Labor 2012: Minnesota unions eye legislative seats in suburban areas

October 24, 2012 by

Mona Meyer, a volunteer from the Communications Workers of America, picks up her door-knock route from Peter Polga-Hecimovich, St. Paul Regional Labor Federation political organizer.

On a sunny Saturday morning Oct. 20, dozens of union volunteers trickled into a coffee shop downtown Burnsville. They paired up, gathered routes and handbills, and fanned out across the suburb, knocking on fellow union members’ doors and talking about their labor-endorsed candidate for Minnesota House, Will Morgan.

Similar campaign activities have been taking place in Stillwater, Woodbury and other East Metro suburbs this fall, and they reveal a key strategy behind Minnesota unions’ Labor 2012 campaign: Building a better Legislature means winning in the suburbs.

“These are the races that have been tight in recent elections,” said Bobby Kasper, president of the 50,000-member St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, which organized the door-knock in Burnsville last month. “We know they are going to be really tight again this year, and labor-endorsed candidates are going to need every union vote in order to win.”

The St. Paul RLF, working with the Minnesota AFL-CIO and other union federations, has identified eight races critical to rebuilding a pro-middle class majority in the Legislature. Those candidates come from places like Shoreview, Stillwater, Woodbury, Eagan and Burnsville – places where “Tea Party” candidates swept into office two years ago, helping Republicans gain majorities in both the Minnesota House and Senate for the first time in decades.

Despite winning by narrow margins in these suburban districts, freshmen lawmakers did not seek out the middle ground at the Capitol. Rather, many of them sought to push their party to new extremes, shutting down the state government, attacking collective bargaining rights and pushing Right to Work legislation that would undermine the middle class.

Volunteers in Burnsville reported hearing a lot of frustration from union members they have talked to during door-knocks and phone banks.

“When you talk to union members out here about what the Legislature has done for middle class families, they say they are fed up with the gridlock, with the attempts to divide people,” said Mark Krey, a rank-and-file member of SEIU Local 284. “We need to get people elected who are running because they want to do good for the community – not people who just want to take the seat for the Republican Party.”

The Burnsville campaign event was the fourth door-knock this fall for Troy Eisenhuth, a member Teamsters Local 120. “I know my livelihood is at stake,” he said. “If these guys pass Right to Work, they take away my union – and they take away everything I’ve got.”

Find a list of labor-endorsed candidate – and sign up for a volunteer shift with your union – at www.middleclassmn.org.

Labor 2012 volunteers gather in a coffee shop downtown Burnsville before a door-knock organized by the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation.

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Outside John Kline’s office, minimum-wage workers rally for a raise

July 24, 2012 by

Workers ask John Kline to consider living on $290 per week, the gross pay of a full-time, minimum-wage worker in Minnesota.

Could John Kline live on $290 per week?

That’s the question several constituents from the 2nd Congressional District asked their Republican representative in the weeks leading up to today’s three-year anniversary of the last federal minimum-wage increase.

When Kline failed to provide his constituents with an answer, they decided to deliver a letter to his Burnsville office – and bring along about 50 of their friends and supporters. Together, they rallied in support of efforts to give the country’s lowest-paid workers a raise – efforts Rep. Kline says he continues to oppose.

“The economy is getting worse, and people need help,” said Dezirai Jones, a Savage resident who works for minimum wage at a local restaurant. “(Kline) doesn’t know what it’s like to make minimum wage. Even if he tried he would find it hard and a real eye-opener.”

Jones and other minimum-wage workers at the event, staged by the union-backed organization Minnesotans for a Fair Economy, talked about their struggle to make ends meet for themselves and their families.

“Minimum wage is basically impossible to live off of,” said Mallory Curran of Lakeville, a single mother who is separated from her husband but unable to afford a divorce.

A Minnesotan working 40 hours a week at minimum wage grosses about $290. Kline, by contrast, averages a salary of about $3,300 per week.

James L. Peng of Inver Grove Heights asked Kline to consider agreeing to live on $290 a week.

“Perhaps it’s difficult to imagine what $290 a week might look like,” Peng wrote in a letter to Kline. “We’d like to encourage you to consider trying to live on that amount for one week. After all, it isn’t easy to understand one’s personal experience if you haven’t encountered that experience yourself.”

Kline, who chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee, voted against the last minimum-wage increase, passed in 2007.

Without an increase over the last three years, the minimum wage has failed to keep up with inflation – let alone skyrocketing executive pay.

Workers in the 2nd Congressional District weren’t the only ones pushing a minimum-wage hike today. A team of prominent economists, including a Nobel laureate and a former Secretary of Labor, released a letter to President Obama and congressional leaders today.

The letter, sent from the Economic Policy Institute, argues “a higher minimum wage at this juncture will not only provide raises for low-wage workers but would provide some help on the jobs front as well.”

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Bobby Kasper: Let’s make sure the next Legislature stands with workers

May 16, 2012 by

I breathed a sigh of relief when the Minnesota Legislature finally adjourned the 2012 session. It meant an end to the seemingly endless string of Republican attacks on Minnesota’s working families – attacks on our union rights, attacks on our wages and pensions, attacks on our voting rights and more.

I’m writing today to say “thank you” to everyone who helped us fight these right-wing attacks at the Capitol over the last three months.

Some of you volunteered to staff our phone banks, where we called union members and asked them to talk to their legislators about the irresponsible “Right to Work” constitutional amendment. Others of you joined us at the Capitol, where we maintained a visible presence advocating on behalf of good jobs, safe workplaces and a strong middle class.

By putting aside our differences and working together as union brothers and sisters, we kept “Right to Work” off the ballot this November. We also helped pass an infrastructure-jobs bill and a stadium bill that, together, will succeed in putting thousands of Minnesotans back to work in high-paying, construction-industry jobs. That’s a good start toward getting Minnesota’s economy going in the right direction again.

I’m proud of what we accomplished together during the 2012 session. And I know I can count on union members to join us again this summer and fall, as our staff at the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation puts our Labor 2012 political plan into action.

Together, we can make sure that when the Legislature reconvenes in 2013, we’re not fighting the same battles we fought over the last three months.

The 2012 legislative session found Minnesota unions in a collective panic, and it is simply because we did not have enough labor friendly legislative allies at the Capitol. The upcoming Fall elections give us a valuable opportunity to reverse that.

Working together, we will win seats for political allies who will work arm-in-arm with labor as partners to drive toward a better tomorrow – a tomorrow in which preserving our state’s middle class is once again the top priority of our elected officials. Over the last two years, we’ve learned that for too many state legislators, workers and jobs do not rank among the top priorities. This Fall we will change that.

We will win this fall because the strength of labor is unmatched and because our brothers and sisters will fight for our present and fight for our future.  We will win because we have the strength.

We will win because there is no other way.

– Bobby Kasper is president of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, and a member of Laborers Local 132. Reach him at rkasper [at] stpaulunions [dot] org.

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Workers to keep pressure on Verizon with May 3 picket in Roseville

May 2, 2012 by

Workers outside the Verizon Store in Roseville during the “National Day of Action” March 22.

Apparently, Verizon didn’t get the message the first time.

On March 22, union members protested outside Verizon Stores across the country in a “Verizon National Day of Action.” Tomorrow workers nationwide will stage more informational pickets, timed to coincide with the company’s annual shareholder meeting Alabama.

In the Twin Cities, the informational picket will take place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. outside the Verizon Wireless Store in Roseville, located at 2325 Fairview Ave. N. (This is not the store inside the Rosedale Mall.)

It’s the same Verizon location where workers picketed March 22. Workers inside the Roseville store are not union members, and demonstrators will not attempt to prevent customers from entering the store.

Rather, the point of the informational picket is customer education and solidarity with Verizon’s 45,000 union workers on the East Coast, who are members of the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

These union members have been working without a contract since the previous agreement with the company expired in August 2011.

Although Verizon claims it needs concessions from its workers totaling $20,000 per member annually, the truth is the company is turning record profits.

The company is so profitable, in fact, that CEO Lowell McAdam recently tripled his annual compensation, from $7.2 million to $23.1 million. And while the company claims it needs to strip its union workers of their pensions and health benefits, Verizon’s top executives have taken home $258 million over the last four years.

For more information on the Verizon campaign, go to www.cwa-union.org/verizon.

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