, but, unfortunately, it seems like that may be a reason they want people to go back – so they can extract as much money from us as possible.”

If that’s the case, Abbe, who works in public records, fears that many state workers – concerned about parking costs, accommodations for people with health conditions and losing the flexibility to care for their families – will abandon public service.

“We show up every day to serve people because we believe in what we do,” Abbe said. “We aren’t out here to get rich.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Essential workers call bonus pay holdup ‘a slap in the face’

December 6, 2021 by

At a rally in downtown Minneapolis, advocates call on legislators to stop playing politics with a fund created to compensate essential workers.

What do nurses, janitors, educators and other essential workers want from state lawmakers this holiday season? They spelled it out last week during a rally and march through downtown Minneapolis.

“Quit playing politics and get the job done,” Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner said, standing alongside a chain of essential workers holding large, block letters spelling out “ESSENTIAL PAY.”

In July, Minnesota lawmakers set aside $250 million in state funds to compensate essential workers for keeping the state running during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But workers have yet to receive a penny from that fund, and it appears unlikely they will before the 2022 legislative session convenes Jan. 31.

That’s because legislators on a bipartisan working group failed to reach agreement on who should be eligible for payments.

Republicans refused to budge from their position that a smaller pool of workers – including health care workers, long-term-care staff and first responders – should be compensated, while DFLers insisted on including grocery clerks, cleaning workers and child care providers like Tamara Greene, who directed her comments at the rally to GOP legislators.

“Tell us your justification for excluding us from this bill,” said Greene, director of All Ages & Faces Academy in St. Paul. “We want to know. We find it an insult and an absolute slap in the face.”

DFLers on the committee accused Republicans of rejecting their compromise proposal, which would have cast a wider net while compensating some workers more than others.

Turner, a nurse in the North Memorial hospital intensive care unit, said the GOP wouldn’t succeed in its attempt to divide essential workers.

“That’s not going to fly,” she said. “It never has, and it never will.

“The reason is because I have been at the bedside, along with our other nurses. People from security and cleaning and teaching and the food industry and every other industry represented here – we have been at their deathbeds. We have seen the number of essential workers that have died.”

Lawmakers could supplement the fund with additional dollars, but it would require Gov. Tim Walz to call a special session, giving Republican Senators an opportunity to act on threats from some in the caucus to remove Department of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm, an architect of the state’s pandemic response.

As the political fight drags on, workers like Angie Halseth, a caseworker at Lino Lakes Correctional Facility, are left wondering if the compensation they were promised will ever come. A member of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, Halseth described the additional duties tacked onto her workload during the pandemic, like administering temperature checks to inmates in quarantine.

“But like so many, extra work is just the start of the hardships,” she added. “We’ve all worried that our jobs will make us or our families sick. I’ve had several colleagues become ill from COVID-19 outbreaks at our facilities, including one who gave COVID to their pregnant wife and elderly in-laws.”

Activists were also keen to point out that CEOs in Minnesota have taken exorbitant bonuses and pay raises during the pandemic, while workers in their companies’ warehouses, on their shop floors and elsewhere on the front lines see their “hero pay” held up at the Capitol.

The event began on the sidewalk outside the Ameriprise Financial building, where workers hoisted a large photo of CEO James Caracchiolo with the tagline, “This guy got a 283% raise last year!”

“We are a state that is lucky to have more resources available,” Halseth said. “I am asking the state to spend those resources helping our frontline workers try to be whole again.”

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

Labor values are lived, not learned for union members on the 2020 ballot

October 28, 2020 by

Members of labor unions make the best labor-endorsed candidates. Fortunately for working families, several union members are running for office this year with the Labor 2020 endorsement.

“We know that when union members hold public office, they champion our values and work hard to shift the balance of power for working people,” said Bill McCarthy, president of the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

A power shift is exactly what Josiah Hill, an English teacher in the Stillwater school system, has in mind with his campaign to represent Senate District 39, which straddles the St. Croix River in Washington County.

Republicans hold a narrow, three-seat majority in the Senate, and they have used it to thwart progress on “environmental protection, public-school funding and expanding access to affordable health care coverage,” Hill said. Unseating his incumbent opponent would be a step toward a labor majority in the chamber.

Hill has served six terms as president of his union, the St. Croix Education Association. It’s an experience he considers the “perfect training exercise” for the Legislature because it involved reaching compromise, not scoring political points.

“I’m solutions focused,” Hill said. “I’m not interested in short-term wins. The work I’ve had to engage in makes it necessary to listen deeply to all parties and to find solutions that allow us to move forward with the resources available.”

Like Hill, Erin Preese is a union educator vying to unseat an incumbent. Preese’s work teaching English-language learners in the Lakeville schools has informed the type of legislator she hopes to be for the residents of House District 58A.

In fact, it’s why she’s running in the first place. Two years ago, as a member of the Lakeville Education Association’s committee on government relations, Preese paid a visit to her House representative – now her opponent – to advocate for fair funding of public schools.

“It was frustrating,” Preese remembered. “Our current representative, he has two daughters in private school, and sometimes it’s hard to understand life experiences that are not your own.”

Preese said she plans to continue teaching in Lakeville if she wins Nov. 3, with a leave of absence during the legislative session.

“The decisions made at the Capitol have real effects on people here at our school, on their everyday lives,” she said. “Working will help me stay grounded. I think maybe if you’re at the Capitol too much you can get caught up in the politics.”

Jim Swenson makes a point of keeping politics out of the City of North Branch’s business. A member of Local 110 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Swenson is seeking reelection this fall to a second two-year term as the Chisago County community’s mayor.

North Branch is growing, and Swenson’s focus has been on making that growth sustainable for everyone. Building permits are up over 250% this year, and the city has seen 96 new homes built already in 2020. A 48-unit, income-based housing development has opened, and last year the city added a 20-unit apartment complex for people struggling with mental-health issues and homelessness.

In August, Gov. Tim Walz visited North Branch to present the city with a “Telecommuter Forward!” award for its efforts to expand broadband internet access citywide – something of critical importance to workers during the pandemic. During the ceremony, Swenson said, he pulled Walz aside and touted the nonpartisan, community effort that led to North Branch’s success.

“This is the way government needs to work, with two people from totally separate parties working together,” Swenson told Walz. “Can you believe that? It’s the way government should work – for the people.”

Bringing people together is, of course, what unions do. So it should come as no surprise Swenson and other candidates with union backgrounds are good at it. As a member of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) for the last six years, House District 58B candidate Sara Wolf has seen firsthand the power of collective voice.

“It’s telling that when the topic of health insurance comes up and someone says, ‘I’m union,’ everybody knows that it means they have good insurance!” Wolf laughed.

Kaela Berg, a flight attendant seeking office in House District 56B, remembered how she felt upon joining her union, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, 17 years ago. It was “a spark that was ignited that became a fire in my belly for fighting for working families,” she said.

Since signing that union card, Berg has taken an active role in local movements for economic and environmental justice, serving a stint as director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition. Now she’s ready to go to work in the Legislature, fighting to advance the priorities she and all labor-endorsed candidates share, like accessible health care, fully funded schools and economic opportunity for everyone.

“They aren’t just legislative talking points to me,” Berg said. “They are my lived experience. I’m passionate about a Minnesota that works for working families.”

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

Working people plan big push for paid family leave next year

December 17, 2018 by

Miguel Lindgren, a state employee and member of MAPE, describe how valuable paid family leave – which state employees won in contract negotiations two years ago – in the process of adopting a child from Colombia last September.

Supporters of paid family and medical leave launched a lobbying push at the Capitol today, calling on state lawmakers to pass legislation next year expanding the benefit to all Minnesota workers.

“It’s simple, it’s popular and it’s the right thing to do,” Pastor Corinne Freedman Ellis of Macalester Plymouth United Church in St. Paul said during a press conference at the Capitol, surrounded by fellow clergy, working people, retirees and business owners.

Ellis is a leader in the faith-based advocacy group ISAIAH, one of 25 local organizations leading the Minnesotans for Paid Family Leave campaign. Eight unions are on board, and the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, is a campaign co-chair.

The groups propose creating a statewide insurance pool that would cover the cost of replacement wages for workers who take time off for the birth or adoption of a child, or to be with an ailing family member. Workers would be eligible for up to 12 weeks of leave, with benefits ranging from 55 to 80 percent of their typical wages.

To build up the insurance pool, employees and employers would make mandatory contributions, similar to payroll deductions for health insurance or workers’ compensation. The median worker would pay an estimated $1.75 per week into the fund.

Similar policies are on the books in eight states, and two powerful lawmakers in Minnesota – Lt. Gov.-elect Peggy Flanagan and Rep. Melissa Hortman, the next Speaker of the House – have expressed support for making Minnesota the ninth.

The policy enjoys support among voters, too. A recent Pew poll found 84 percent of Americans back paid family and medical leave, but only 14 percent of U.S. employees have access to the benefit.

Jason Rathe, who owns a landscaping business in Minneapolis with over 20 employees, called the coalition’s proposal a win-win for working people and business owners.

“I really believe paid family leave is important to businesses because it creates a level playing field,” Rathe said. “It allows our employees and ourselves to do the things that are important.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , , , ,
Next Page»