Burnham to succeed McCarthy as Minnesota AFL-CIO president

December 14, 2021 by

Bill McCarthy and Bernie Burnham

The Minnesota AFL-CIO General Board today elected Bernie Burnham as the statewide labor federation’s next president. The former Duluth teacher, who currently serves as Education Minnesota’s vice president, will succeed Bill McCarthy, who plans to retire Feb. 1 after more than six years in the state’s top union office.

The Minnesota AFL-CIO represents over 300,000 union members across the state. The federation supports more than 1,000 affiliate unions in their efforts to build worker power through contract and organizing campaigns, as well as the political process.

As a Pacific-Islander, Burnham is the first person of color elected to an executive office at the Minnesota AFL-CIO, and the second woman elected president. The vote was unanimous.

Burnham became active in the Duluth Federation of Teachers after taking an elementary teaching job 22 years ago and quickly. She served as a steward and member of the union’s racial equity teams, and on the district’s labor-management committee.

“I was a woman of color who took an unconventional route into the teaching profession,” Burnham said. “I didn’t know if I would be accepted, but my new union family embraced me.”

DFT members elected Burnham vice president in 2010 and president in 2013. She successfully ran for vice president of Education Minnesota in 2018.

In campaigning for state AFL-CIO president, Burnham pointed to her experience working in coalition with other unions to boost political activism and to elevate racial justice as an area of focus in the labor movement.

“It’s an honor and privilege to be elected to this office,” she said. “I am committed to continuing the labor movement’s fight for a state where everyone earns a fair return on their work, where every child can pursue their dreams and where every family that’s struggling today will get what they need, things like accessible healthcare, modern roads and bridges, safe housing and world-class schools.”

Burnham is co-chair of the Minnesota AFL-CIO Racial and Economic Justice Committee, which has taken a prominent role in the work of the federation during McCarthy’s time in office.

In an interview last week, McCarthy called the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin a turning point. “We just couldn’t stand by and not do anything,” McCarthy said.

Within a month, McCarthy had issued statements calling on the president of the Minneapolis police union to resign and affirming the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s commitment to “dismantling systems of oppression” inside and outside the labor movement.

“These are tough, hard issues, and we’ve just got to keep at it,” McCarthy said. “And I know we’ve failed along the way. We’ve made mistakes. But we cannot be a labor movement that’s effective in any way if we’re not working on social and racial justice issues.”

McCarthy’s accomplishments also include overseeing political programs that thwarted a wave of attacks on union rights at the state level. While anti-union lawmakers were passing right to work and repealing prevailing wage in Wisconsin and other Midwest states, pro-union lawmakers in Minnesota were passing the nation’s strongest wage theft protection law.

Minnesota unions were in better position to advocate for emergency protections after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, too. Under McCarthy’s leadership, the Minnesota AFL-CIO pushed Walz to issue an executive order protecting workers who speak up about unsafe conditions, and fought at the Capitol for expanded unemployment and workers comp.

“Thank God for Gov. Walz,” McCarthy said. “Here’s a man who, I think, really understood what the workers were going through, especially our frontline workers. We asked him to do certain things, to create executive orders to support workers – and he agreed.”

McCarthy also pointed to the expanded work of the federation’s nonprofit, the Minnesota Training Partnership, as a focal point of his presidency. The organization has leveraged grant funding to support Minnesota unions and their apprenticeship programs, helping prepare tradespeople, window washers, manufacturing workers and others for family-sustaining jobs.

“The more we’re supporting our affiliates, the bigger they’re going to be able to grow their unions,” McCarthy said.

A longtime member of UNITE HERE Local 17, the hospitality workers’ union, McCarthy first ran for union office 36 years ago, when he was tending bar at Cleo’s Lounge on the 50th floor of the IDS Tower in Minneapolis.

From there, McCarthy’s rise through the labor ranks began. After taking a job as business agent, McCarthy successfully ran for president of Local 17, a title he held for 15 years before being elected president of the Minneapolis Central Labor Council (now known as the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation) in 2002. He was seated as state president in 2015.

“I feel like I’ve left the organization in a good place,” he said. “We have a strong team, one of the best teams I’ve worked with. Whoever moves into the leadership role is going to have an opportunity to make it better.”

General Board members voted to name McCarthy president-emeritus for his career of service to Minnesota’s labor movement.

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Union volunteers provide Clinton, Sanders with boots on the ground in Minnesota

March 1, 2016 by
Left: Laborers President Terry O'Sullivan rallies a crowd of Hillary Clinton volunteers. Right: Bernie Sanders thanks members of the Minnesota Nurses Association for their support.

Left: Laborers President Terry O’Sullivan rallies a crowd of Hillary Clinton volunteers in Little Canada. Right: Bernie Sanders thanks members of the Minnesota Nurses Association for their support.

 

Energized by the prospect of keeping a pro-labor president in the White House, union volunteers in Minnesota are hitting the streets, working the phones and planning a major presence at tonight’s precinct caucuses, one of 14 Super Tuesday nominating contests nationwide.

[Click here to learn how to participate in the caucus process. Click here to learn where you caucus.]

While their enthusiasm may be shared, not all union activists agree when it comes to the best candidate for the job.

Members of AFSCME, the Carpenters, LIUNA, the Painters, the Pipe Trades, the Service Employees and other unions rallied in support of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in Little Canada on Saturday, with nearly 100 volunteers fanning out to knock on doors across the metro area.

 

SEIU volunteers map out a door-knocking route.
AFSCME Council 5 volunteers hit the streets for Hillary Clinton.
Carpenters cheer a speech by U.S. Rep. Tim Walz at the Clinton rally.
LIUNA General President Terry O’Sullivan
Members of IUPAT get a primer in door-knocking.
Union members rally in support of Hillary Clinton at the IUPAT hall in Little Canada.

 

Although Clinton has drawn an overwhelming majority of union endorsements, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has garnered support from National Nurses United and the Communication Workers of America, and both unions have mobilized their own network of volunteers in advance of tonight’s caucuses.

CWA members have been holding phone banks for weeks, and members of the Minnesota Nurses Association spent the days running up to tonight’s caucuses riding the “Bernie Bus” across the state, urging people to caucus for Sanders.

Differences in style and substance

Clinton’s union supporters point to their candidate’s extensive resume as a public servant, as well as her results-oriented approach. Sanders’ backers tout the senator’s independence and his fiery, populist message.

SEIU President Mary Kay Henry (R) knocks doors in support of Hillary Clinton with Local 284 member Nate Mathias and SEIU Healthcare MN member Robin Pikala (L).

SEIU President Mary Kay Henry (R) knocks doors in support of Hillary Clinton with Local 284 member Nate Mathias and SEIU Healthcare MN member Robin Pikala (L).

Nate Mathias, a pre-kindergarten teacher from Plymouth and member of SEIU Local 284, said he initially gravitated toward Sanders. But on Saturday, he knocked doors on St. Paul’s east side with SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, rounding up support for Clinton.

“I love a lot of the things Bernie is saying, but Hillary Clinton is a bit more of a pragmatist,” Mathias said. “I just think she has more of the experience and political savvy we need in a candidate.”

Henry, the SEIU’s highest-ranking elected officer, said Clinton met with rank-and-file members in seeking the union’s endorsement last year. “Members said, ‘She gets us, she’s tough and she fights,’” Henry said. “She understands the agenda we think matters most to working people.”

Policy differences, too, have steered unions into the Clinton or Sanders camp.

Sanders greets nurses in St. Paul.

Sanders greets nurses in St. Paul.

At a private reception with Sanders in St. Paul Feb. 12, many nurses said Sanders won them over with his support for expanding Medicare to cover everyone – and taxing Wall Street to pay for it.

“From the beginning, Bernie made total sense to me,” said United Hospital nurse Jennifer Michelson, who traveled to Iowa to volunteer for the Sanders campaign earlier this winter. “I like that he’s challenging the power structure of Wall Street, and I like that he wants to get profit out of health care.”

Energy policy, meanwhile, marks a substantive difference for many Building Trades unions, who draw work from pipelines and other energy-infrastructure projects.

Speaking at the rally in Little Canada, LIUNA President Terry O’Sullivan praised Clinton’s commitment to an “all-of-the-above energy strategy that works for us and works for our economy.”

High stakes

Despite their differences, union members on both sides agreed the stakes are high in 2016, and they hoped early enthusiasm among volunteers would carry over into the fall.

“Regardless of who our candidate is, if we don’t win we’re going to see a rollback of help for working families,” Mathias said. “We’re going to go back to policies that foster inequality and don’t do enough to help working people. We can’t afford that.”

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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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