Fifty years ago, another Romney was bad news for union members

November 1, 2012 by

A name certain to be in the headlines this November – for better or for worse – was also in The Union Advocate’s front-page headlines 50 years ago.

The top story in the Nov. 16, 1962, edition analyzed the results of gubernatorial races across the country: “Rocky, Romney, Scranton Win Big For GOP; Nixon, Others Defeated.”

George Romney, father of the Republican nominee for president in 2012, was elected governor of Michigan, defeating the labor-endorsed Democratic incumbent John Swainson by 78,000 votes. The Advocate considered Romney’s win something of a fluke, noting the narrow margin of victory and “great hoopla” surrounding the prominent automobile executive’s campaign.

“Upsetting as the Romney victory was to the Democrats, it was the only statewide one scored by the Republicans, indicating that Romney won more on his glamour than on the Republican program,” The Advocate reported.

Of course, readers can expect a more dire tone in these pages next month if George Romney’s son upsets another labor-endorsed Democratic incumbent on Nov. 6, 2012.

[The Union Advocate’s “This Month in the Archives” feature offers a look back at what our newspaper was reporting from 5 to 100 years ago. Our digital archives are online, searchable and free to anyone. Click here for access.]

• 100 Years Ago: Gompers re-elected

In its Nov. 29, 1912, edition, The Minnesota Union Advocate celebrated the re-election of Samuel Gompers, the first president of the American Federation of Labor, to another term in office during the AFL’s national convention in Rochester, N.Y.

Gompers defeated Max Hayes of Cleveland “by an overwhelming majority and amid scenes of enthusiasm,” The Advocate reported. “In fact, the demonstration in his favor was never before equaled at any of his numerous elections.”

Gompers, who helped found the AFL in 1886, served as its president from 1886 to 1894, and again from 1895 until he died in 1924.

By 1912 labor newspapers like The Advocate were referring to Gompers as the “grand old man.” The Advocate described his opposition as stemming from “the radical wing of the convention.”

Gompers had this to say to delegates after his re-election: “If this American Federation of Labor makes changes that are fundamentally in conflict with the views for which I have contended all my life, I shall go along as a union man, but you will have to choose another president.”

• 75 Years Ago: St. Paul Teachers hold City Council accountable

After accepting wage cuts to help the City of St. Paul ride out dwindling tax revenues during the Great Depression, union teachers put the city on notice in November 1937 that they would sue, if necessary, for full payment of the salaries adopted in an ordinance passed by the City Council two years earlier.

“The teachers declare their intentions of fulfilling their responsibilities by teaching the entire month of December, but insist that the city will be held to strict accountability to live up to its contract,” The Advocate reported in its Nov. 25 edition.

In a resolution passed at a joint meeting of the American Federation of Women Teachers and Men Teachers, St. Paul educators pointed out that their average salary, $1,521, was almost $600 less than their peers in cities with populations above 100,000.

The resolution called on the City Council to use its full taxing power – the city’s levy had been below the $30 per-capita limit for several years – to fulfill the promises made to St. Paul’s teachers.

“We believe the people of St. Paul want the city to honor its just obligations,” the teachers’ resolution said. “We do not believe they want the teachers to teach for nothing.”

• 25 Years Ago: Homeless Union organizes in St. Paul

The National Union of the Homeless founded a St. Paul chapter Nov. 21, 1987, in a convention held at the Labor Centre, The Union Advocate reported in its Nov. 30 edition.

“About 200 homeless and low-income people turned out to hear speakers, elect officers and pass resolutions on homelessness and other issues,” Editor Barb Kucera wrote.

The homeless union got its start two years earlier in Philadelphia, advocating for job training and affordable housing for its members. “When homeless people were barred from the polls for having no permanent address, the union won lawsuits that reaffirmed their right to vote,” The Advocate reported.

St. Paul Trades and Labor Secretary-Treasurer David Foster gave the convention’s keynote speech. Organized labor, he said, is starting to recognize “we share a lot more with people at the bottom of American society than the people at the top.”

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Bobby Kasper: Obama, Democrats the right choice for union members

October 24, 2012 by

Bobby Kasper

We are at a political crossroads. The economy is still struggling from the devastatingly deep hole that President Obama inherited from George W. Bush. The political action that we take today through November 6 will decide our future as union members.

We have a responsibility to get out the vote, with our state and federation endorsed candidates. The working middle class needs to take the lead to get our economy back on track. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and their republican allies are willing to sabotage the recovery for their political interests.

I ask you today to commit to volunteer to phone, door knock and register to vote. This November’s election is about the future of our country. The labor movement must be committed to the policies of “prosperity economics” – reforms that will unite America by creating jobs, promoting economic security and rebuilding our democracy.

Four years ago working union families chose to go a different direction. We chose to stand for fairness, a voice for all of the middle class. Nov. 6 we have a choice to build a labor movement of working men and women to move America forward.

President Obama and the Democratic Party stand for the right to bargain collectively for a better life. As President, Obama stated “We’ve come too far to go back. Now is the time to continue moving that vision forward.”

– Bobby Kasper is president of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.

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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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Letter to the Editor: In this election, union members must keep their eyes on the prize

September 24, 2012 by

Mike Mazurkiewicz

I’ve been retired for a few years now. Although I don’t always know (or care) what day of the week it is, I do try to stay informed, and I brush up on national, local and postal issues – especially those affecting seniors and retirees. That leads me to some thoughts on something I do care about – the important 2012 presidential election. We have one political party saying government is the problem. The other says it’s the solution. It’s that simple, right?

I’m not so sure.

I see it this way: While government will sometimes be a problem and other times a solution, it will always be the prize. Why else would candidates and political parties spend millions upon millions of dollars on a job that doesn’t pay much? Because with the prize comes enormous power and control. The party winning the prize will have a dramatic impact on your jobs, your family, your retirements – and the future of our country.

Will they be a solution or a problem? Who deserves the prize? Cynics will say this election is a question of the lesser of two evils. Others will say it’s the evil of two lessers.

Maybe, but maybe not. I have voted in every election since I was 21, and over the years cast my vote for different political parties based on what I felt was important. But during the last few decades or so I have become increasingly disgusted with and opposed to the party that calls itself “conservative.”

Their policies turned our country’s budget surplus into a multi-trillion dollar deficit. What’s conservative about that? They continue to say that tax cuts for the wealthy will have a positive, “trickle down” effect for the middle class. But have they? No, they haven’t.

Now these “conservatives” want to double down on trickle down. I cannot simply stand by and let them run our nation into the ground and turn us into a third-world country.

I watched with disgust as “conservatives” approved (but didn’t fund) an unnecessary war, voted for wealthy tax cuts and sent American jobs to foreign countries via the passage of NAFTA and CAFTA. They warn us about their opposition party’s “socialist” policies, but they willingly sold the debts their policies created to Communists in China, and actually made socialists out of us all by using taxpayers to bail out Wall Street and the Banks. (Apparently profits belong to capitalism, but socialism is OK for losses).

“Conservatives” really stuck it to postal workers with “Postal Reform,” which put the only government agency that regularly made money into bankruptcy.

Oh sure, they say they care about us middle class people – while we’re in the womb! But after that – well, you’re on your own. Forget about supporting education, good jobs, social services, health care and a clean environment; you have to use your own personal responsibility and care for your own needs, until you’re needed for the next war.

I won’t allow the same political party most responsible for the declining state of our union try to tell me that they are the solution. And I won’t let its “Tea Party” faction try to convince me that their outdated and failed ideologies are a “new direction.” I’m not even going to listen to them anymore.

Well, maybe just a little bit. I did watch some of the Republican National Convention. What a joke! They accuse the president of not doing his job when they have done nothing but obstruct every piece of progressive legislation he proposed. They condemn the president for proposing a plan that is identical to a plan their own candidate proposed while governor of Massachusetts. They’re not just clueless; they’re shameless.

The fact is that our Congress hasn’t been doing its job – unless you think supporting an oligarchy while dissolving a democracy is their job. I’m done putting up with them.

– Michael Mazurkiewicz, St. Paul Area American Postal Workers Union retiree

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Statewide labor convention opens with political call to action

September 17, 2012 by

Election-year politics dominated Day 1 of the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s 51st Constitutional Convention in Rochester yesterday, as speakers, including U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, urged delegates to take action in support of labor-endorsed candidates up and down the Nov. 6 ballot.

Klobuchar, whose campaign for a second term has the state labor federation’s endorsement, said unions will succeed in the 2012 elections by sticking to their vision for the U.S. economy – one that creates shared prosperity, preserves opportunities for all and rewards those who work hard and play by the rules.

“As hard as this (economy) is, it could be so much worse,” Klobuchar said. “We have to keep focused on the economic agenda, and that’s what I’ve done.”

Klobuchar and other speakers drew a sharp distinction between President Obama’s economic plan and the vision offered by Republican nominee Mitt Romney. One candidate puts middle class families first, she said; the other serves the interests of the richest 1 percent.

“In order to bring the debt down – which it actually doesn’t do – they’re proposing $250,000 in additional tax cuts for people making over $1 million,” Klobuchar said. “That’s totally the opposite of what we need to do.”

Liz Shuler, secretary-treasurer of the national AFL-CIO, called Romney the “outsourcer in chief.”

“At Bain Capital he destroyed jobs and bankrupted companies like they were toys in his personal toy chest,” Shuler said, adding that Romney “even outsources his own bank accounts to Bermuda and Switzerland and other tax havens so he doesn’t have to pay his fair share to support this country.”

Delegates to the convention also heard about political efforts closer to home, including the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s plan to rebuild labor majorities in both houses of the Minnesota Legislature. Republicans in the House and the Senate, Minnesota AFL-CIO President Shar Knutson said, have done much over the last two years to divide workers, weaken unions and make it harder to vote – but they haven’t done much to create jobs.

“They tried to throw everything they could at us,” Knutson said. “They tried to weaken collective bargaining, gut prevailing wage, reduce safety standards and attack the professionals that educate our children… There were hundreds of attacks.”

Ultimately, DFL Gov. Mark Dayton helped stave off most attacks on workers. But as Nov. 6 draws closer, Knutson said, union members must remember how narrow Dayton’s election was.

“If 2.4 percent of union members had voted for Emmer instead of Dayton, Tom Emmer would be governor, and our state would look just like Wisconsin,” she said, referring to the all-out attack on collective bargaining that took place after Republicans swept control of that state’s government in 2010.

“If we do what we need to do – knock the doors, make the calls, get those fliers out at the worksite, talk to our friends and neighbors – we will elect a pro-worker majority to the Minnesota Legislature that will put us, middle class families, to work,” Knutson added. “If we fail, Right to Work will come back with a vengeance.”

After the conclusion of business Sunday, the convention floor became the site of a brief Labor 2012 campaign phone bank, as delegates called fellow union members on behalf of endorsed candidates from Southeast Minnesota.

The Minnesota AFL-CIO’s convention continues today. Delegates participated in workshops this morning, and were scheduled to hear from more speakers, including Dayton, this afternoon.

Today’s schedule also includes presentations on union organizing, the campaigns to defeat both constitutional amendments on the Nov. 6 ballot and the lockout of 1,300 American Crystal Sugar workers in Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa.

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St. Paul Steelworkers pitch manufacturing policy to Dems’ platform committee

August 3, 2012 by

Bob Ryan, a Steelworker from St. Paul’s Rock-Tenn paper-recycling plant, addresses the DNC platform committee.

Eighteen of the nation’s most prominent lawmakers listened last weekend as two Steelworkers from St. Paul testified about the importance of revitalizing the U.S. economy with initiatives designed to grow middle-class manufacturing jobs.

Bob Ryan and David Hallas, members of the United Steelworkers union, addressed the committee charged with drafting the Democratic Party’s platform in advance of its national convention Sept. 4-6 in Charlotte. The Platform Committee met in Minneapolis the weekend of July 27.

Ryan and Hallas offered committee members several suggestions for supporting American manufacturers and the middle-class workers they employ, including infrastructure investments, “Buy American” laws and trade agreements that level the playing field for domestic manufacturers.

“My manufacturing union job at the paper mill has given me a good, middle-class standard- of- living,” Ryan told committee members. “America now desperately needs a Democratic vision for how to address our national and local economic … challenges to keep us a strong economy in the global marketplace.”

Ryan is a member of Steelworkers Local 264, which represents 500 workers at the Rock-Tenn plant in St. Paul’s Midway district. Hallas is a member of Local 7263, representing 350 workers at the Gerdau Long Steel plant, located off Highway 61 and Interstate 494.

Ryan reflected for committee members on what the Rock-Tenn plant has meant to his family, which enjoys a “good, middle-class standard of living” as a result of his job, he said.

But like many manufacturing jobs, Ryan’s has been threatened in an era of global competition, as companies are increasingly able to exploit cheap labor supplies overseas. Rock-Tenn, a paper recycler, competes with companies that collect waste paper from municipalities and, in turn, ship it to recycling companies in China.

“Waste paper is now the largest export by volume to China,” Ryan said. “Instead of exporting waste paper, we should keep it here to create and sustain good jobs for value-added products in the U.S.”

To protect jobs like Ryan’s, he said, Democrats must commit to policies that reward companies for keeping jobs in the U.S. The party’s leaders also must commit to confronting China and other countries that fail to abide by the rules of fair trade, particularly when it comes to currency manipulation and protectionism.

“The Asian tiger refuses to play by the rules of global trade and sees trade as a one-way ticket to our market, without our having the competitive access to their own markets,” Ryan said. “This must stop.”

Hallas offered another suggestion for revitalizing the manufacturing sector: pairing increased investment in public infrastructure with “Buy American” laws that ensure the materials used to build and repair highways, bridges and water systems come from U.S. companies whenever possible.

Hallas talked about the pride he and other workers at Gerdau took in producing the 63-millimeter anchor bar bolts that secure the new Interstate 35-W bridge to bedrock in Minneapolis.

“I remember well that as the steel bars moved from one work station to the next, we steelworkers reminded each other of our skills and the importance of what we were doing,” he said.

Hallas also responded to criticisms of “Buy American” laws – that they create inefficiency and waste, that they could spark trade wars with other countries.

“Most industrialized countries already utilize their own domestic procurement requirements,” Hallas said, pointing to “Buy Canadian” laws and “Buy European” laws in Canada and the European Union. “Providing a preference for domestic content is fully within the rights of the United States.

“As national polling shows, Americans not only support U.S. manufacturers and their workers, but they also favor ‘Buy America’ preferences when their tax dollars are spent on public infrastructure projects. American voters understand what’s at stake: good-paying jobs and the strength of the U.S. economy.”

The U.S. economy’s manufacturing sector was hit particularly hard during the most-recent recession. According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the industry lost 2 million jobs – or 17 percent of its workforce – between December 2007 and December 2009, when U.S. manufacturing employment fell to its lowest level in six decades.

Efforts to stem the tide of job losses took a hit last month, when Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have eliminated a tax credit U.S. employers use to move jobs overseas – and replaced it with a 20 percent tax break for the costs of moving jobs back to the U.S.

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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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Oakdale community forum to tackle money in politics

July 12, 2012 by

River Valley Action will host a forum entitled “Follow the Money: How big money influences our elections and public policy” Aug. 8, from 7 to 8:30 p.m., in Peter O’Neill Hall at Guardian Angels Church in Oakdale.

From the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling to the influence groups like ALEC are having on the legislative process, Minnesotans are seeing the impact that big money is having on our elections, public policy, and civic dialogue. Panelists at the Aug. 8 forum will provide an in-depth look at the changes. Panelists include:

• Tom Horner, 2010 Independence Party candidate for governor.
• State Sen. John Marty, a DFLer.
• Beth Hawkins, a journalist from MinnPost.

The discussion will be moderated by former Minnesota House Minority Leader Matt Entenza.

The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

River Valley Action is a group for citizens of the St. Croix Valley area who value a healthy and informed civic community. The nonpartisan group is “associated with labor unions, nonprofit organizations and faith communities,” and it focuses on public policy at the state and local levels.

For more information go to www.RiverValleyAction.org.

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UNITE HERE Local 17: Bottom line is Vikes stadium will create jobs

June 20, 2012 by

The Vikings Stadium deal is done, and the members of UNITE HERE Local 17 are happy about that. We are happy about the jobs that it will provide over the next few years while it’s being built and about the jobs it will provide over the next 30+ years for our members.

Local 17 represents workers in the hospitality industry, including sports arenas. When Target Field opened, there was no doubt what that did for the hospitality industry in downtown Minneapolis, with people eating at restaurants, shopping, and staying in hotels. Our union, which was hit hard in a bad economy, regained members, saw wages rise and people called back from layoff. Target Field employs as many as 800 of our members at each game, many of them coming from inner city neighborhoods where unemployment is high.

As we listened over several months to the endless debates, opinions, and commentary about the jobs that would be created once the new stadium was built, we also heard a lot of misconceptions and untruths about the type of jobs these would be. Some politicians and some labor people described them as “dead end, low wage jobs.”

We need to respect all workers and not allow politicians to look down their nose and create “jobism.” We should not be taking a position that working in a stadium or a hotel is somehow less important. Not everyone will be a teacher or a lawyer or a skilled professional, and some who are will continue to vend the beer, sell the hotdogs and work in the bars, restaurants and clubs that will be part of the new stadium.

The fact is, for each of the jobs created at the site, many more are truly created; it’s a ripple effect that could hardly be quantified. Think of it this way: for every hotdog sold, not only is the cook and the server of the hotdog working, but the person who delivered the hotdogs to the stadium. There’s a person that keeps that person’s truck running and in good tires and brakes, which someone else makes, and then there’s the farmer who raised the pigs or cows to make the hotdogs and the people who make and print the bags they come in and the makers of mustard, ketchup, pickles and onions. And let’s not forget the bakers of the buns. We could go on and on.

This is how the economy is built. One job relies on the job of another and then expands to create more jobs. It is shallow and shortsighted to claim that we are giving billionaires millions. We are giving ourselves millions in pride in our community that cannot be estimated in dollars.

– Nancy Goldman is president of Twin Cities-based UNITE HERE Local 17. Martin Goff is senior vice president of Local 17. For more information on their union and the workers it represents, go to www.uniteherelocal17.org.

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Union volunteers take center stage at Labor 2012 kickoff event

May 18, 2012 by

Terri Buttleman of SEIU Local 284 urges union members to get involved in the Labor 2012 political campaign. “Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work,” she said.

Regional labor federations from both sides of the Mississippi River fêted their union volunteers yesterday, hosting a barbecue at the Operating Engineers Hall in Minneapolis to thank activists for helping stave off a flood of attacks on workers during the 2012 legislative session.

The event also kicked off the Labor 2012 political campaign in the Twin Cities, as union volunteers received a preemptive “thank you” for the work they will do to get out the vote for labor-endorsed candidates in November.

The St. Paul and Minneapolis Regional Labor Federations, in partnership with the Minnesota AFL-CIO, are set to ramp up their political campaign this summer, and it was clear from the speeches union leaders made yesterday that electing a pro-worker majority in the Legislature is their top priority.

“We get to choose who is going to be (at the Capitol) for the next two years,” said Steve Hunter, secretary-treasurer of the Minnesota AFL-CIO. “We need each and every one of us who’s in this room, and we need about 100 more for every one of us in this room. We’ve got to turn our people out to vote.”

If they succeed in electing pro-labor majorities to the Minnesota House and Senate, the state’s union members can be assured that right-wing attacks on workers won’t resurface in 2013. That includes reckless “Right to Work” legislation, which would weaken unions by forcing them to represent workers who don’t pay dues.

Last winter Republican majorities in the Legislature attempted to put RTW on the November ballot as a constitutional amendment. In response, unions rolled out an aggressive grassroots campaign that included member-to-member phone banks, door knocks and rallies at the Capitol.

“You made the calls. You attended the rallies. You were at the Capitol,” said Bill McCarthy, president of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation. “All of these things led to victories.”

The St. Paul and Minneapolis labor federations also set out to educate the public about the threat RTW poses to workers and their unions. With the help of workers released by their local unions to work on the RTW campaign, the federations hosted 120 briefings on RTW across the Twin Cities area.

Harry Melander, president of the Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council, thanks union members for their work to keep “Right to Work” off the 2012 ballot. “You are the people that made this thing go away,” he said. “Not forever, but you made it go away this year.”

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 released four workers to the RTW campaign. Local 1005 President Michelle Sommers said her members understand “that in order to keep what we have, we have to find a way to work together. We need to move forward, and we cannot move forward as long as we’re spending all of our time and money on fighting the attacks. We have to become proactive.”

RTW wasn’t the only attack on workers offered by Republican majorities, of course. The list of targets also includes teachers’ tenure rules, nurses’ professional standards and construction workers’ prevailing wages.

St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Bobby Kasper compared the 2012 session to a 15-round fight, which unions managed to win by judges’ decision.

“Do you know what the knockout punch is?” Kasper asked. “We need to take both the House and the Senate back so we can help Superman, our governor, Mark Dayton.”

The governor’s chief of staff, Tina Smith, received a standing ovation for the work Dayton’s administration did to fend off – often by veto – Republican attacks. While the governor, a former hockey goalie, has become adept at playing defense during his tenure in office, he would prefer to play some offense next year, Smith said.

“He cannot do that without Democratic, DFL majorities in the House and the Senate,” Smith said. “We need everybody’s help.”

Click to view a gallery of photos from the Labor 2012 campaign kickoff.

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