As nonprofits face uncertain times, some employees look to unionize

September 3, 2020 by

Hope Community workers are bargaining their first union contract after winning voluntary recognition from the Minneapolis nonprofit in July.

The new bargaining unit, organized with Minnesota Newspaper and Communications Guild – TNG-CWA Local 37002, brings together 10 frontline workers.

They announced their victory in a video posted on social media, calling themselves “part of the increasing number of nonprofit workers joining organized labor because we believe that our power plus your power equals more power.”

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Hope Community works out of the city’s Phillips neighborhood. Frontline employees work in the community to find alternatives to development through gentrification, and to grow a network of leaders who work for racial and economic equity.

The work requires long hours and is often stressful, Hope parks and power organizer Shruthi Kamisetty said. And like many jobs in the nonprofit sector, the wages are low.

“Everyone should get paid more,” Kamisetty said.

And she doesn’t just mean everyone in her bargaining unit.

Kamisetty, who has been on staff at Hope for almost two years, wants the union drive and contract campaign at Hope to be a catalyst for more worker power in the local nonprofit community, and many of her co-workers feel the same, she said.

“We have our grievances specific to Hope, but our campaign can’t be divorced from other (nonprofit) organizations,” Kamisetty said. “We’re grounded in our issues, but we’re going to use that as fodder and fuel to help others organize.”

Local union organizers report an increasing level of interest among nonprofit workers in collective bargaining recently.

In fact, Hope Community is the second nonprofit to unionize this summer. In June, employees of Jewish Community Action, a local nonprofit committed to racial and economic justice, won representation with Local 12 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU).

Members of the seven-person bargaining unit include community organizers, a business and office manager, a communications director and an outreach and engagement manager. In a statement, they said they are looking forward to bargaining a first contract with JCA.

“We repair the world as a ‘bnai brit’ – covenantal partners,” union members said. “Forming a union binds us in covenantal relationship with one another and commits us to take responsibility for one another as fellow workers. It also allows us to make more explicit the implicit covenant that forms our relationship with JCA as an organization and with our members.

“We are looking forward to entering this new covenant, one that brings us all towards a just world, together.”

Ripe for organizing? 

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on the local nonprofit landscape. The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits estimates organizations statewide saw their revenue drop by $1 billion in April alone.

Nonprofit workers have been hit hard by the budget problems. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported in July that roughly a third of nonprofit employees in Minnesota had filed for unemployment benefits since the coronavirus outbreak reached the state.

(MN Department of Employment and Economic Development)

Even before the pandemic, workers at nonprofits like Hope – advocacy, arts, environmental and social service organizations – were seeing lower pay than workers in both the for-profit and public sectors. Median pay for nonprofit workers, excluding those at hospitals, clinics and colleges, was about $18 per hour in 2018.

Making a career of nonprofit work, Hope workers say, usually means going into management. And climbing the ladder requires learning to squeeze as much programming as possible out of limited resources, while finding favor with the powerful foundations and donors who fund nonprofit work.

Workers closest to the mission, parks and power lead organizer Jake Virden said, are too often left without a seat at the table in nonprofit decisions. And that makes the industry ripe for union organizing.

“The people who drive the nonprofit ecosystem are billion-dollar foundations,” Virden said. “And yet a lot of our co-workers are working two or three jobs, part-time jobs on weekends or after work at Hope.

“There’s this idea we are acting out of our values or our mission. But I think a lot of people are waking up to the idea that there are these big pots of money, billions of dollars, and it’s the people who are well connected setting policies and agendas. But it’s the youth workers, the health care workers, the policy workers on the ground, doing the grunt work, who have good ideas and a lot to say, who are really shut out.”

A voice for workers 

Having won recognition of their union from Hope Community’s board of directors – a process Kamissety described as “not super smooth” – workers are turning their attention to the first contract. In addition to higher wages, they plan to seek greater clarity regarding expectations and disciplinary procedures.

They will also be looking for a bigger voice in the organization’s decision making. Virden said that for many of his colleagues, their lack of voice at work hit home during a recent all-staff meeting to discuss proposed changes to Hope’s mission statement. “What became clear to us was we were the very last people to see this mission statement, and it was already written,” he said. “The meeting was for us to just check the box.

“We’re the ones who do the work of the organization. All the grant money, accolades, prestige – it comes from the work we do in the community. So how is it management, the board and outside consultants have seen this document before we did?”

If it happened to them, it’s probably happening to workers at other nonprofits. That’s why, although their own organizing drive may be over, Hope workers haven’t stopped talking about the power of a union in the nonprofit workplace.

“I never thought about myself as a worker until we started our union campaign,” Kamissety said. “I’m working. I’m getting a wage. I depend on this wage to support myself. Yet I never thought of myself as a worker. So I’m very invested in making sure my friends, people at other nonprofits, know everyone can unionize.”

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

New labor college launching this spring in St. Paul

February 13, 2019 by

After months of planning, a small group of labor leaders, activists and scholars will open a new college this spring in St. Paul, inspired by the belief that working people can build the labor movement of the future, in part, by looking to the past.

Set to begin classes in April, New Brookwood Labor College is modeled after a school for labor organizers that operated between 1921 and 1937 in Katonah, NY. It attracted over 600 students, who went on to lead major union and civil rights campaigns across the country in the decades to come.

[New Brookwood is currently accepting applications for entry into its first cohort through March 15. Apply at newbrookwood.org/apply.]

The school’s lifespan was brief, said Robyn Gulley, a co-founder of New Brookwood and local labor and human rights organizer. But its impact was great.

“It’s hard to read a book about labor history without coming across Brookwood Labor College,” Gulley said. “Brookwood left behind a tremendous legacy. And it was coed, it was racially diverse, it was ethnically diverse at a time when that was basically unheard of.”

Brookwood’s brand of inclusiveness and forward thinking hasn’t lost its relevance in an era of intense cultural and political divides in the U.S. And the gaps between rich and working people have widened back to the bloated levels of the 1920’s, when the original Brookwood began educating organizers.

If ever there were a time for a reboot, labor historian Peter Rachleff said, this is it.

“The Brookwood Labor College came along at a time when the labor movement needed critical thinking – how to organize when traditional forms of work (skilled manual labor) were being challenged by assembly lines and scientific management; how to organize a workforce that was increasingly diverse by race, gender and ethnicity; how to organize when corporate management was dead-set against negotiating with unions; how to organize when employers were able to use laws and court decisions to undercut workers’ rights,” Rachleff said. “Does this sound familiar?”

New Brookwood classes will take place at the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul.

A ‘rigorous’ curriculum

Rachleff is co-executive director of the nonprofit, independent East Side Freedom Library, which will host New Brookwood classes on St. Paul’s East Side.

Rachleff and Gulley, who served as an instructor in the University of Minnesota’s undergraduate leadership program, will be among the academics co-leading courses with local organizers. They were part of a planning group that included leaders of roughly a dozen local unions and community groups that often work in partnership with the labor movement. Staff from the U’s Labor Education Service and Metro State’s Advocacy and Political Leadership program also participated.

Together, they developed New Brookwood’s “core curriculum” of four classes, offered two at a time, to cohorts of between 10 and 15 students. Organizers anticipate as many as three cohorts per year.

New Brookwood is intentionally not accredited and offers no grades or diplomas, a structure that keeps tuition costs low and makes the school as accessible as possible.

The curriculum, according to promotional materials, is “rigorous.” Students are expected to produce work that “will advance both the immediate and long-term goals of the labor movement.”

Gulley said the New Brookwood experience won’t end with core classes.

“Our goal is to figure out ways to keep people engaged on a continuing basis, so that we’re building up community and a diverse group of people from different unions who can get together and talk about how to unify on pressing issues,” she said.

Educating a working class

New Brookwood isn’t out to replace existing labor-education programs, organizers say. But it is intended to be something different.

“You can’t throw a stone without hitting a sign advertising an MBA program,” Gulley said. “There’s really not anything like New Brookwood.”

Most existing labor courses or trainings focus on meeting the needs of workers already in unions, whether it’s bargaining better contracts, filing grievances or serving as elected officers.

But the share of the workforce represented by unions has dwindled in recent years, as anti-union politicians, employers and court rulings have made it harder for workers to join together. In response, New Brookwood organizers envision a more outward-looking curriculum.

“We have to think about how we can bring new people into the labor movement,” Gulley said. “We deeply believe that we can’t do that without dealing with oppression and power imbalances.”

Rachleff said New Brookwood “will offer a space, a framework and opportunities for dedicated instructors and workers to come together to find the answers needed for our times,” from how working people push back against corporate and political attacks to how they organize in a changing economy.

At its core, Gulley added, New Brookwood’s mission mirrors the original Brookwood’s mission.

“We’re educating workers into the working class,” she said.

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

DFL campaign workers unionize

August 14, 2018 by

MN_DFL_blue_previewCampaign workers at Minnesota’s Democratic Farmer Labor Party joined the labor movement last week.

After a majority of DFL coordinated campaign workers expressed support for the union drive, two worker representatives approached party chair Ken Martin on Friday with a request for voluntary recognition of their union, which he granted.

“Campaign workers are at risk for long hours, low wages, exploitative conditions and hostile work environments,” DFL coordinated campaign worker Nathan Lewicki said. “Forming a union protects the workforce and ensures fairness for all.”

Although the bargaining unit has yet to be finalized, more than 50 DFL staffers are likely to be eligible, according to Ihaab Syed, secretary of the Campaign Workers Guild. It marks the CWG’s largest successful organizing drive since launching as an independent, nationwide union last year.

CWG currently represents about 125 non-management workers on issue-based and political campaigns in eight states. That already includes Minnesota, where workers on two active political campaigns have collective bargaining agreements.

The fledgling union will nearly double its membership once coordinated campaign workers in Ohio and Minnesota approve first contracts. Coordinated campaigns are the core organizing apparatus for state Democratic parties during major elections.

Syed said DFL workers pressed Martin to recognize their bargaining unit last week so that the issue would be settled before the party’s get-out-the-vote blitz for today’s statewide primary election.

The state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, cheered DFL workers’ decision to unionize.

“We commend the DFL Party and Chair Ken Martin for voluntarily recognizing their workers’ choice to organize with the Campaign Workers Guild,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy said. “All working people, whether they be educators, construction workers, nurses, or campaign staff, should have the freedom to join together to negotiate a fair return on their work.”

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

Minnesota gained 46,000 union members last year, reversing decade-long decline

January 19, 2018 by

Working people’s voice grew stronger last year in Minnesota, where organizing gains pushed union membership to its highest point since 2004, according to federal data released today.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual report on union membership shows Minnesota gained 46,000 union members from 2016 to 2017, the largest year-to-year gain since 2000. The state’s union population, 411,000, was at its highest since 2004.

Union members grew as a share of Minnesota’s total workforce as well. Union density increased from 14.2 percent to 15.2 percent in 2017, its highest point since 2010.

The report shows Minnesota unions are reversing a trend of decline that began over a decade ago.

“These numbers show that despite political threats from Washington, more working Minnesotans are exercising their freedom to join together in unions to negotiate for a better life,” said Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy, president of the state’s largest labor federation.

Driving the uptick in union membership are organizing gains Minnesota unions have made recently on several fronts, including the service sector, retail and higher education. Some highlights include:

• More than 500 retail janitors, after a six-year campaign with the Twin Cities worker center CTUL, won their first union contract last February.

• Retail workers at three Minneapolis co-ops – Seward, Eastside and Linden Hills – voted to unionize in 2017, as did workers at Whole Foods Co-Op in Duluth.

• The Mayo Clinic’s move to outsource food-service work in 2016 sparked a flurry of organizing activity in Rochester. Some 250 workers have formed four separate bargaining units with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, which went from representing about 50 percent of Mayo’s food service staff to representing all of them.

• Adjunct faculty members at colleges and universities nationwide are forming unions to push back against a higher-ed model they consider unsustainable. In Minnesota, SEIU Local 284 helped adjunct faculty at Augsburg and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design organize in late 2016.

The BLS report also reflects renewed emphasis Minnesota’s public sector unions are putting on membership. With the U.S. Supreme Court likely to rule so-called “fair share” fees unconstitutional later this year, teachers and other public-service workers are scrambling to shore up support among their co-workers.

AFSCME Council 5, which represents over 40,000 public-service workers statewide, converted thousands of “fee payers” into full-fledged members last year, on top of organizing new units at seven different employers, bringing 225 new members into the fold.

Of course, an increase in union power isn’t just good for union members. “It’s no coincidence that as union membership increased in 2017, so did Minnesotans’ average wages,” McCarthy said. “Union workers set standards for wages and safety that benefit all working people.”

Nationally, the number of union members rose by 260,000 to 14.8 million. Union density remained unchanged at 10.7 percent.

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Bobby Kasper: On Labor Day, let’s celebrate our freedom to join together

August 31, 2017 by

Bobby Kasper

This Labor Day is more important than ever for working families across this country. Union members can take back their freedom by getting out there and taking action.

We must get out there and organize our union membership. We need to have a strong commitment to internally organizing our union membership. We must talk to our union members one by one and listen to what they have to say.

It is important to know that the majority of Americans have a positive view of our unions. We need to fight and stand up against corporate-backed policies and politicians that have looked to strip away our pay, benefits and workplace safety.

Brothers and sisters, it comes down to this: Are we going to stand up and fight for our freedom to have a better life and our right to be a union member? We must be committed to working together in solidarity to have a stronger voice.

Corporate-backed politicians are out to destroy us and take away our freedoms – freedoms that labor unions and working people gave their blood and guts to win for those of us working today.

It is our responsibility to get out there and organize and volunteer and stand up for higher education and to push for more American manufacturing, accessible health care and civil liberties for all races in this country. Yes, our civil rights are under attack, our labor rights are under attack and our rights to join a union are under attack.

Labor Day is not only a time to enjoy with our families, but also it is a time for us to recreate collective action. In America we must continue to value our personal freedoms, and American working families deserve the freedom to bargain collectively for fair wages, good benefits, a safe workplace and a secure work environment.

We have an obligation to get out there and fight back the anti-union legislation that is coming our way. From right to work – which is nothing but a misleading policy and law that could destroy our labor unions’ future – to the removal or repeal of prevailing wage laws, these attacks threaten American unions and our freedom to prosper.

We must tell the facts and spread the word that labor unions don’t just raise wages, they give working people voice, control and self-determination. Unions elevate fairness, justice and high standards throughout the economy.

Sometimes non-union workers benefit from unions as well. States with higher union density have a better quality of life, with stronger economic growth, better education and longer life expectancy.

Our work as a labor movement is gaining steam. In fact, we are riding a wave of pro-worker momentum. Because of our unity at the bargaining table and the ballot box, working people in 2016 won the largest pay increase in years.

Yes, collective action is on the rise. Across the country, working people are taking action to win the freedom to negotiate a fair return on our work so we can provide for our families. We are breaking ground everywhere, from manufacturing to digital media, hospitality to higher education.

This is good news! And we must promote our freedom to stand together, to organize in numbers and to negotiate our fair share that the American worker deserves. Our passion and commitment are the keys for union members to promote the freedom to organize without intimidation from the boss.

These are exciting, challenging times for our nation and for our movement. This Labor Day, let’s renew our commitment to building an economy that works for all of us. Let’s celebrate our freedom to work together. Let’s build on the incredible achievements America’s working people have made through collective action.

Happy Labor Day!

– Bobby Kasper is President of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, representing over 100 affiliate unions with more than 50,000 members in Ramsey, Washington, Dakota and Chisago counties. Learn more about the federation and its work at http://www.stpaulunions.org.

Filed Under: Labor Voices Tagged With: , , ,

Local organizer glimpses challenge of building worker power in South

August 28, 2017 by

Tastad-Damer outside Nissan’s Canton production plant on the day of the union election. (submitted photo)

Lured by generous tax incentives and low wages, foreign automakers have steadily increased their footprint in Southern states over the last two decades. Their employees earn less than union members at the Big Three domestic automakers, but attempts to organize workers in the South’s new, foreign-owned plants have almost always failed.

The most recent defeat came earlier this month, when workers at Nissan’s Canton, Miss., plant voted by nearly a 2-to-1 margin against forming a union.

The United Auto Workers devoted several years to organizing the Canton facility’s 3,500 workers (3,000 more contract workers at the plant were not eligible to join the union), and the UAW projected confidence as the Aug. 3-4 election approached. But in the weeks leading up to the vote, Nissan unleashed a “vicious campaign … of intense scare tactics, misinformation and intimidation,” UAW President Dennis Williams said.

Twin Cities-based union organizer Diana Tastad-Damer saw that campaign firsthand. An organizer on staff at United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1189, Tastad-Damer spent 10 days on the ground in Mississippi, answering the UAW’s call for help reaching out to Nissan workers and drumming up support for the “Union Yes” campaign. When an organizer familiar with Walmart’s anti-union tactics sounds outraged, it gets our attention. Here’s our interview with Tastad-Damer, which has been edited for length and clarity.

UA: What kind of response did you get from workers you visited in advance of the election?

DT: They were pretty much half and half, but the company sent workers door hangers that said “No Trespassing UAW.” Quite a few people had those on the door, and I obviously didn’t talk to them.

UA: Sounds like door hangers weren’t the only stops pulled out by Nissan’s anti-union campaign.

DT: They had “Vote No” signs and signs that said “Union” with an X through it… Nissan threatened to take away people’s leased cars. They put up billboards, they aired radio ads and TV commercials talking about how many jobs they’ve brought to Mississippi and how people are lucky they chose Mississippi. Nissan even rented huge air conditioners leading up to the vote. They normally don’t have air conditioning in that plant, but for three weeks life was great for everyone.

UA: What kind of influence does this plant have on its surrounding communities, and how did that play out in the organizing campaign?

DT: Working at Nissan is one of the better paying jobs in Mississippi, and the plant employs over 6,000 people, even though half of those are temps. Even making $15 as a temp worker is more than double the state’s minimum wage of $7.25.

UA: So what were workers fighting for?

DT: It was less about wages because their wages were good money in the South. But they’ve seen their pension frozen, their health care premiums go up and their coverage drop. One worker brought his insurance card to the pharmacy, but they told him his account was frozen. It stayed frozen for about six months, and it wasn’t until at one of the captive audience meetings with management where he brought this up … and a day later an HR person went up to him and said it’s been resolved.

UA: What did you hear from workers voting no?

DT: A lot of workers told us Nissan doesn’t have to negotiate with the union, so I’m not going to risk losing my job and have them shut down the plant. What Nissan was telling them was that the plant would be shut down if they voted for the union. Of course, that’s illegal. (The National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint against Nissan, which disputes the charges.) You can talk about having a voice, but these workers felt the pressure: managers constantly talking to them one on one, hour-long captive audience meetings every day until the vote.

UA: Did you sense something different about the challenge organizing poses in the South?

DT: A Levi’s plant down there is union, and some people drive three to four hours to go to work there because it’s one of the best paying jobs. But for some reason if you want to create a union, it’s a problem.

UA: What do you take back from the experience?

DT: Never trust the company unless it’s in writing and legally binding. The UAW thought they had Nissan in a corner to remain neutral because … Nissan is union in the rest of the world, just not in the U.S. But as soon as they filed, it was bam – hardcore union busting.

Filed Under: Organizing Tagged With: , , , ,

Area Red Cross workers join AFSCME after first-of-its-kind union drive

November 14, 2016 by

Project1_Layout 1In his 16 years working as a phlebotomist for the American Red Cross, Roy Nodsle had seen union-organizing drives start and sputter before. But last summer, he finally saw one cross the finish line.

“I’ve never been union before, but the idea of a group of people having a voice to talk about our workplace always sounded like a good idea to me,” the 62-year-old Carlos resident said. “So I was excited and a little apprehensive, but compared to the other (organizing drives), it went really well.”

By a 3-to-1 margin, Nodsle and other North Central Region Red Cross workers voted in October to form a union, joining Local 3931 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

The new bargaining unit includes nearly 300 phlebotomists, couriers, material coordinators and other frontline workers at Red Cross outposts in Minnesota, western Wisconsin and eastern South Dakota.

It’s the first successful organizing effort since AFSCME and seven other international unions reached a nationwide labor-peace agreement with Red Cross in 2013. The employer agreed to remain neutral during organizing campaigns, AFSCME Council 5 organizer Marybeth Juetten said.

“On our side of it, we weren’t running a negative campaign,” Juetten said. “We were really listening to the workers, and what we learned really quick was they really love what they do. They love their clients, love their work and want to keep this organization healthy and thriving.

“To do that, they need a voice in the workplace. And that’s what this drive was all about.”

Talks on a first contract have yet to begin, but Local 3931 has started pulling together a negotiating team. That’s no small challenge for a bargaining unit spread across three states, with members whose schedules change weekly.

“This group never sits still,” Juetten said. “They work all over the map, whenever and wherever blood mobiles are in demand.”

Nodsle said he hopes bargaining yields improvements in workers’ wages and benefits, as well as a pathway for “getting everybody” – management and frontline staff – “to work together toward the same cause.”

As for being the first major unit to organize under the nationwide neutrality agreement, Nodsle said it felt “pretty good.”

“But both parties – AFSCME International and American Red Cross – are working extremely hard at this, and it’s been amazing for me to watch,” Juetten said. “Both parties have taken a very professional approach.”

Filed Under: Organizing Tagged With: , , , ,

Judy Wahlberg: The sexist agenda hidden in Harris v. Quinn

June 5, 2014 by
AFSCME Council 5 President Judy Wahlberg

AFSCME Council 5 President Judy Wahlberg

Any day now, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on Harris v. Quinn, the most important labor law case in decades. The lawsuit is another attempt to kill off public employee unions. It centers on a small group of Illinois home care workers who sued to avoid paying fees to the very union that would negotiate their wages and benefits. Their lawyers are asking the high court to go even further and rule against the right of all public workers in America to choose a union.

While that’s troubling enough, the case is about more than workers’ rights. It potentially opens up yet another front in the nationwide war on women now raging from state legislatures to our doctor’s office and our bank accounts. Here’s why.

The face of the working poor is a mother struggling to feed, shelter and educate her children. She’s working multiple jobs, but still can’t get by. She can’t put healthy food on the table and she can’t afford to live in a safe neighborhood. That’s because her profession is undervalued and her hard work isn’t recognized with a decent paycheck. Chances are she is a caregiver, one of millions of women who help us raise our children and care for our aging parents.

There are now more than 3 million home care and family child care providers in the United States, and more than 90 percent are women. With Americans living longer and baby boomers entering their golden years, it is expected that more than 5 million providers will be needed in the next five years to assist our growing, aging population.

Caregivers are with us from cradle to grave. Child care providers make sure our kids are healthy, learning and safe. Home care providers assist the elderly and people with disabilities who want to live in their own homes instead of an institution. These workers cook, clean, make beds and do laundry. Many also provide health-related care like changing bandages, monitoring medical equipment, and administering medication. It’s physically demanding work. Anyone who thinks that lifting children and helping a client in and out of bed every day isn’t work has probably never done it.

Yet many of these jobs pay too little, have inadequate benefits, and don’t provide women with a path out of poverty so they can support their families.

That’s why so many women have come together to form unions. The average salary for home care workers and child care providers is about $20,000. But caregivers represented by a union have seen their salaries increase by as much as 65 percent, reflecting the grueling demands of the work.

It’s simple. When women join unions, we gain a voice on the job. That gives us the power to get the fair and equitable compensation we deserve. We close the income gap. We climb out of poverty.

A ruling undermining unions in the Harris case would bring that progress to a halt and deal a significant blow to pay equity for women, as well as fair treatment in the workplace.

Let’s be candid about why cases like Harris v. Quinn are rising to the Supreme Court. Women make up 45 percent of union membership and will become the majority by 2020. That has anti-worker forces worried. They know that if women enjoy collective bargaining rights and have a strong voice in the workplace, the inequalities of the past will begin to fade away. Nearly 60 percent of women would earn more if they were paid the same amount as men, and the poverty rate would be cut in half.

We have already lost too much time and too much compensation owed for our work.

Caregivers have a better shot at the American Dream when they choose a union to represent them. The evidence of that is clear. The question now is whether the Supreme Court will side with hardworking women, or put the judicial seal of approval on income inequality.

– Judy Wahlberg is president of AFSCME Council 5, a union of 43,000 public service workers in Minnesota.

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

NLRB proposes rule changes to modernize, streamline organizing elections

February 5, 2014 by

National_Labor_Relations_Board_logo_-_colorSeeking to hasten an organizing process ripe for obstruction and fraught with delays, the National Labor Relations Board today proposed changes to the rules governing elections that determine union representation in most U.S. workplaces.

The NLRB, the federal agency that oversees union-organizing elections, voted 3-2 in favor of pursuing the rule change. In a press release, the board said the proposals “are intended to enable the Board to more effectively administer the National Labor Relations Act,” and are “aimed at modernizing processes, enhancing transparency and eliminating unnecessary litigation and delay.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who leads the nation’s largest federation of unions, called the rule changes a step toward fixing a broken system.

“When workers petition for an NLRB election, they should receive a timely opportunity to vote,” Trumka said in a press release following the NLRB announcement. “But the current NLRB election process is riddled with delay and provides too many opportunities for employers to manipulate and drag out the process through costly and unnecessary litigation and deny workers a vote.”

According to the NLRB, the proposed reforms include:

• Allowing electronic filing of petitions for election.

• Granting unions access to phone numbers and email addresses so that they can “communicate with voters using modern technology.”

• Streamlining pre-election procedures and post-election appeals.

The proposals are identical to changes proposed by the NLRB in 2011 but blocked by a district court because, with President Obama’s appointments stalled in the Senate confirmation process, the board lacked a quorum at the time. The Senate confirmed all five members of the NLRB in July 2013.

“With a Senate-confirmed five-member Board, I feel it is important for the Board to fully consider public comment on these proposed amendments, along with the comments we previously received in 2011,” NLRB Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce said.

The NLRB will accept public comments on the proposed changes – or make other suggestions for improving the board’s election procedures – through April 7. For more information, go to www.nlrb.gov.

Filed Under: Organizing Tagged With: , , , ,

Report shows passenger service workers earn poverty-level wages at MSP Airport

October 29, 2013 by
State Rep. Ryan Winkler (right), co-author of a bill to raise Minnesota's minimum wage to $9.50 by 2015, greets Darcy Landau before a press conference outside Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

State Rep. Ryan Winkler (right), co-author of a bill to raise Minnesota’s minimum wage to $9.50 by 2015, greets Darcy Landau before a press conference outside Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

As a military veteran with a college education, Darcy Landau is overqualified for his job as a wheelchair agent at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Earning wages of $7.25 per hour, Landau struggles to make monthly car payments, pay back his student loans and meet his basic needs.

“If it weren’t for the VA,” Landau said, “I don’t know how I’d survive.”

Landau’s is hardly an isolated case. Low-wage jobs have provided the fragile foundation for the current U.S. economic recovery, accounting for more than half of the jobs created since 2010. As more and more adults turn to retail, service, hospitality and temporary jobs, public scrutiny of wages paid in those industries is increasing.

A report unveiled yesterday sheds light on the working conditions of Landau and roughly 600 other passenger-service workers at MSP, including cabin cleaners, wheelchair agents and motorized cart drivers. Its findings reveal that many earn wages at or near the legal minimum, even after many years on the job. Few can afford the health care insurance offered by their employers, and many  say they are forced to access public services like food stamps and Medicaid to meet their basic needs.

Jordan Ash, an organizer for Local 26 of the Service Employees International Union, which compiled the report, said the public is essentially “subsidizing poverty wages at MSP” to the tune of $1.7 million per year.

Local 26 has been working with passenger-service workers on a union-organizing drive for the last two years. But at a press conference outside Terminal 1 yesterday, workers and community leaders pointed to the report’s findings as yet another reason to raise the state’s minimum wage.

[Click here to sign the petition in support of a $9.50 minimum wage in Minnesota.]

“We can’t afford to live with a $7.25 minimum wage, to pay our bills,” said Misrek Anbesse, who has worked as a cabin cleaner for the last four years. “We have to look for a second job.”

“I have seven kids,” said Samson Yeshitla, who earns $7.25 working for G2 Secure Staff, a Texas-based contractor that provides Delta Air Lines with wheelchair agents and electric-cart drivers. “It’s hard to survive.”

Yeshitla is one of more than 300 parents working for poverty-level wages at the airport, according to Local 26’s report. Peggy Flanaganan, executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund-Minnesota, said increasing in the minimum wage would directly improve the lives of airport workers’ children, too.

“We know if we increase minimum wage to $9.50 by 2015, over 137,000 children will directly benefit,” she said, pointing to research by the Brookings Institution indicating a $1,000 increase in families’ incomes corresponds with tangibly improved educational outcomes for their children.

State Rep. Ryan Winkler, lead author of a bill to raise Minnesota’s minimum wage to $9.50 by 2015, also stood with airport workers. His bill, supported by the labor-backed Raise the Wage coalition, would increase wages for 360,000 Minnesotans, and boost purchasing power by $400 million throughout the state’s economy.

“It’s important to remember the economy is leaving behind a great many workers,” Winkler said. “Hard work should deliver somebody a decent quality of life. It’s about time we all start doing better.”

Local 26 already represents about 200 cleaning workers at MSP. Under the terms of their collective bargaining agreement, they earn, on average, $14 per hour with health benefits.

That’s why workers like Landau aren’t just fighting for an increase in the minimum wage; they’re also working to form a union.

“This is only the beginning,” Landau said. “We’ll continue to fight until we get justice.”

Airport workers Samson Yeshitla (left) and Misrek Anbesse join a press conference in support of raising the state's minimum wage outside Terminal 1.

Airport workers Samson Yeshitla (left) and Misrek Anbesse join a press conference in support of raising the state’s minimum wage outside Terminal 1.

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