TSA officers’ commemoration comes with warning against privatization

September 25, 2026 by

U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum joins AFGE Local 899’s commemoration of the 9/11 attack.As Transportation Security Adminis-tration agents at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport commemorated the 25th anniversary of 9/11 last month, union leaders made a point of warning against new attempts by the Trump administration to privatize U.S. airport security.

American Federation of Government Employees Local 899 held its observance on the mezzanine level of Terminal 1, perched above the ticketing counters. Two members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation, Reps. Betty McCollum and Kelly Morrison, joined the event, as did a representative of the Metropolitan Airports Commission.

Speakers mourned the lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001, and they reflected on the role TSA workers have played in protecting the nation’s airways from other attacks since then.

Local 899 Secretary Emily Woods was a child when the attacks took place, but she now works as a transportation security officer at MSP, serving in the agency created by Congress after 9/11 to standardize passenger screenings in the nation’s commercial airports.

“I may have been too young to understand Sept. 11 as it happened, but I understand its significance today,” Woods said. “Every time I put on my TSA uniform, I carry forward the responsibility that came from that day.”

“Every day, transportation security officers carry out that important mission,” Local 899 President Sharif Mehanna said. “They identify prohibited items, they respond to evolving threats and they protect millions of passengers – often under difficult conditions and without receiving the recognition they deserve.”

Difficult conditions have been all too common for TSA workers during the second Trump administration. They were forced to work without pay during extended Department of Homeland Security shutdowns, and Trump’s DHS appointees have sought to strip TSA officers of their union contract – a move AFGE has challenged in federal court.

Now, the administration is acting on a secretly devised plan, TSA Gold+, to privatize passenger screening at some airports. The agency recently informed AFGE of its intention to launch the program, which puts private contractors in charge of passenger screening and the screening technology itself, at three airports next year: Tampa, Fla.; Charleston, S.C.; and Des Moines, Iowa.

At MSP Airport, union leaders and federal lawmakers called the privatization scheme a dangerous departure from the system that has worked to protect travelers in the 25 years since 9/11.

Morrison said she opposes any effort to “change airport security that does not include input from the real experts, TSA employees.” McCollum agreed.

“I fly in and out of a lot of airports, and every airport is different,” McCollum said. “But the one thing I know is consistent is the professionalism and the training (of TSA officers). If this starts being privatized, it’s going to be scattered all over. You can come in with the lowest contract? That’s not who I want watching out for my constituents when they fly.”

Local 899 Treasurer Neal Gosman said privatization threatens to undermine TSA officers’ healthcare and pension benefits and their wage standards. But it would also come at a price to accountability, which officers take seriously.

“It takes years to get someone trained up fully; to replace us all with a privatized workforce would be a tremendous loss to federal security,” Gosman said. “The message that we learned after 9/11 is that we aren’t just here to do airport security, we’re here to do national security. That is the oath that we take as federal employees, and we do that work every day.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Community, Politics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Union members sound alarm on threats to Postal Service, mail-in voting

July 28, 2026 by

APWU members march outside the Eagan Post Office during a nationwide day of action.

EAGAN – Twin Cities postal workers rallied today to raise awareness about threats to Minnesotans’ mail service coming out of Washington, D.C.

Joining a nationwide “Protect Our Public Post Office Day of Action,” local members of the American Postal Workers Union demonstrated outside the U.S. Postal Service distribution center in Eagan, along busy Lexington Avenue.

Union members warned of multiple threats to mail service, including President Donald Trump’s latest nominees to the USPS Board of Governors and the president’s increasingly aggressive attempts to curb mail-in voting.

“This is a critical time for the USPS, and we need leaders at the top who understand this important institution and are committed to public service,” Dave Cook, president of the APWU’s St. Paul local, said.

The Senate is likely to vote soon on four nominees to the Board of Governors who, union members say, are unqualified to oversee the agency, particularly at a time when it is under financial pressure and attempting to modernize.

Not only do the nominees lack experience with the post office or the logistics and delivery industry, but all four are Republicans, prompting concerns from Senate Democrats that Trump may be looking to consolidate his power over a historically bipartisan board.

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) aired those concerns in a letter to GOP leadership earlier this month, warning that an “imbalance in representation would be unprecedented and would undermine public confidence in the Board’s ability to serve the public interest above any partisan political aims.”

At the rally, APWU members urged Minnesota’s senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, to vote against Trump’s nominees. Cook said he worries that the administration’s ultimate aim is greater privatization of the Postal Service.

“The deck is being stacked against us politically,” Cook said. “If we keep getting leaders who want to privatize it, then that’s the way it’s going to go. They will take the services that we provide, jack up the prices and make big profits.”

Supporters of privatization point to the Postal Service’s financial woes, and the agency – which operates without taxpayer support – recently leveraged its retiree-benefit funds to cover operating costs.

Workers say a better approach would be to allow the USPS to diversify its pension investments, limited by law to U.S. Treasury securities, to seek higher yields. The alternative, Cook said, is cutting hours and services at postal counters, raising prices for mail and packages and closing post offices.

“We are not a business,” he said. “We are not designed to run as a business. And trying to run us as a business is a big part of what’s gone wrong.”

Workers also blasted efforts by Trump and some congressional Republicans to undermine public trust in voting by mail. Despite voting by mail himself, Trump has long spread misinformation and debunked conspiracy theories that connect voting by mail to election fraud.

Passing the SAVE America Act, which would limit mail-in voting, has become the administration’s top legislative priority. And Trump signed an executive order in March – since tied up in a legal challenge – that creates roadblocks for mail-in voters and seeks to expand federal access to states’ voter information.

Cook said USPS employees consider mail-in balloting a “core service that week provide” and one that is growing in popularity locally and nationally.

“Every postal worker takes pride in serving postal customers and we clearly have a stake in protecting the USPS, but we’re not in this alone, everyone has a stake in what happens to the USPS in coming weeks,” said Cook. “We need people to reach out to their members of Congress, regardless of what side of the aisle they are on.”

The APWU represents about 200,000 postal employees nationwide.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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

Postal workers sound the alarm as DOGE gains access to USPS

March 21, 2025 by

APWU member Julia Maye-Leggett cheers during a rally outside the post office where she works as a clerk.

Postal Service employees aren’t sitting back and waiting to see how their agency’s new partnership with Elon Musk’s “DOGE” team plays out.

With rallies in Minnesota and across the U.S. this week, workers are saying “hell no” to any attempt at dismantling the public post office.

On Thursday, the Postal Workers union (APWU) staged a rally outside the downtown Minneapolis post office on a nationwide “U.S. Mail is Not for Sale” day of action, with events in over 100 cities.

On Sunday, March 23, local chapters of the Letter Carriers union (NALC) will hold a “Rally to Save USPS” at 11 a.m. on the Capitol steps in St. Paul.

Postal unions have been warning about the threat of privatization for years, but their sense of urgency ratcheted up in February, when President Donald Trump floated the idea of dissolving the independent agency’s leadership and putting it under the Commerce Department’s control – a move widely considered illegal.

Last week, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy delivered more concerning news for unions, announcing an agreement with DOGE to assist with “identifying and achieving certain efficiencies.”

Service cuts, massive layoffs and lawsuits over privacy concerns and executive overreach have followed DOGE’s infiltration of other federal agencies. Minnesotans at the rally in Minneapolis yesterday said they are worried the same will play out at the Postal Service.

“I’m very concerned that they are trying to rip the post office apart slowly but surely,” Julia Maye-Leggett, a lead sales and service clerk at the downtown post office, said. “But the mail is not for sale. It is for the people, and the people’s voice needs to be heard.”

“We have to start small and work big,” retiree Jean Brown (middle) said of pushing back against DOGE overreach.

Jean Brown, whose husband is a retired APWU member, joined the rally to raise her voice in support of workers like Maye-Leggett.

“It feels really good to be out here, especially because all the people working here have their jobs being threatened,” she said. “It means they’re getting the message that we support every one of them and want them to have a living-wage job with job security.”

The noon rally drew over 150 postal workers and retirees, members of other unions and activists eager to protest Trump’s agenda.

Several signs and chants took aim at Musk, Trump’s billionaire campaign donor who has amassed his private fortune, in part, on public-sector contracts and federal aid worth an estimated $38 billion over 20 years, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

Earlier this month, speaking remotely to an investors’ conference, Musk floated “privatizing” the USPS, even though the executive branch has no legal authority to dismantle the agency on its own, unions say. Its oversight spreads across the Office of Inspector General, the Postal Regulatory Commission, the Board of Governors and congressional committees.

Devin Brown, a member of APWU Local 647, traveled to the rally from St. Cloud.

But Kendall Smith, who joined the rally in Minneapolis, said he worries Musk and Trump will test the legal limits of their power over the USPS, “just like they are at all the other federal agencies that have had the people laid off by DOGE, even though they don’t have the authority.”

An Army veteran, Smith carried a handwritten sign that read, “73,000 Veterans Work at the Postal Service.” Military veterans who apply for postal employment automatically receive extra points in the hiring process, a practice known as “veterans’ preference.”

“I know a lot of people who finished up their service to our country, going from the military to the Postal Service,” Smith said.

Marlys Fox, who retired seven years ago after a 32-year career as a letter carrier in Columbia Heights, saw the importance of veteran’s preference firsthand.

“I watched the Vietnam veterans come in when I started as a letter carrier, at the same time as the Korean War veterans were retiring,” Fox said. “Then I watched the Gulf War veterans come in and so on. Each time they helped us fill the gaps.”

That tradition of service, Fox and Smith agreed, stands in contrast to what Musk and DOGE are doing to the federal government.

“We took pride in our work, and we worked our butts off,” Fox said. “Musk and DOGE are looting our country.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Wednesday is Public Post Office Day in Minnesota

November 25, 2019 by

Postal employees rallied against privatization outside the Minneapolis post office on Tax Day last April, reminding the public that the USPS receives no tax dollars for operating expenses. Sale of postage, products and services entirely funds its operations.

Gov. Tim Walz issued a proclamation last week declaring Wednesday, Nov. 27, Public Post Office Day in the state of Minnesota.

The proclamation, signed by both the governor and Secretary of State Steve Simon, is a token of the state’s gratitude for the U.S. Postal Service and its employees as they brace for a busy holiday mailing season.

Aaron Young, president of Local 7019 of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), began lobbying Walz’s office for a Public Post Office Day in Minnesota after learning Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington signed a similar decree last year.

“I was very grateful to Gov. Walz that he did this for us,” Young said. “Hopefully, other states can follow our lead.”

Many post offices across the state are expected to print and display Walz’s proclamation Wednesday, Todd Elkerton, president of the APWU’s St. Paul-area local, said. He called it a well-timed gesture to postal workers and letter carriers.

“Our members work a lot of overtime, trying to deliver the packages and letters for Christmas,” he said. “So it’s great that we’re appreciating the workers that deliver the mail during the holiday season.”

But the proclamation also comes at a pivotal time for the agency.

Postmaster General Megan Brennan has announced plans to retire Jan. 31, 2020. Members of the Postal Service Board of Governors, who are appointed by the president, have begun the process of appointing Brennan’s successor.

The APWU and other postal unions fear President Trump will push the board to appoint someone who shares his hostility to the agency’s public mission.

Last year, Trump formed a task force on postal reform that recommended selling the USPS to corporations for private profit. Unions warn that would result in higher shipping and mailing costs, reduced service and the end of guaranteed delivery.

The U.S. Postal Service delivers 470 million pieces of mail each day to all 159 million addresses in the country. In contrast, private companies likely would deliver only to areas where they can turn a profit.

Trump’s privatization plan has stalled since its unveiling earlier this year, but union members, Young said, worry that could change if a privatizer replaces Brennan as postmaster general.

“A lot of people get depressed when they hear this constant push out of DC for privatization,” Young said. “It seems like it is inevitable, like we’re not going to be able to stop it.”

But the APWU, the National Association of Letter Carriers and other postal unions aren’t giving up so easily. To keep the USPS public, unions are enlisting public support, gathering over 33,000 signatures (and counting) on a petition to “stop the postal sell-off” and ensure the new postmaster general doesn’t support privatization. (Add your name to the petition here.)

Unions are also lining up support in Congress and from elected officials like Walz.

“This proclamation, it gives people hope that we can stop the privatization push,” Young said. “It doesn’t have to be an inevitability.”

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Workers put Trump on notice: ‘The U.S. mail is not for sale!’

October 8, 2018 by

Craig Barrett, who said he has delivered mail for “16 winters” in St. Paul, rallies with fellow Postal Service employees on a national day of action.

Postal Service employees are bringing their unions together to push back against President Trump’s plans to privatize the federal agency.

And their solidarity is paying off.

Letter carriers, postal workers, mail handlers and other USPS employees in Minneapolis — and in communities across the country — rallied today with supporters, putting Trump and federal lawmakers on notice that the U.S. mail should not be for sale.

“As long as we can fight, we’re going to keep fighting to keep our Postal Service going strong,” said Harold Harvey, a member of St. Paul-based Branch 28 of the National Association of Letter Carriers, as he walked an informational picket line outside Minneapolis’ downtown post office.

Todd Elkerton, president of the American Postal Workers Union’s St. Paul chapter, noted the Postal Service is the only federal agency mentioned in the Constitution. “We believe the threat is real,” Elkerton said. “This will be the first time in U.S. history the president has come forward with a proposal to privatize the Postal Service.”

Several signs suggest Trump’s privatization push already is losing steam.

The president can’t sell off the Postal Service without the approval from Congress, and in just three months since Trump pledged action on the issue, a majority of House members and 42 senators have signed onto resolutions in support of keeping the agency under federal control. Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith and all five DFL House members are among the resolutions’ co-sponsors.

It may be no coincidence, then, that the recommendations of Trump’s hand-picked task force on postal reform, delivered to the White House in August, have not yet been released to the public.

Workers who rallied in downtown Minneapolis today said they fear privatization would drastically reduce mail service — especially in rural areas of the country — and cost many of the agency’s 500,000-plus employees their jobs. They pointed out the USPS is the nation’s second-largest employer of military veterans, and union jobs at the post office offer family-sustaining job opportunities to people of all educational backgrounds, races and ethnicities.

Sara Huebner was earning $12 an hour as a vet tech when she applied for a job delivering mail in St. Paul nearly six years ago. The college graduate said she gave up working in her field — “It was a livable wage versus a non-livable wage,” she said — but now worries privatization could send her back to square one.

Fellow St. Paul letter carrier Matt Falbo agreed. He pointed to Amazon as the employment model potential buyers might look to copy with the USPS.

Work at the post office “is good, honest work, and it could all go away if it’s privatized,” Falbo said. “They’ll cut our benefits. They’ll cut our pay. Everything we’ve fought for all these years will start going away.”

Trump and other supporters of privatization claim the Postal Service is broke and a drain on the federal budget, but neither claim passes the truth test. The agency is a self-sustaining, independent establishment of the federal government that does not receive taxpayer funding and relies solely on revenue derived from the sale of postal services and products.

Meanwhile, the Postal Service and its employees continue to enjoy overwhelming support from the Americans they serve. The most recent Pew Research Center poll, released in February 2018, showed that the USPS has an 88 percent favorability rating.

“The mail has been around for 200-plus years,” said Craig Barrett, who has delivered mail for 16 of those years. “It’s something everyone throughout the country relies on, and we’re here to fight for it.”

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

Postal unions call National Day of Action to stop privatization

October 3, 2018 by

Postal Service employees and their customers will rally across the country Monday in opposition to President Trump’s proposal to privatize the U.S. mail.

The National Day of Action has support from all four postal unions, including the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) and the Postal Workers (APWU).

In the Twin Cities, union members and supporters will rally over the noon hour Oct. 8, outside the Minneapolis Post Office, 307 S. 4th Ave.

Trump announced his interest in turning over the USPS to private hands in June, and his administration later directed a task force to look into overhauling the mail.

That committee has yet to release its report, but the idea of privatization already has drawn formal – and bipartisan – resistance in Congress.

Last month, Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith joined 26 colleagues from both parties in co-sponsoring a resolution to keep the U.S. Postal Service under the control of the federal government.

“It is the sense of the Senate that Congress should take all appropriate measures to ensure that the United States Postal Service remains an independent establishment of the federal government and is not subject to privatization in whole or in part,” the resolution said.

A similar resolution in the House has drawn 197 co-sponsors, including four from Minnesota: Reps. Betty McCollum, Tim Walz, Rick Nolan and Collin Peterson.

Fully privatizing the Postal Service would require Congress to act, and the early, bipartisan support for the resolutions indicate Trump has a steep hill to climb if he pushes forward on the issue.

But postal unions aren’t taking any chances. They warn that privatization would increase prices for consumers, threaten service in rural parts of the country and undermine good jobs.

What’s more, privatization is a solution in search of a problem. The USPS is self-sufficient; taxpayers do not subsidize its operations.

“Privatizing the Postal Service is not in the public interest or the interest of postal workers and would be nothing more than a raid by corporate pirates on a national treasure,” the APWU said in a statement.

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

Postal workers to Staples: ‘The U.S. mail is not for sale!’

April 30, 2014 by

web.staples-staplesU.S. Postal Service employees from the Twin Cities rallied with supporters April 24 outside a Staples store in Roseville, part of a nationwide day of action opposing plans to put USPS service counters inside Staples locations across the country.

Already, 82 Staples stores in Georgia, California, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts house USPS service counters, and postal administrators hope to expand to other locations – and, potentially, other retail chains – if the pilot program is successful.

But union members at the rally decried the pilot program as a privatization scheme that threatens middle-class jobs and undermines the security of the mail.

Supporters of the Stop Staples campaign march outside the Roseville location during a nationwide day of action.

Supporters of the Stop Staples campaign march outside the Roseville location during a nationwide day of action.

All four unions representing USPS workers – the American Postal Workers Union, the National Association of Letter Carriers, the National Postal Mail Handlers and the Rural Letter Carriers – are united in opposition to the program.

“For a while we splintered, but we’re standing together on this,” said Dan Garhofer, president of St. Paul-based Branch 28 of the Letter Carriers.

“If you pick on one of us, you get all of us,” added Mike Zagaros, president of Branch 9 in Minneapolis. “That’s what unions are all about.”

Increased access – at a cost

The Staples plan won support from Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe as a way to increase public access to postal services, but postal union members raised several objections at the rally.

Allowing Staples employees to do postal work, they said, undermines the security of the mail. Uniformed postal workers swear an oath to protect the safety and security of the mail. They must pass a background check before being hired, and, once on the job, they go through trainings that equip them to uphold their oath.

Additionally, workers say the pilot program threatens USPS jobs, which offer middle-class wages and benefits, in favor of low-wage, high-turnover jobs like the ones at Staples.

“This is an attack on the postal unions,” Zagaros said. “This is an attack on the middle class. This is an attack on good-paying jobs.”

AFSCME Council 5's Eliot Seide pledges support for postal workers.

AFSCME Council 5’s Eliot Seide pledges support for postal workers.

Community support

The rally drew about 100 people, including U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, a DFLer from Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, and Mike Obermueller, the DFL-endorsed candidate in the state’s 2nd District.

Ellison called the Postal Service “the great American melting pot” when it comes to providing middle-class employment, and he noted its commitment to hiring military veterans upon their re-entry into the workforce.

The strong turnout, Ellison added, was proof postal workers are not alone in the fight to stop Staples. “May America always stand with the post office,” Ellison said. “You are not alone. We are with you. Do not put our mail up for sale.”

Representatives of other unions, including the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, also pledged support for the Stop Staples campaign.

“We want the profits from the Postal Service to go back into the Postal Service, not some CEO’s pocket,” Minnesota Nurses Association President Linda Hamilton said.

Added Eliot Seide, director of Council 5 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees: “Staples can sell paperclips, but they can’t sell the mail. We won’t stop until Staples gives up its claim, and the mail is handled by professional postal employees.”

St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Bobby Kasper speaks at the Stop Staples rally in Roseville.

St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Bobby Kasper speaks at the Stop Staples rally in Roseville.

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

Postal unions plan ‘Stop Staples’ protests April 24

April 2, 2014 by

stop-staples-275Staples and the U.S. Postal Service have cut a deal that will replace full-service post offices with privately run post offices inside Staples stores. These knock-off post offices will not be staffed with Postal Service employees.

This back-room deal jeopardizes the mail service, local post offices and thousands of middle class jobs, postal workers say. That’s why the American Postal Workers Union is organizing “Stop Staples” events nationwide April 24.

Locally, activists will target one or more Staples stores in the Twin Cities. Monitor The Advocate’s website for details.

The APWU’s Stop Staples campaign has the backing of the National Association of Letter Carriers, as well as the mail handlers’ and rural letter carriers’ unions.

Visit www.stopstaples.com for more details and to sign a petition in support of the campaign.

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

Letter to the Editor: State Fair trip provides another sign of postal privatization

September 30, 2013 by
The Minnesota State Fair’s on-site post office had a new look in 2013 (right), ditching the U.S. Postal Service logo present a year earlier – and stoking concerns about privatization of the postal service.

The Minnesota State Fair’s on-site post office had a new look in 2013 (right), ditching the U.S. Postal Service logo present a year earlier – and stoking concerns about privatization of the postal service.

Our Minnesota State Fair prides itself in offering new things to be found on the fairgrounds each year. But this year, I found one of the State Fair’s new offerings distressing – and insulting – to me.

I have regularly attended our “Great Minnesota Get-Together” since childhood, and for as long as I can remember the U.S. Postal Service has maintained an on-site post office, providing fairgoers with complete mailing services as well as offering special souvenir cancellations. It also provided St. Paul postal workers with choice temporary assignments.

Those days appear to be over. This year the eagle on the decades-old USPS mailbox was covered over with the corporate competitor UPS logo.

Postal management’s plan to privatize the people’s post office marches on. From the fair to our neighborhoods – one distribution center, one post office, one union job and one mailbox at a time.

You can help prevent further erosion, preserve a people’s post office and protect union jobs by asking your congressional representatives to support The Postal Service Protection Act (S.316 in the Senate and H.R. 630 in the House).

– Mike Mazurkiewicz

The writer is a retired St Paul postal clerk and former editor of the newsletter for members of Local 65 of the American Postal Workers Union, “The Postmark.”

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

Strike threw a monkey wrench into Montgomery Ward’s holiday plans 75 years ago

December 1, 2012 by

Kris Kringle has graced The Union Advocate’s pages in several forms over the years. In 1962 his beard was used as a symbol of the union advantage.

More than 30 workers in St. Paul threw a monkey wrench into Montgomery Ward’s holiday-shopping rush Dec. 6, 1937, walking off the job after management at the mail-order company’s University Avenue plant refused to negotiate with their elected union representative, Warehouse Employees Local 20,297.

The picket line drew 300 supporters on the strike’s first day, according to The Union Advocate.

A week later police conducted a “mass arrest” of picketers, who were charged with disorderly conduct. Police levied the same charge against a Montgomery Ward detective accused of entering Local 20,297’s strike headquarters and “using abusive language.”

Despite the bluster, the strike fizzled out after its second week as a result of lukewarm support from the labor community. The St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly voted against placing Montgomery Ward on its “do not patronize list,” noting that several craft unions, including the Electrical Workers and Operating Engineers, had members working inside the University Avenue plant.

While some of the workers were reinstated after the strike ended, those who were unwilling to “repudiate their union membership” were not, according to National Labor Relations Board charges filed the following July. The NLRB charges also alleged Montgomery Ward “maintained an espionage system among its employees to not only discourage unionization but to virtually prohibit it,” the Advocate reported.

[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.]

In 1997 Santa joined volunteers in the Minneapolis skyway to call attention to sweatshop labor.

100 Years Ago: Shoe Cutters staged organizing drive

St. Paul-based Shoe Cutters Union No. 281 scored a major organizing victory in December 1912, expanding its membership rolls to include roughly 85 percent of all shoe cutters in St. Paul.

The union, which represented workers at only one local shoe manufacturer prior to the organizing drive, successfully appealed to non-union workers, according to the Dec. 27 edition of The Union Advocate, with a mix of economic and social incentives.

A circular letter sent to all shoe cutters “contrasted the conditions in the factories where … a minimum wage for cutting prevailed with those in the unorganized factories where cutters were paid a sliding scale based upon the necessities of the employer.”

Later, Local 281 hosted a “stag party” for the city’s union and non-union shoe cutters. The party netted “a large number of applications for membership,” giving the local enough clout to present a price list – with a minimum wage scale – to several manufacturers in St. Paul.

All but one of those manufacturers agreed to the union’s terms, The Advocate reported. “A strike was called against the factory which held out, and in less than a day afterward this factory also conceded the demands of the union.”

The new price lists resulted in wage increases for the city’s shoe cutters of between $1.50 and $3 per week.

In 1987 Santa urged shoppers to buy union.

25 Years Ago: Carpenters targeted chain restaurant builders

A non-union construction firm building Bonanza Steakhouse restaurants across the Twin Cities suburbs found itself the target of an aggressive campaign of leafletting, picketing and consumer boycotts, staged by Carpenters Local 87 in the fall of 1987.

The campaign eventually led to victory for all Building Trades unions, the Dec. 14 Union Advocate reported, as Alexandria-based Don Getz Construction agreed to use union labor on all future construction jobs. Getz signed the agreement in a donut shop with Local 87 business representative Jerry Beedle, after approaching him during an action outside the Bonanza in Stillwater.

Beedle said the agreement marked a big victory in the trades’ battle to keep fast food and retail chains from building non-union. “If you allow one fast food operation to go non-union, then the danger is another and another and another will take the same route,” Beedle said.

Discount retailers don’t often care about the value in hiring construction workers who are better trained and more productive, he added, making public pressure necessary. “We use every negotiable way to try to get employers to the bargaining table, and when we have to, we use consumer pressure,” Beedle said. “We’ve found that’s been very effective.”

10 Years Ago: Bush, Pawlenty eyed privatization

Minnesota’s public employees were bracing themselves for privatization battles at the federal and state levels in December 2002, as Union Advocate Editor Michael Kuchta reported.

Republican executives in the White House (George W. Bush) and in St. Paul (Governor-elect Tim Pawlenty) were touting alleged cost savings taxpayers would realize by outsourcing public employees’ jobs to the private sector.

But public sector union leaders called the privatization push crony capitalism at its worst. “The Republican Party at the state level is doing the same thing the Republican Party is doing on the federal level – paying back their contributors,” said Jim Monroe, executive director of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees.

As for the cost savings of privatization? U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum wasn’t buying what Bush was selling.

“While the stated goal of this move is cost savings, the administration has been unwilling to back up this claim with facts,” she said. Because private companies need to make a profit, she pointed out, they often achieve low bids only by undercutting wage, benefit and safety standards.

McCollum also raised fears of increased fraud and other bad behavior.

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