Mobile billboard shines light on price of Trump’s deportation agenda

October 26, 2026 by 1 Comment

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham talks about a mobile billboard the labor federation is sending into communities across the state.

The cost of unleaded isn’t the only painfully high price confronting drivers in St. Paul – at least not today. That’s because the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s mobile billboard is crisscrossing the capital city, highlighting the local cost of President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

The public-awareness campaign, which arrives in St. Paul after tours through the Rochester and Mankato areas earlier this month, takes aim at $170 billion in funding for immigration enforcement in Trump’s signature tax and spending legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) of 2025.

The funding, which runs through September 2029, will build up two agencies, ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), that were heavily involved in Operation Metro Surge here last winter.

That means Minnesota is on the hook for about $4.4 billion, or $2,050 per taxpayer, to expand the campaign that brought violence and chaos to our communities.

“That’s money people could use in their pockets,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said. “Affordability is such an issue right now. People are spending more on gas, on healthcare. They are making choices about whether to get groceries or go to the doctor.”

The Minnesota AFL-CIO’s mobile billboard spotlights a new online calculator, developed by the Economic Policy Institute, to isolate the cost of mass deportations on the local level.

The calculator also shows what those funds could have meant for public education and essential services that keep people fed, healthy and safe. The roughly $385 million paid by Ramsey County taxpayers, for example, could have been used to hire 1,300 public school teachers or to keep 11,261 people on Medicaid through the rest of Trump’s term.

Burnham said the state’s largest labor federation doesn’t want voters to forget how Trump and Republicans cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, Obamacare subsidies, and food assistance in their “Big Beautiful Bill,” while handing tax breaks to large corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

“We want to have candidates who are supporting children, working people and communities,” she said. “If we continue to lose this money (to mass deportations), people are going to keep coming up short every day.”

The mass deportation calculator adds to a growing body of research about the high cost of Trump’s immigration policies and, specifically, Operation Metro Surge.

The three-month occupation cost Minnesota an estimated 32,000 jobs, according to a report released by the Minnesota Budget Project earlier this month, and reduced economic activity, especially in the hospitality sector. Meanwhile, security costs for local communities increased by an estimated $700 million in the metro area.

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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

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MSP Airport unions lead march on ICE terminal as labor shows solidarity with Somali community

December 3, 2025 by

Local 17 organizer Geof Paquette speaks to the crowd of activists outside Signature’s terminal at MSP.

One day after the Trump administration announced it would target the local Somali community with immigration raids, two airport unions led a march on the company that operates Minneapolis-St. Paul International’s charter terminal, where local detainees are being flown in shackles to deportation hubs.

More than 200 activists from labor, community and faith groups gathered Dec. 3 at the Terminal 2 light-rail stop and marched together to the Signature Aviation terminal. There they rallied with speeches and chants, and later tied red ribbons of remembrance to the iron fence that separates the terminal from the public road.

Speakers called on local officials, including the Metropolitan Airports Commission, to find ways to stop the deportation flights.

“These deportations create terror in our neighborhoods and are ripping families apart,” said Geof Paquette, an organizer with UNITE HERE Local 17 who works with immigrant workers at MSP’s bars and restaurants. “They do nothing but sow fear and anxiety in our community. We’ve got to demand better.”

Another union speaker, retired airport janitor and Service Employees (SEIU) Local 26 member George Mullin, offered a firsthand account of the squalid, dehumanizing conditions detainees face in the privately owned holding centers to which they are flown from Signature’s terminal.

George Mullin, a retired SEIU member, traveled to deportation hubs in Louisiana earlier this year.

Mullin joined a delegation, sponsored by SEIU, that traveled to remote detention hubs in Louisiana earlier this year. Those sprawling private prisons, like Signature Aviation and the charter airlines that use its terminals to traffic ICE detainees, are “making money off of cruelty,” Mullin said.

“I’m here today because one of the bright spots of our trip to Louisiana was seeing detained women reacting to us for showing up where no one comes,” he said. “They waved like crazy the whole time.

We got to show them that they are not alone. We see them, and we are with them. Today we’re doing the same thing. To our neighbors who are being put on these planes in chains, likely with no idea where they are going, we see you.”

Labor’s leading role in the march on Signature Aviation illustrates how unions here – and across the U.S. – are showing solidarity with immigrant communities under attack, while also working in coalition to defend people’s rights and hold the Trump administration accountable.

Demonstrators tie ribbons to the iron gate outside the Signature terminal.

Local SEIU unions were among those that reacted swiftly after President Trump began spewing hateful rhetoric at Somali immigrants. In a Cabinet meeting, Trump called them “garbage” and said they “contribute nothing” – an insult belied by work local SEIU members do as school employees, health care workers and property-service workers.

“We could not be prouder or luckier to have many Somali Minnesotans as coworkers and courageous leaders in our struggle to end poverty wages for everyone,” Minnesota’s SEIU locals said in a statement. “As usual, Trump is saying things that aren’t true and claiming powers he doesn’t have. We will make sure all our members have the tools they need to protect their rights.”

To that end, the state’s labor movement has been helping stage training sessions in nonviolent, direct action, supporting immigrant-rights and progressive groups as they brace for an increased federal presence in the Twin Cities. The first session in November drew an overflow crowd, prompting the groups to schedule another for Dec. 7.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said that solidarity demands labor mobilize to meet the moment.

“Union members refuse to let anyone, even the President of the United States, divide us based on what we look like, where we were born, or how we pray,” she said. “President Trump and his cronies are hoping that working people will forget that immigrants aren’t standing between us and a better life – billionaires are. We refuse to let them break our solidarity.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Union members at No Kings: ‘We have to show solidarity’

October 20, 2025 by

Union members gather outside the United Labor Centre in Minneapolis before walking together to “No Kings.”

At “No Kings” demonstrations across the state Saturday, Minnesotans turned their individual anger over the alarming, anti-democratic trajectory of President Donald Trump’s second term into a collective display of strength, unity and hope.

Many labor unions endorsed “No Kings” events both here and across all 50 states.

The Minnesota AFL-CIO, the state’s largest labor federation, teamed with three other groups to organize the peaceful march in Minneapolis that saw thousands clog downtown streets for several blocks Saturday afternoon.

Union members who joined the march cited a wide range of motivating factors. But they agreed that “No Kings” was an opportunity to leverage the power of solidarity against Trump’s far-reaching attacks – on federal workers and their unions, on democracy and the rule of law, on immigrants, on public services, on the LGBTQ+ community and more.

“I could keep going and going,” Education Minnesota Local 2209 member Beth Kowski laughed after beginning to list the concerns that inspired her to march Saturday.

Beth Kowski (L) and Education Minnesota retiree Marsh Jarvela.

Kowski, and educator in Intermediate District 287, joined a pre-march meetup for union members at the United Labor Centre in Minneapolis. After a brief rally, union members walked to “No Kings” together, forming a labor contingent of about 200.

“Unions have a collective power and voice that is crucial at this juncture,” Kowski said. “We have to be together and be firm in our conviction. Silence is complicity.”

AFSCME Local 2864 President Amanda Gustafson, who marched with fellow Hennepin County employees, agreed.

“We have to show solidarity with people who are seeing everything fall apart right now,” Gustafson said. “We see all of the communities that are being attacked, and many of us (in unions) are people who are members of those communities as well.”

That includes union members in the federal workforce. Trump has been attacking their jobs, their union rights and the services they deliver since January.

For Miranda Kiwelu, a program support assistant at the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis, seeing so many people reject Trump’s agenda at “No Kings” felt “amazing.”

“We definitely have support, but I don’t know that federal employees feel that way now because it’s been nonstop attacks left and right,” said Kiwelu, a member of American Federation of Government Employees Local 1969 who serves as a young-worker coordinator for AFGE District 8.

Union members cross the Third Street bridge together on their way to “No Kings” in Minneapolis.

“No Kings” took place on the 18th day of a government shutdown, which the Trump administration has used as an excuse to continue its attempts – illegally, according to AFGE and several courts – to slash federal payrolls, redirect spending authorized by Congress and inflict pain on Kiwelu and other federal employees.

“By the time this is done, we’re going to have 1.3 million federal employees out of a job or impacted,” she said.

But in extending the shutdown, Trump and Republicans who control Congress are also refusing to address steep cuts to Medicaid and to subsidies that keep health coverage affordable on public exchanges like MNsure.

Health care workers like SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa member Viktor Solberg said they were marching at “No Kings” for themselves and the people who rely on them for care.

“It’s not just our jobs, it’s the ability of our clients to live their lives,” said Solberg, who provides in-home care funded by Medicaid.

“Health care is being cut by billions, and we can’t stand for that,” pharmacy tech Kyle Johnson, also an SEIU member, added. “We’re standing up for our profession and the community at large.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Union members sound off on impacts of DOGE cuts to federal workforce

April 10, 2025 by

USDA worker Skye Carpenter sounds the alarm on the Trump administration’s reckless layoffs and what they will mean for Minnesota farmers, the nation’s agricultural industry and the integrity of its food supply.

While members of Congress went on recess the week of March 17, Minnesota’s labor movement went to work.

Union members showed up at Republican congressional offices across the state to support federal workers and services in the crosshairs of unelected billionaire and Trump megadonor Elon Musk’s “DOGE” team.

The message to lawmakers, Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said, is that federal workers are real people, not lines on a balance sheet.

The statewide labor federation worked with the American Federation of Government Employees to coordinate actions at offices of all four Republican members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation during the recess week.

[More town hall meetings with lawmakers are scheduled for the upcoming congressional recess. Click here to RSVP.]

Republicans so far have shown little interest in oversight of Musk, and they showed little interest, too, in hearing from federal workers impacted by the chaos that DOGE has sewn across federal agencies. While some union members at the actions were able to meet with lawmakers’ staff, Burnham said, others were “shown the door.”

During the same week, AFGE members aired their concerns at a Capitol press conference in St. Paul, warning that the damage DOGE has done in the first two months of Trump’s second term could take years to fix.

Skye Carpenter, an employee in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and member of AFGE Local 3748, struggled to suppress her anger as she described the work done by employees laid off from her office, Agricultural Research Services.

Those fired include leaders, scientists and support staff who work “hand in hand with farmers,” she said, to implement scientific research into agricultural practices. She called the cuts “an attack on every farmer, every consumer and every community that depends on research we conduct.”

“The farmers who rely on our cutting-edge research to combat drought, disease and pests are left without answers,” Carpenter said. “The scientists working to protect against livestock illnesses that could devastate our agricultural economy are silenced. The taxpayers funding this research are robbed of the progress and innovation they were promised.”

Jacob Romans, a registered nurse at the VA Hospital in Minneapolis and president of AFGE Local 3669, said DOGE layoffs at Veterans Affairs have nothing to do with efficiency.

“Let me be very clear,” Romans said. “DOGE is run by very unserious people making very serious decisions.”

Earlier in the month, a leaked memo showed the Trump administration planned to slash the VA’s staffing to 2019 levels. That would mean cutting nearly 80,000 jobs, or 20% of the department’s staff. Romans estimated the local VA would lose 1,300 workers.

“We were already short staffed before 2019,” he said. “This would devastate our workforce… I have nurses right now who are working 16-hour days. We’re being mandated to because we don’t have the staff.

“It is imperative that Congress exercise their ability to halt these layoffs and prevent the dismantling of the VA care system.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Unions vow to lead with solidarity as second Trump administration looms

December 12, 2024 by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Volunteers key to Minnesota unions’ election-year goals

July 19, 2024 by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Union members push bill to give striking workers unemployment benefits

March 22, 2024 by

Autoworkers in Hudson, Wis., picketed during their union’s “Stand Up Strike” in 2023.

After a wave of collective action saw American workers improve their pay and working conditions by going on strike, Minnesota lawmakers are weighing a change to the state’s unemployment insurance system that would lighten the economic hardship union members here face during a labor dispute.

Legislation introduced earlier this month by DFLers in the House and Senate would make some workers in Minnesota eligible for unemployment benefits when they are on strike.

Advocates, including several union members who testified in support of the bill last month, said giving workers more leverage at the bargaining table is good for working families, local communities and the economy as a whole.

The cost to the state’s unemployment insurance fund, meanwhile, would be “negligible,” according to Jake Schwitzer, director of the North Star Policy Action, a research group that issued a report on the idea earlier this year. That report estimated the proposed expansion would amount to 0.3% or less of existing unemployment claims.

The benefits, union members said, would far outweigh those costs.

More equal footing

More often than not, employers enter a work stoppage from a position of strength, with deep pockets to cover any losses in productivity. Workers, particularly those in low-wage jobs, begin feeling the impact of lost wages almost immediately.

That dynamic, workers told lawmakers, gives employers an incentive to wait things out and force workers to capitulate to their demands. It’s what Dean Benson, a retired St. Paul Park refinery worker, said Marathon tried to do to members of Teamsters Local 120 when they went on strike for safety and job security three years ago.

“We won that strike, but only because we had the support we needed to keep that fight on,” Benson said during a Senate committee hearing on the bill March 13. “That isn’t always the case because Marathon did what many large corporations try to do when their workers are seeking a fair contract. They tried to starve us out.”

Minnesota’s unemployment benefit covers about 50% of a worker’s average weekly wage, up to a maximum of $890. That’s the right amount, AFSCME Council 5 Interim Executive Director Bart Anderson said, to give workers more bargaining power while keeping the strike a last resort.

“Going on strike will still be financially challenging, but at least workers won’t be starved back to work,” Anderson said.

Community gains

Other supporters argued that the legislation could reduce the number of work stoppages in Minnesota. Employers would know that union members have access to a partial wage replacement if they strike, giving them reason to bargain a timely, equitable contract.

With record profits in the bank, the Big 3 automakers could have reached a deal before members of the United Auto Workers went on strike last September, UAW member John Kontzelmann told lawmakers.

“The strike didn’t have to take five weeks because these employers knew what their top offer was,” said Kontzelmann, who was on strike at the Twin Cities Stellantis parts facility. “Managers didn’t sacrifice a penny while they tried to starve us out, and despite pleading poverty for weeks they ended up agreeing to a record four-year contract.”

The autoworkers’ contracts, with wage increases of 25% or more, also show the ripple effects of union power at the bargaining table. After the UAW settled, non-union automakers across the U.S. moved quickly to increase their wages by double-digit percentages – the so-called “UAW bump.”

“This bill benefits not just workers, but the entire economy,” Rep. Kaela Berg (D-Burnsville), lead House author of the bill, said. “When workers are earning a living wage, they are contributing to the local economy.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Unions to stay vigilant at Capitol: ‘What we’ve got can go away in a vote’s notice’

February 23, 2024 by

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham spoke at a rally outside a business lobby event on the opening day of the 2024 legislative session.

Minnesota’s unions will approach the 2024 state legislative session looking to expand on – and defend – the historic package of labor standards and public investments passed by DFL lawmakers last year.

Legislators returned to St. Paul on Feb. 12. Before their deadline to adjourn May 20, they are sure to hear from union members pressing for action on a range of issues, including infrastructure investments, pension adjustments, protections for health care and railroad workers and more.

Of course, union members and their allies won’t be the only voices lawmakers hear from at the Capitol this spring. On Day 1 of the new session, the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce hosted a reception with legislators at River Centre in downtown St. Paul. The event’s theme was “Restore the Balance.”

To union members like Jake Anderson, a special education teacher in the St. Paul Public Schools, that sounded like going backwards – “and we are not going backwards,” he said at a rally outside the event.

“We won a lot of things last time around,” Anderson, a member of the St. Paul Federation of Educators, said. “Our kids get free school lunch. We get unemployment for our paraeducators. But it’s not enough, it’s just the beginning.”

Kelly Gibbons, executive director of Service Employees (SEIU) Local 284, said 18,000 education support professionals accessed unemployment insurance last summer, after legislation passed to make hourly school employees eligible for the benefit. She said union members have told her that “unemployment insurance has changed their lives.”

“They’re going to talk about going back to the system that was rigged against us, the workers,” Gibbons said of the Chamber. “They want it to go back in their favor, and we’re here to say absolutely not.”

The state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, last month identified its top priorities for the session, and defending the gains made in 2023 is at the top of the list.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said the federation developed its priorities through conversations with affiliate unions and labor leaders.

“First and foremost, we’ve got to protect the things we’ve got,” Burnham said. “We’re going to be working to make sure that paid family and medical leave and union rights – all of that and more – stay in place. What we’ve got can go away in a vote’s notice.”

Burnham said it’s an indication of just how much work lawmakers did on labor issues last year that there are few holdovers from 2023 on the federation’s list of legislative priorities.

Along with paid family leave and unemployment for school employees, union-backed measures to expand earned sick and safe time benefits, ban captive audience meetings, raise safety standards in refineries and give public-sector unions more bargaining rights all became law, not to mention historic one-time investments in public schools and infrastructure jobs.

Still, there are policy measures the state AFL-CIO will work to advance in 2024, including a crackdown on employers who misclassify their workers as independent contractors. Unions have long said the practice is alarmingly common in the nonunion construction industry, but it also applies to the gig economy, advocates say.

Unions want to see legislators put teeth into the state’s existing misclassification laws this session. When workers are misclassified, Burnham said, “they lose out on minimum wage, they lose out on benefits like workers’ comp and overtime pay.”

The federation also plans to lobby for extending unemployment insurance to workers who are on strike. Such a law would level the playing field in collective bargaining, Burnham said, noting that employers can replace striking workers, cut off their health care and stall negotiations.

“There is so much action right now among people who are fighting to do better on the job,” she said. “If they have to go on strike, how are they going to make ends meet?

“If we are going to continue in Minnesota with all the good things we got last year, why wouldn’t we go that next step further?”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Led by nurses, coalition of MN unions to push ‘Healing Greed Agenda’ in 2024

February 9, 2024 by

John Welsh, a nurse at Unity Hospital, outlined the MNA’s 2024 legislative agenda.

Less than a year after hospital lobbyists stymied efforts to establish minimum staffing levels in Minnesota hospitals, union nurses will head back to the Capitol in 2024 with an agenda focused on safety, nurse retention and increased accountability for health systems and their highly paid executives.

The Minnesota Nurses Association calls it the “Healing Greed Agenda,” and the union has readied a broadly supported campaign to advance it when the 2024 legislative session begins Monday.

“Hospital executives think they run the show,” MNA President Chris Rubesch, a nurse at Essentia-Duluth, said during a Capitol press conference Feb. 5. “They have the money to pay more than sixty lobbyists to ensure the system stays exactly like it is. But we are here today to speak with one voice and demand change. Minnesota can do better, and we must do better!”

Leaders of several other labor organizations, including the Minnesota AFL-CIO and AFSCME Council 5, joined the press conference, pledging to work in coalition to support the campaign. And MNA leaders listed several DFL lawmakers who are working with the coalition to usher the proposed policy measures through the Legislature.

Those measures include:

• Increased protections for nurses who raise concerns about patient safety and inadequate staffing in their hospitals, and greater legal accountability for hospital executives when their staffing decisions lead to adverse events. MNA pointed to several examples of hospitals allegedly retaliating against nurses for calling out unsafe staffing in their units.

• An enhanced student-loan forgiveness program, with more funding and expanded eligibility, designed to recruit and retain hospital nurses, as well as new protections against violence in hospitals – another factor driving nurses away from the bedside. Nurses’ proposed violence prevention measures include trauma-informed care and de-escalation strategies.

• Increased regulation of nonprofit hospitals’ finances and operations, including a cap on executive pay and new requirements that hospitals give public notice of planned service cuts and consolidations. Nurses also want to see increased scrutiny of hospitals’ debt-collection tactics and how the non-profit institutions are meeting requirements that, in lieu of paying taxes, they invest in charity care and public health.

Nationwide polling results, released by Gallup in January, showed that nurses are the most trusted profession among Americans, with 77% of respondents agreeing that they are “honest and ethical.” It was the 22nd consecutive year in which nurses had the highest rating of any profession.

MNA President Chris Rubesch spoke during the Capitol press conference Feb. 5.

At the press conference. Sandra Feist (D-New Brighton) said lawmakers should have the same trust in nurses’ assessment of how corporate greed is impacting patient care in Minnesota hospitals.

“As lawmakers, we need to trust nurses when they tell us that they face retaliation for speaking up in defense of safe patient care,” Feist said. “We need to trust nurses when they tell us that violence is rising in their hospitals for patients and workers due to slashed staff levels and resources. And we need to trust nurses when they tell us that there is a crisis in our hospitals.”

But the “Healing Greed Agenda” is also notable for what isn’t included: the hospital staffing mandates that nurses hoped would become law a year ago.

The “Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act” advanced through several legislative committees in 2023. The measure would have required hospitals to create labor-management committees to determine appropriate staffing in their wards, but support among lawmakers dwindled after Mayo Clinic threatened to withhold investments in its Rochester campus if the measure passed.

“Hospital CEOs have created a crisis in our hospitals that is driving nurses from the bedside and putting safe patient care at risk,” Shiori Konda-Muhammad, a vice president of MNA, said. “Now, they’re doing everything in their power to keep nurses from speaking up and taking action to demand better for patients and workers.”

Feist and many other DFL lawmakers continue to support the “Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act,” but she said advocates decided to prioritize the anti-retaliation measure during this shortened legislative session because “it is pure policy,” while the staffing law would be more appropriately considered during a budget session.

Konda-Muhammad, meanwhile, said MNA members will continue to advocate for minimum staffing requirements in their bargaining units – and they shouldn’t fear retaliation from management when they do it.

“We nurses will continue to fight for patients,” she said. “Now, we need lawmakers to have our backs and stand up to corporate bullies in our health care system so we can carry on that fight.”

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