Report: Healthcare costs are eroding Minnesotans’ wage gains, and hospital consolidation won’t help

July 22, 2026 by

An independent report issued last month by North Star Policy Action digs into the factors behind Minnesotans’ rapidly rising healthcare costs, warning that proposed health-system acquisitions could make things worse.

The report comes as two Minnesota-based health systems, North Memorial and Allina, are in the process of being sold to South Dakota-based Sanford and California-based Sutter, respectively.

Aaron Rosenthal, research director at the progressive research institute, said those transactions warrant public scrutiny, as they would further a trend of consolidation in the state’s healthcare industry. Twenty years ago, he said, two-thirds of Minnesota providers were independent; today two-thirds are part of a larger system.

Consolidation, he added, “decreases competition and leads to bigger players, who use their increased power to charge patients more.”

The report, “Rising Health Care Spending in Minnesota,” found that specialists in health systems charge 16-20% higher prices for services than independent practices.

Another key finding: healthcare spending in Minnesota increased by 15% between 2019-2023, despite Minnesotans utilizing healthcare services at a lower rate, 3.5% less. Over the same period, hospitals’ operating costs increased by 87%, while their charges for services increased by 116%.

When hospitals charge more for services, of course, insurance companies pass along those higher costs to their customers.

“Most people are quick to blame health insurance companies for their high premiums,” report co-author Jen Schultz, an economics professor at the University of Minnesota, said. “But folks only need to look at their bill or (explanation of benefits) to see another reason: high hospital prices.”

The report found that employee contributions toward health insurance premiums in the state grew 67% over the last 11 years, far outpacing the state’s 42% wage growth.

That means the cost of keeping health insurance has “essentially eroded workers’ wages,” Schultz said.

Minnesotans who purchase their own health insurance are facing even steeper price increases – as much as 54% this year – as federal subsidies that helped reign in marketplace premiums expire.

Data released by the state’s health exchange, MNsure, a week after North Star Policy released its report showed about 17,000 fewer people purchased insurance coverage this year, a decrease of 12% from 2025.

That won’t help contain prices, according to Rosenthal.

“Keeping Minnesotans insured is itself a cost-control strategy,” he said. “Every person who loses coverage … drives up hospitals’ uncompensated care costs.”

The report includes policy recommendations that, the authors argued, could help contain Minnesota’s healthcare spending.

Not surprisingly, hospitals are the target of most proposals. In addition to keeping people insured and addressing the rate of consolidation in the industry, state lawmakers could take aim at hospital prices more directly, authors said.

Indiana recently passed a law capping what its five largest hospital systems can charge patients covered by employer-sponsored insurance plans for certain procedures. If the providers fail to meet the new caps by 2029, they risk losing their tax-exempt status.

Other states have looked to leverage their public employees’ health plans to drive down hospital prices, tying reimbursement rates to those paid by Medicare. Costs for privately insured patients are roughly three times higher than Medicare rates, Rosenthal said.

“The worst thing we could do is treat rising healthcare spending as inevitable,” Rosenthal said. “Federal policy has put Minnesota in a tough spot to be sure. Even so, we have the power to make healthcare more affordable for working families in this state, and we should use it.”

Read the full report on North Star Policy’s website.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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Research into union busting in MN nursing homes draws lawmaker scrutiny

April 17, 2026 by

Minnesota nursing home workers attend a Senate Labor Committee hearing on rampant union-busting in the heavily subsidized industry.

Authors of two recently published reports on union busting in Minnesota nursing homes presented their findings to the Senate Labor Committee last week, raising concerns among some lawmakers that public funds are being used to stifle worker voice.

Committee Chair Jen McEwen (D-Duluth) called the new research “kind of a bombshell.” Sen. Sandy Pappas (D-St. Paul) said she was “pretty shocked.”

But the findings came as no surprise to about two dozen nursing home workers in the hearing-room gallery, many of whom had been on the business end of management’s union-avoidance playbook.

Addressing the committee, Cassandra Thomas, a certified nursing assistant at Chapel View Home in Hopkins, described the changes she and her co-workers saw after they petitioned for a union election last year, like town-hall meetings with free food and regular check-ins with an out-of-town consultant.

The message, Thomas said, was clear. “They kept talking about how much the union would cost us,” she said. “But I wondered how much all this cost them, instead of just giving us that raise.”

Chapel View workers won their union election in December, joining SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa. They are working toward a first contract that delivers that raise – and addresses concerns over staffing, safety and client care that sparked their organizing drive.

But the anti-union campaign left a bitter taste in workers’ mouths – especially after they learned the estimated price tag of Chapel View’s union-avoidance campaign: as much as $400,000, or $2,800 per worker, according to Labor Lab researcher Teke Wiggin, who also addressed the Senate committee.

“It was so frustrating to hear how much they spent to try and stop us,” Thomas told lawmakers. “This all happened while we were working short. They could have spent that money on staff to care for our residents.

“How is this OK?”

Wiggin presented findings from Labor Lab’s new report, “The Price of Repression,” which studied five union-busting campaigns at nursing homes in Minnesota from 2022 to 2025.

The report uses anti-union consultants’ public disclosures, industry billing rates, campaign manuals and independent research to estimate the price tag of those union-busting campaigns, which ran from $140,000 to over $400,000.

Wiggin compared those costs to the amount employers could have spent on wage increases for impacted workers had they recognized the union voluntarily, an amount that ranges from 3.5% to 20% – or $1,400 to $7,300 per worker.

“Our report underscores that when nursing homes really want to find money and resources, they do,” Wiggin told lawmakers.

In a separate report on Minnesota nursing homes, Columbia University researchers surveyed 2,000 certified nursing assistants statewide and uncovered a “pattern of anti-union tactics” in the industry – especially in nursing homes that rely heavily on public funding.

Sociologist Adam Reich, one of six researchers who worked on the Columbia report, walked lawmakers through two case studies of union-busting in Minnesota nursing homes.

The report includes firsthand accounts from workers reacting to their bosses’ anti-union campaign, including misinformation, so-called “captive audience meetings” and, most shockingly, appeals to nursing home residents and their families to encourage caregivers to vote “no.”

At one nonprofit nursing home with a religious affiliation, an administrator leaned on Biblical proverbs to suggest that union organizers were wolves in sheep’s clothing.

“One story that sticks in my mind is a worker whose manager told them that they were going to talk to the pastor of the church they both attended about how this worker was organizing,” Reich said.

Asked by lawmakers what policy recommendations might come out of the two reports, Reich suggested a precise analysis of how nursing homes are using public funds, and whether they are being used to thwart organizing efforts.

“That seems deeply problematic in a state that I know cares deeply about the integrity of public funding,” he said.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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

Lawmakers take up educators’ call for new insurance pool

March 24, 2026 by

Rep. Liz Reyer of Eagan joins members of Education Minnesota at a Capitol press conference about the Educator Group Insurance Program.

House and Senate authors of a statewide health insurance pool for school employees, one of Education Minnesota’s top priorities this session, outlined their legislation’s path forward last week.

The statewide educators’ union held a day of action at the Capitol March 18 to drum up support for the idea among lawmakers. During a press conference, Rep. Liz Reyer (D-Eagan) and Sen. Mary Kunesh (D-New Brighton) said they hoped to pass bills this session that would survey school districts about the insurance coverage they provide.

The data is necessary, Kunesh said, to calculate costs of the full proposal, known as the Educator Group Insurance Program (EGIP). Kunesh and Reyer said they are aiming for EGIP’s passage in 2027.

“This session, the goal is to vet concepts through committees,” Kunesh said during a press conference with educators at the Capitol on March 18.

Modeled after an existing program that covers State of Minnesota employees and after programs in other states, EGIP is Education Minnesota’s preferred approach to stabilizing school districts’ skyrocketing health insurance costs.

The issue has increasingly become a stumbling block for local unions in contract negotiations, as educators and other school employees are repeatedly forced to choose between absorbing big premium hikes or accepting lower wage increases.

Over 150 union members joined the day of action at the Capitol, and many carried signs bearing the exact amount by which their district’s health insurance costs have increased in recent years – 30% in Mankato, 34% in Lyle, 54% in New Ulm.

By consolidating the purchasing power of every school district into a statewide risk pool, EGIP would cut down on brokerage fees and level the playing field in negotiations with large insurers like UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross MN, advocates say.

“Minnesota’s school districts are small buyers in a market that rewards large ones,” Education Minnesota President Monica Byron said. “Every year, hundreds of school districts negotiate alone against a multi-billion-dollar insurance industry that knows exactly how much leverage it has. Educators pay for that power imbalance in higher premiums, worse coverage and impossible choices.”

Because the risk pool in most school districts is relatively small, they often see a dramatic spike in coverage costs after an employee experiences a health crisis, Byron added. “Every school district in Minnesota is just one sick employee away from a crisis that it cannot manage.”

A high-deductible insurance plan left Glencoe-Silver Lake science teacher Amanda Kottke’s family with steep medical bills after her son’s hospitalization.

That’s what happened to Amanda Kottke, a science teacher in the Glencoe-Silver Lake district. Her son spent 10 “long, terrifying days” at Children’s Hospital last year receiving treatment for complications from a ruptured appendix.

Kottke, who has a high-deductible plan through her employer, acknowledged that concerns about out-of-pocket costs factored into her family’s initial decision to hold off on a $250 trip to the urgent care. But the hospital stay left Kottke with a much larger bill – and feelings of “guilt and trauma” that she now can’t afford to address in therapy.

“We were asked to pay our $10,000 deductible up front, and we couldn’t,” Kottke said. “They then suggested $900 a month until the bill was paid off, and we couldn’t do that either.”

Now her district, which already has seen insurance costs increase 165% over the last six years, is seeing bids for insurance plans next year come in 30% to 50% higher, she said.

The rising cost of their health insurance comes with public costs beyond the strain it creates on districts’ budgets. (The proposal would include a “hold harmless” provision to ensure districts’ costs don’t increase with EGIP.)

Education Minnesota reports that high insurance costs are a leading factor in driving licensed educators away from the profession. Lower-paid school employees, meanwhile, often forego the district’s insurance and look to public programs for coverage.

Kunesh and Reyer, EGIP’s authors in the legislature, said most lawmakers agree that public schools’ rising insurance costs are an urgent problem. Reyer had a message for those who are still skeptical EGIP is the solution.

“They have not offered a systemic solution, and that’s what we need,” she said. “Every day without a solution is another educator choosing between a paycheck and a family’s health care. Minnesota can do better than that.”

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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LIUNA summit digs into Minnesota’s infrastructure outlook

October 16, 2025 by

State Sen. Erin Murphy accepts an Infrastructure Champion award from LIUNA Local 563 Business Manager Joe Fowler (L) and LIUNA Minnesota and North Dakota President Joel Smith.

Advocates for public infrastructure gathered Oct. 10 at the Minnesota Laborers’ Training Center in Lino Lakes to take stock of the state’s investment needs and celebrate recent legislative gains.

The 2025 LIUNA Infrastructure Summit and Open House, sponsored by LIUNA Minnesota and North Dakota, brought together over 100 representatives of unions, contractors, state agencies and other infrastructure-minded groups.

The half-day event covered topics like water and energy infrastructure, incentives for high-road housing development, workforce development and initiatives within the industry to increase workers’ access to mental-health resources.

Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan addressed the summit, and LIUNA officers presented awards recognizing lawmakers and the union’s lobbying partners for their work to strengthen and expand prevailing wage and secure new investments in transportation, water, energy and other infrastructure needs statewide.

Walz noted that the awards recognized both Democrats and Republicans. He called it a testament to LIUNA’s ability to work “bipartisanly” in support of public investments and standards like prevailing wage, ensuring infrastructure jobs go to safe, highly trained and fairly compensated tradespeople.

“It’s a really difficult job right now to try to find common lines, and LIUNA and the Building Trades have been doing it year after year,” Walz said.

Earlier this year, Walz signed a $700 million infrastructure jobs bill into law. It will chip away at a backlog of requests from communities and agencies across the state that has surpassed $7 billion.

The governor struck a hopeful note that lawmakers will continue to invest.

“I think we have set a precedence with this leadership that’s here at the Legislature that it just makes good sense to continue to pass robust bonding bills every year to make sure that we’re staying ahead of what needs to be done,” he said.

In anticipation of that work, LIUNA Minnesota and North Dakota, which represents about 14,000 workers, will expand its apprenticeship and training programs to include a second campus in North Branch, where the union recently acquired 96 acres.

The Lino Lakes facility already operates Minnesota’s largest registered apprenticeship program. The site delivers about 150,000 training hours each year, LIUNA Minnesota and North Dakota President Joel Smith said, at no cost to taxpayers.

“This campus represents our commitment to connecting Minnesotans, including more women, people of color and veterans, to lifelong careers with family-sustaining wages, excellent benefits and dignified retirement,” Smith said.

Recipients of LIUNA’s 2025 Infrastructure Champion awards included two state lawmakers, Sen. Judy Seeberger (D-Afton) and Rep. Nathan Nelson (R-Hinckley), who authored legislation that appropriates $1 million to promote mental-health initiatives in the construction industry, where suicide rates are over three times higher than the U.S. average.

State Reps. Kaela Berg (D-Burnsville) and Mary Franson (R-Alexandria), Sens. Jen McEwan (D-Duluth), Rob Kupec (D-Moorhead), Grant Hauschild (D-Hermantown) and Erin Murphy (D-St. Paul), and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith also received awards.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Blissenbach: Aquatic plant removal bill honors memory of fallen workers

April 28, 2025 by

Minnesota Labor Commissioner Nicole Blissenbach speaks during local Building Trades unions’ Workers Memorial Day ceremony on the Capitol grounds.

From the first day on the job to the last, each and every worker, each and every shift, has the right to a safe and healthy workplace. Unfortunately, in Minnesota between October 2023 and March 2024, Minnesota OSHA (MNOSHA) investigated 10 workplace fatalities. We take time each April 28, Workers Memorial Day, to honor and remember all workers whose lives were cut short by a workplace injury, illness or disease.

Workers Memorial Day began in 1970 and, within the year, the first Occupational Safety and Health Act was passed, establishing federal OSHA. That first OSHA law – and every worker protection law enacted since then – has passed thanks to the power of the labor movement and concerned citizens, standing up to advocate for the right to a safe workplace and to protect working people.

Every year our agency meets with unions, businesses, trade organizations, medical professionals, workers’ advocates and individuals who share their ideas for improving worker safety. Our role is to listen, to learn from their experiences and to advocate for advancements in workplace safety laws and regulations.

This year I had the honor of meeting the parents of two young men who died in two separate workplace incidents while removing aquatic weeds in 2022 and 2024. I am grateful to these parents for their strength to fight for improved safety for employees who dive on the job.

After completing its investigations, MNOSHA’s compliance office issued citations to those employers for violations of the commercial diving standard. Earlier this year, the Minnesota Legislature introduced legislation designed to increase protections for workers using scuba-diving equipment to perform aquatic weed and plant removal. Called the Brady Aune and Joseph Anderson Act, the new legislation will align the efforts of MNOSHA Compliance and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to ensure employers permitted to perform this work have formally trained and certified scuba divers and use required standardized equipment.

As summer quickly approaches, Minnesota employers performing aquatic weed removal at lakes across the state will be tasked with implementing requirements to protect workers using scuba-diving equipment as a result of this new legislation.

When employers follow required safety standards, have proper controls in place and make safety and health programs a priority, our brothers, sisters and siblings are safer and our state is stronger. On Workers Memorial Day and throughout the year, we must work together to make sure employers embrace safety and health as a core value in their operations so that every worker goes home safe every day.

All workers – no matter their age or experience – have a right to a safe and healthy workplace. When I came to work for the Department of Labor and Industry, I wanted to make a difference in the lives of workers across Minnesota. I joined a workforce of more than 600 dedicated people working in service to all workers of Minnesota, ensuring safety and health in the workplace is a right, not a privilege. It is now more important than ever to protect the rights that exist for workers while advocating to advance safer working conditions that will save lives.

– Nicole Blissenbach is commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. Her column appears in the May 2025 issue of The Saint Paul Union Advocate.

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Local lawmakers, unions scramble to support federal workers harmed by Trump cuts

April 25, 2025 by

Members of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) held informational picketing in support of about 170 employees at the Department of Health who have been laid off as a result of federal funding cuts.

Unions, local lawmakers and community volunteers are acting to support Minnesotans ensnared by the Trump administration’s reckless attempt to gut the federal workforce.

“If the Trump administration turned you away, Minnesota wants you,” Gov. Tim Walz said, announcing a new one-stop website with referrals to state employment openings, resources for veterans and tips for accessing state unemployment insurance benefits.

DFL legislators, meanwhile, have introduced bills that would bolster the safety net for workers navigating the federal chaos.

One measure would guarantee unemployment benefits for workers who accepted the so-called “fork-in-the-road offer” from Trump megadonor Elon Musk, head of the administration’s “DOGE” team.

Jacob Romans, president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3699, which represents 2,300 VA hospital workers, praised the proposal. He called it “legitimate” to question whether DOGE and the Trump administration would honor terms of the buyout through Sept. 30, as originally promised.

Another bill would establish a relocation bonus program for veterans who have been fired by the Trump administration, incentivizing public employees to continue their public service in Minnesota. Veterans make up roughly 30% of the federal government’s workforce.

Some House DFLers are also pushing a measure to tack on a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits for government workers whose federal benefits expire.

“We want to make sure that these dedicated public servants stay here in Minnesota and are not forced to leave their communities and find work elsewhere,” Rep. Pete Johnson of Duluth said. “But the goal is clear – make the job unbearable for workers so that they leave.”

“What we are trying to do is absorb some of the shock and the impact of the Trump-Musk actions, and protect Minnesota’s economy,” Rep. Greenman of Minneapolis said. “Right now our job is to protect Minnesota with the power that we have.”

Unions, too, have stepped up their advocacy on behalf of federal workers. As their attorneys continue fighting Trump’s war on the federal workforce in court, unions announced a new partnership that aims to connect individuals impacted by the cuts with free legal support.

The Rise Up Federal Workers Legal Defense Network, backed by the AFL-CIO and several federal government unions, put out the call for attorneys to volunteer their services to advocate for workers who have seen their rights violated – and careers upended – by the Trump administration’s recklessness.

“Attacks on federal workers are attacks on all workers and on the essential services that our communities rely on daily,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said. “Getting these workers the justice they deserve in the face of this onslaught will take all of us.”

Anna Chu, executive director of We The Action, an organization that connects volunteer attorneys with community initiatives, said lawyers are “uniquely positioned” to assist federal employees in this moment.

“This is a moment for lawyers to support the federal workers who serve us all,” Chu added.

Tens of thousands of federal workers have been laid off, put on administrative leave or left their jobs since Trump took office. Over 18,000 federal employees reside in Minnesota.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Gottfried, endorsed in House special election, embraces labor roots

March 10, 2025 by

The labor-endorsed candidate in a special election March 11 that will determine control of the Minnesota House of Representatives is a longtime member of SAG-AFTRA, the union of media professionals.

David Gottfried, who is running in House District 40B, which includes Roseville and parts of Shoreview, signed his union card in 2011. Although he has since moved on to work in the legal field, Gottfried said he’s kept his SAG-AFTRA membership current to show solidarity with the labor movement.

“I’ve seen firsthand how being in a union improves the lives of workers and their families,” Gottfried said. “I want everybody to have access to that same opportunity.”

Both of Gottfried’s parents worked union jobs while he was growing up, his mother as an educator and member of Education Minnesota and his father as a state employee.

That background also instilled in Gottfried an appreciation for the critical role public services play in local communities. His mother, who now works in the Minneapolis Public Schools, saw firsthand the impact of a new state law that makes all children eligible for free breakfast and lunch, Gottfried said.

“She told me it was like a light switch went on,” he said. “For a lot of her students, having access to those meals, having a steady source of food is incredibly important. And I know it really does take off a lot of pressure on working families.”

Expanded access to school meals is just one of many accomplishments the so-called “DFL trifecta” – Gov. Tim Walz and majorities in the House and Senate – made in the previous two years, an agenda Gottfried said he will fight to defend if elected March 11.

That outcome would lift the DFL into a 67-67 tie with Republicans, who already have set out to dismantle or delay one of the signature achievements of the last Legislature, a paid family and medical leave law scheduled to launch in 2026.

“I think the reality is it’s going to be more playing defense, which is not a position we want to be in, but we have to make the most of it,” Gottfried said, adding that he will defend the family leave law “tooth and nail.”

The special election campaign comes at a time when most public attention is on the chaos in Washington. To make sure a key legislative race doesn’t fly under the radar, volunteers with the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation (SPRLF) have been working the phones since January to get union members to the polls.

“Minnesota has accomplished too much over the last two years to let Republicans and the corporate lobbyists who fund them take it all away,” SPRLF President Kera Peterson said. “Union members have each other’s backs, and we’re proudly working to support our union brother, David Gottfried, in House District 40B.”

As he reaches out to his neighbors in the district, Gottfried said, “every single one” mentions the crisis unfolding in Washington. He tells them that solidarity will be critical to meeting the moment.

“We’re entering a very scary time,” he said. “We need to take care of each other, and one of the best ways we can do that is to really invest in relationships with our union siblings and, beyond that, looking out for our neighbors.

“Take care of each other, and I will do what I can at the State Legislature to take care of my union siblings too.”

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

Proposal would allow Minnesota Uber, Lyft drivers to unionize

March 10, 2025 by

Dawit Kassa (R) spoke during a Capitol press conference on a bill that would allow Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize. (SEIU photo)

Two labor-endorsed state lawmakers announced plans last month to introduce legislation that would give drivers in Minnesota the right to unionize and bargain collectively with ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft.

Drivers in the Twin Cities have been organizing in recent years to push local and state officials to address low pay, safety concerns and a lack of transparency in their industry. State lawmakers responded last year with a bill establishing a new minimum wage and other guarantees.

But Dawit Kassa, a driver who served on Gov. Tim Walz’s task force to offer recommendations for the new law, said it doesn’t do enough to level the playing field between the ride-hailing companies and their drivers.

“No law is going to address all of the issues we are facing from these companies,” Kassa said. “We need a union. We need a seat at the table so we can ensure this industry works for us.”

Kassa was among roughly 20 Uber and Lyft drivers at a Capitol press conference Feb. 25. Most were wearing the Service Employees union’s trademark purple shirts, and SEIU Local 26 President Greg Nammacher said the union would support any Uber and Lyft drivers looking to organize.

Lead authors Rep. Samakab Hussein (D-St. Paul) and Sen. Zaynab Mohamed (D-Minneapolis) said they are modeling their bills after a historic ballot measure approved by Massachusetts voters in November.

The Massachusetts law establishes a process for drivers to organize a union and, if successful, bargain one contract with all the apps licensed to operate in the state, known as “sectoral bargaining.”

Drivers, like most other workers in the gig economy, are classified by law as independent contractors, making them ineligible to form a union without a special process like the one in Massachusetts.

Under the proposal from Hussein and Mohamed, pro-union drivers would need to sign up at least 25% of the potential bargaining unit – open to anyone who has completed 100 rides in the previous quarter – before contract talks could begin.

Any tentative agreement would need approval from a majority of voting union members and from the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Labor before taking effect.

The proposal also establishes an arbitration process if the union and ride-hailing apps fail to reach an agreement within six months of opening talks.

Hussein said that stories from Uber and Lyft drivers confirmed that they need collective bargaining to address their shared concerns around fare transparency and pay for time spent waiting for a job.

And despite safeguards in the new state law, drivers continue to report being deactivated from their Uber or Lyft accounts – making it impossible for them to work – due to rider feedback, without getting an opportunity to respond in their defense.

“Without a voice, these problems are going to continue to come back to the Legislature,” Local 26’s Nammacher said. “The Legislature does not need to be the HR department for these multimillion-dollar, global corporations like Uber and Lyft,”

“Ride share companies continue to do the bare minimum while making millions,” Hussein added. “It’s time for change.”

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Report on AI’s impact a ‘wake-up moment’ for MN lawmakers, unions

February 5, 2025 by

Artificial intelligence is poised to have a greater impact on Minnesota’s workforce than most other states’, according to a report released last month. But it’s not too late for workers, unions and state lawmakers to erect guardrails that protect jobs and promote fairness and accountability.

Researchers at the Minnesota-based North Star Policy Action think tank found that the state ranks 10th nationally and second in the Midwest for workforce vulnerability to AI, with 500,000 Minnesotans – or 17% of the workforce – at “high risk” of having their jobs altered by the emerging technology.

Those impacts could be positive or negative for workers, but the implementation of AI is more likely to be good for workers, according to the report, if they have a voice in the process. And that means collective bargaining.

Aaron Rosenthal, North Star’s research director and author of the report, said he hopes its publication serves as a “wake-up moment for both unions and legislators.”

“AI is advancing rapidly in both its technological capacity and its workplace adoption,” Rosenthal said. “It’s time that workers are given protections to ensure that its implementation helps but doesn’t harm them, and that unions are aware of the need to bargain over AI in any negotiation.”

AI implementation can be a good thing for workers, employers and the economy, “but it has to be done in concert with worker welfare,” Rosenthal stressed.

An Al revolution?

AI systems are designed to perform complex tasks normally done by humans, like reasoning, decision making and creating. Generative AI systems like Chat GPT create content – text, images, music and more – from a human prompt, while machine learning AI systems analyze data, images or other systems to perform a task.

Unlike computerization and automation, which have impacted workers in blue-collar jobs like manufacturing, AI is more likely to impact workers with higher levels of education, according to the North Star report. AI is already impacting fields like medical research and health care, law and engineering.

The report points to Minnesota’s strong agricultural, software development and construction industries as areas AI is likely to impact moving forward, making the state more vulnerable than most others. But Rosenthal emphasized that AI is “probably going to touch every industry in the state, and it’s that breadth that’s going to require a similarly broad effort by legislators to respond.”

The stakes are high. AI’s potential impact “puts it into a class with only the most significant economic shifts, such as the Industrial Revolution,” during which labor lost a significant share of its income, according to the report.

Without protections for workers, the report warns, AI could “accelerate” income inequality and consolidate more wealth and power among the elites. One AI executive, Sam Altman, already has predicted the technology will create the world’s first trillionaire.

Legislative responses

What should lawmakers be doing in response? The report offers four policy recommendations, and they begin with strengthening workers’ bargaining rights.

Union density is low in many of the industries AI is poised to impact, but collective bargaining is an effective way for workers to “use their expertise to guide an effective employment of AI in their workplace,” Rosenthal said.

Other policy recommendations include worker training and transition programs, regulations governing AI’s use in employment decisions, and a long-term framework – or task force – for keeping tabs on the technology and its use.

State Sen. Erin Maye Quade (D-Apple Valley) co-sponsored a law passed last session to protect Minnesotans from AI-generated deep fakes and non-consensual sexual imagery. This session she hopes lawmakers will prohibit the use of AI in hiring decisions, as a first step toward regulating the technology’s impact on workers.

While the technology may be good at identifying the typical worker an employer has hired in the past, AI won’t be able to account for the racial or other biases that might have factored into those decisions.

“AI knows what, but it doesn’t know why,” Maye Quade said. “AI is built by humans, so it is rife with the same biases that humans carry. The thing about humans is we can be cognizant of our own biases and know that we have them and try to ameliorate that. AI is not going to do that.”

Maye Quade said she is hopeful that the hiring measure will gain bipartisan support in the Legislature. Other AI-related issues lawmakers could consider, she said, include the environmental impact of data centers built to support AI systems across the state and the technology’s use by state agencies.

“There’s only so much a state legislature can do,” Maye Quade acknowledged. “Even between last session and this session, we have seen AI be integrated almost against our will and in more places in our life. We just keep finding out more places.”

Space for unions to act

Some unions, meanwhile, already have taken steps to protect members against negative impacts of AI. In contract negotiations with entertainment studios in 2023, members of the Writers Guild bargained for language that allows them to use AI as a tool for script writing but protects against the use of fully AI-generated scripts.

And last month, National Nurses United – the umbrella organization that includes the Minnesota Nurses Association – put AI concerns at the forefront of its contract campaign covering more than 100,000 California nurses. The union conducted a survey last year that “found nurses repeatedly reported that their own assessments of patients did not match assessments from AI technology deployed in their facilities.”

North Star’s report suggests Minnesota unions should be taking similar action, whether it’s organizing new workers susceptible to AI’s impacts or bargaining to protect their current members.

“There’s an opportunity here for unions across the state to reach out to individuals in industries that are experiencing newly found precarity due to AI and build cross-class, cross-industry solidarity,” Rosenthal said.

“I think there’s a way of looking at this as Luddite panic about technology, but we’re not saying that AI innovation is a bad thing,” he added. “Far from it. It could complement existing work, making jobs more fulfilling by automating mundane tasks. But it could also produce income inequality by cutting wages, leading to job replacement.

“The difference comes down to legislative responses and, most importantly, the ability for workers to organize and bargain around the shape that AI implementation takes.”

Learn more

Read the full report, “Progress and Protection: Aligning AI Innovation with Worker Welfare,” online at northstarpolicy.org.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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Unions vow to lead with solidarity as second Trump administration looms

December 12, 2024 by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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