Member support, stories turned tide for state workers in tough round of talks

July 22, 2025 by

Members of AFSCME Council 5’s contract action team support the bargaining committee before a session with the state.

Negotiators for the State of Minnesota and unions representing nearly 40,000 state workers reached tentative agreements June 27 on new contracts that will raise wages, preserve longevity pay hikes and, in a big win for union members, make no changes to their health insurance.

Union members who served on the bargaining team for AFSCME Council 5, which represents about 18,000 state workers, said the state’s demands from the outset of talks included an overhaul of health benefits that would have increased workers’ share of the costs.

“The plan shifts they wanted to do would have shifted thousands of dollars onto our members,” Council 5’s lead negotiator, Joel Hoffman, said. “It would have been terrible.”

With the state bracing for federal funding cuts and a projected budget shortfall in the next biennium, unions anticipated a difficult round of contract negotiations. But even experienced negotiators like Hoffman, a lab assistant at Moorhead State who completed a fifth stint on the bargaining team, were taken aback by the severity of the employer’s demands.

In addition to the health plan changes, state negotiators balked at wage increases and wanted to pause workers’ step increases, too. Steps are like longevity bonuses, giving workers a pay bump on the anniversary of their hiring date until they reach the top of the pay scale.

“We’ve had challenging cycles before, but not like this,” Hoffman said. “All of it together, it was just unacceptable, untenable. We couldn’t deal with it.”

It took 215 hours at the bargaining table, but union members succeeded in moving the state off its demands for takebacks, preserving their steps and their health insurance – and winning raises of 1.5% this year and 1.75% in 2026.

Council 5 said in a statement that every worker in the bargaining unit will see a net gain on their paycheck, and the bargaining team voted unanimously to recommend members vote to ratify the deal in balloting this month.

AFSCME, MAPE team up

Union negotiators cited two factors as key to securing a contract they could recommend: a visible, vocal pool of support from rank-and-file members and unshakable solidarity with the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE), which reached a tentative with the state covering over 18,000 workers on the same day as AFSCME.

“They were in the same position as us, and we decided we were going to stick together and have solidarity between the two unions,” Hoffman said. “If they tried to divide us, we weren’t going to have it. We would meet periodically to make sure we’re on the same team, and we had rallies together.”

The unity was especially important in negotiations over health benefits, which bring together over 10 bargaining units at the same table with the state.

When those talks bogged down, union negotiators tapped their “Contract Action Team,” rank-and-file members who had signed up earlier in the year to support their bargaining team. They joined union rallies and showed up at negotiations to send a message to the state – and the Walz administration – that workers were watching the talks.

Jes Shimek, an assistant art studio manager at Anoka-Ramsey Community College in Coon Rapids, credited the team with being intentional about member outreach from the start of the contract campaign.

“They were organizing rallies and a gauntlet during push week and all kinds of outreach – phone banking, workplace actions – throughout this process,” Shimek said. “We communicated more with our members. They could see that they needed to help us fight to not go backwards.”

Getting personal

The turning point in bargaining, Local 2829 President Curtis Seelen said, was when Shimek and two other state employees offered up personal stories that drove home the importance of keeping health insurance affordable.

“Jes brought in her medical supplies and showed just how draconian the state’s health insurance would be to the individuals who work every day to make Minnesota a great place to live,” Seelen said. “I think it was putting a face to all the state workers that keep Minnesota functioning that really helped us turn the tide and prompt the state to drop their more egregious proposals.”

“Two other women, Jess Langhorst and Kate Ella, told their stories too,” Shimek, a member of AFSCME Local 4001, said. “The state’s team was always very cordial to us throughout the process, but this was the first time that we saw emotion from them – a crack in that exterior.

“Right after we shared our stories, everybody walked out of the room to this gauntlet of AFSCME and MAPE members standing silently with their signs, and that was the turning point. We started back the next morning and worked all the way through that night until we reached a tentative agreement at 6:10 in the morning.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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AFSCME members picket Carter’s State of the City speech

April 19, 2023 by

Members of AFSCME locals 1842 and 2508 picketed outside the Oxford Rec Center.

Clerical and technical workers staged informational picketing outside Mayor Melvin Carter’s State of the City address April 18, putting their frustration over a slow-moving round of contract negotiations on full public display.

“We have felt disrespected at the table,” Como Park horticulturist Bryn Fleming said. “Management has shown up late while we’ve been present. It’s disappointing that this is moving so slowly.”

Fleming is a chief steward with Local 1842 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), representing the city’s technical workers. With the clerical union, AFSCME Local 2508, the unions represent about 1,000 workers in talks that began in December.

AFSCME members’ previous, two-year contracts expired New Year’s Eve, and after six mostly fruitless bargaining sessions, the unions will enter mediation with the city May 8.

Union members’ top priorities in bargaining include 6% annual wage increases, affordable health benefits and safety on the job.

AFSCME members staff the city’s offices, libraries, rec centers and other facilities. Many who work in public-facing positions have described an alarming increase in threatening and violent behavior that leaves them feeling unsafe and understaffed, Fleming said.

“Folks in libraries have experienced assault, verbal abuse,” she said. “For folks in rec centers, it’s the same thing. Safety is a big concern, and we’re really trying to have stronger language on that in our contract. We have seen some movement, but we’d really like to have better collaboration.”

The city’s demands, meanwhile, have included elimination of AFSCME members’ promotional rights, which give union members a first shot at interviewing for certain job openings. Union members also have balked at a proposal to eliminate grievances over civil service violations and, instead, shift the process to a commission controlled by the city.

Those are non-starters for AFSCME’s bargaining team, Local 2508 President Jen Guertin said.

“We are the lowest-paid union members in the city,” she said. “For us to be able to promote up to a higher-wage job, that right to take a test and go to the top of a list for an interview, that’s our career path.”

Members of three unions – the Tri-Council – who work in St. Paul’s parks, public works and water departments ratified a new, three-year contract in March that will raise wages by up to 26%. But they took the city to the brink of a strike to get a deal done.

“We’re not there yet,” Guertin said. “We’re going to try mediation, and I’m hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.”

With a mediator involved, Guertin and Fleming said, talks stand a better chance of starting on time and ending when they stop being productive, if nothing else.

“We would set the meeting to start at 5 p.m., and management wouldn’t come into the meeting until 5:30 or 5:45 – on the regular,” Guertin said. “Then we would pass an offer across the table, and they’d leave us sitting there for six or seven hours before coming back to say we can’t get anything done. What’s the point?”

By picketing the State of the City, union members hoped to put Carter on notice that they’re holding him accountable for the city’s lack of urgency.

“When we say things like we’re scared to go to work or we feel unsafe, we’d like to see somebody do something about that,” Fleming said. “And when we say we can’t pay our bills, we’d like to see somebody pay attention to that.

“I would love to feel like the mayor actually respects the work that we do and respects how difficult it can be.”

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Unions say Minnesota’s new labor board is ‘superior in every way,’ but its future remains uncertain

June 9, 2021 by

As negotiations over a new, two-year budget come down to the wire, Minnesota lawmakers this month will determine the fate of a newly opened state agency dedicated to keeping public-sector labor disputes out of court.

Public-sector workers and their unions are pushing lawmakers to fully fund the Public Employment Relations Board, which began accepting unfair-labor-practice complaints from employers, unions and employees in July 2020.

Previously, those complaints would land in district court, where they might languish for a year or longer as parties on both sides racked up legal fees.

In a press conference today, union leaders and DFL legislators called the PERB a faster, more cost effective and accessible way to settle charges of unfair labor practices in the public sector.

“It is superior in every way to having to litigate a dispute about whether the district violated (labor law) in court,” St. Paul Federation of Educators President Nick Faber said, noting that the district’s legal fees take “resources out of the classroom.”

When they established the PERB in 2014, state lawmakers modeled it after the National Labor Relations Board, charged with upholding federal labor law in the private sector. Rather than going to court, private-sector workers and employers file any charges of unfair labor practices with the NLRB.

Delores Flynn, a home care worker from Roseville, said members of her union filed a complaint with the PERB last year, after growing frustrated with a lack of clarity from state agencies over how a temporary pay increase related to the pandemic would be administered. Workers’ complaint received a hearing last month.

“Whatever the ruling is, there was a fair process for both sides – the union and the state agencies – to make our legal arguments and be heard,” said Flynn, a member of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota. “That is how it should be – not just for us in home care but for all public-sector workers.”

But like most issues that unions pushed lawmakers to prioritize this year, funding for the PERB is caught in a standoff between the DFL-controlled House and the Republican Senate.

In their omnibus jobs bill, House DFLers signed off on the agency’s funding request of roughly $1 million over the next two years. But Republicans’ version of the bill would defund the PERB and explicitly direct public-sector complaints back into district court until July 1, 2023.

In today’s press conference, House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler Winkler slammed Republicans for “being held hostage to an ideological agenda that opposes organized labor.”

Rep. Mohamud Noor, lead author of the House bill, said Republicans refuse to acknowledge the efficiencies the PERB offers both for public-sector workers and for the cities, counties, school districts and state agencies that employ them.

“This is truly a more innovative process,” Noor said.

Lawmakers are set to return for a special session next week. They must pass 14 budget bills into law by June 30 to avoid risking a state government shutdown.

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Union members rally in Minneapolis to end shutdown

January 10, 2019 by

Workers call on lawmakers to reopen the federal government – and put people back to work – during a rally near the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis.

 

Tomorrow, tens of thousands of federal employees won’t get their regularly scheduled paychecks. Today, their union family rallied in Minneapolis – and cities across the U.S. – to say that’s not OK.

Dozens of union members and retirees joined a demonstration along Hiawatha Avenue, just blocks from the Veterans Administration Medical Center. They called on President Trump and members of Congress to end the federal government shutdown and put federal employees back to work.

Gregg James, vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said lawmakers should “do their jobs and get the federal government back open – and not use us as pawns in their political game.”

An estimated 5,470 federal employees in Minnesota are affected by the shutdown.

Some are furloughed from their jobs. Transportation Security Administration agents, food safety inspectors, guards at four federal prison and other employees are working without pay.

Several workers from the VA Medical Center joined the rally over their lunch break. They aren’t directly impacted by the shutdown, as funding for their agency is in place through the end of the fiscal year. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t angry.

“I’m thinking about my brothers and sisters who are out there working for free and that are furloughed,” said Bryant Thomas, a St. Paul resident who works in sterile processing at the hospital. “There are 800,000, and I’m out here for them.”

AFGE, which represents some 670,000 federal workers nationwide, organized the rally, but members of several other unions – the Machinists, Education Minnesota, AFSCME Council 5, OPEIU and others – stood in solidarity with federal workers.

Brad Lehto, secretary-treasurer of the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, pinned blame for the shutdown on President Trump, who on Sunday told reporters he could “relate” to the struggles of federal workers going without pay.

“Donald Trump just thinks you can ask your father for money,” Lehto said. “It doesn’t work that way for everyone.”

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MN’s public-sector workers aren’t mourning Janus, they’re organizing

June 27, 2018 by

Early on a Wednesday morning last month, about two dozen St. Paul water department employees trudged into a small conference room for a meeting with their union representatives. After listening to a quick pitch, the workers signed new membership cards, shook hands with their reps and punched in for the day.

Even by union standards, it was an entirely unglamorous scene. There were no bullhorns, no banners, no picket signs – not even coffee or donuts.

But the meeting – and hundreds like it that have played out at schools, courthouses and other public-sector worksites across the state in recent months – was one small part of a historic organizing campaign to make sure people keep a strong voice on the job in the wake of today’s Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME.

As expected, the court’s conservative majority sided with corporations and wealthy donors, overturning 40-plus years of precedent to bar public-sector unions from collecting fees from non-members they are legally required to represent.

Already, the decision has prompted a lot of hand-wringing over the continued “downfall” of America’s labor movement.

Don’t buy it.

No judge or politician can take away working people’s freedom to join together and fight for themselves and their communities, and Minnesota’s public-sector unions have set out to prove it. In anticipation of the Janus decision, unions have taken on the work of strengthening and re-energizing their organizations from the inside out.

Workers in St. Paul’s water department sign cards recommitting to their union, Laborers Local 363, during an early-morning meeting last month.

The response has been overwhelming. Laborers Local 363, which represents St. Paul water department workers and roughly 1,100 municipal and county workers statewide, has collected more than 600 signed cards already this year. Roughly a quarter of those, organizers say, are from workers who previously were not paying full dues.

“If you were on the fence about your union dues before, now’s the time to decide,” said Local 363 member Caitlin Brunette, a maintenance and grounds worker at Phalen Park.

Brunette, 26, has been an active volunteer in Local 363’s internal organizing drive, traveling to worksites to talk face to face with fellow members about the threat Janus v. AFSCME poses to their collective bargaining power. Her pitch?

“I’m pretty sure you like being able to go on vacation, get overtime and all these other things we take for granted,” she said. “We have a lot to lose, and I don’t want to see what would happen if we weren’t represented by Local 363.”

Brunette has been “pleasantly surprised” by the response of her fellow members.

“People listen, and it seems like no matter what their feelings on unions are – and we do have people with mixed feelings – the majority are on board,” she said. “I think whether or not they really are pro-union or not, they realize how good they have it and they get on board. They join.”

But Janus won’t be the last corporate attack public-sector union members face.

Laborers locals in parts of the country that have gone right to work in recent years – Wisconsin, most notably – have seen anti-union groups file legal challenges forcing unions to prove they have signed up a majority of workers in a bargaining unit. Or they will send out door-to-door canvassers to meet with union members and urge them to drop out.

That’s why so many are putting an emphasis on collecting newly signed membership cards from all workers they represent, Local 363 reps Tom Fox and Gary Reed said.

“If you don’t think I’m serious, go ask the public-sector Laborers local in Milwaukee how it’s doing,” Reed told water department workers. “You can’t. It’s not there anymore.”

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With pension and bonding bills, Dayton saves best for last

May 31, 2018 by

Gov. Dayton signs a bill to stabilize pensions covering more than 500,000 Minnesotans during a ceremony at the Capitol.

Common ground between Gov. Mark Dayton and the Republican-controlled Legislature was in short supply at the Capitol this year, but lawmakers were able to compromise on two bills that union members lobbied hard for during the recently ended session.

Dayton gave final approval yesterday to a bill authorizing more than $1.4 billion in jobs-creating infrastructure investments across the state. The bonding bill will create thousands of construction jobs, Minnesota State Building and Construction Trades Council President Harry Melander said.

Today, Dayton signed a bipartisan bill to stabilize pension funds covering more than 500,000 public-sector workers, the last item of unfinished business from the 2018 session.

“This may be Gov. Dayton’s last signing of a legislative bill, but he saved the best for last,” AFSCME Council 5 Legislative Director Julie Bleyhl said.

Missed opportunities

Still, the DFL governor expressed regret that his last session before leaving office failed to make progress on issues like tax relief for working families, emergency funding for local school districts and needed investments in public transit.

Last week Dayton vetoed a tax bill and massive “omnibus” budget bill. The governor, who made his opposition to both bills known throughout the legislative process, chided Republican leaders for forging ahead on their own rather than engaging in negotiations.

“Never have I seen a legislative session so badly mismanaged, less transparent, and more beholden to monied special interests,” Dayton wrote in a letter accompanying the budget bill’s veto.

Bunny Engeldorf, a registered nurse at United Hospital in St. Paul, speaks at a rally for “Minnesota values” sponsored by a coalition of progressive groups, including the Minnesota Nurses Association and SEIU Healthcare MN, during the final week of the 2018 session.

Union leaders shared Dayton’s disappointment.

Bill McCarthy, president of the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, said the tax bill was stuffed with perks for corporations and would have needlessly risked Minnesota’s fiscal stability.

“The Republican tax bill would have handed big corporations a permanent tax giveaway of at least $200 million dollars and created future budget deficits, while only paying lip service to working people and K-12 students,” McCarthy said. “Instead of directly investing in priorities that all Minnesotans agree on, Republicans in the Legislature tied these measures to special interest-backed policies and let big pharma off the hook for their role in the opioid crisis.”

Education issues weren’t prominent when the session began, but a string of deadly school shootings in other parts of the country thrust campus safety onto lawmakers’ agenda. And when districts across the state began announcing layoffs, Dayton responded with a proposal to put part of the state’s budget surplus into a one-time aid package.

Republicans wrapped both school security and their own, watered-down aid package into the budget and tax bills, which Dayton vetoed. But Denise Specht, president of Education Minnesota, refused to let legislative leaders off the hook for packing “important and popular priorities, like school safety, into a sludge of bad ideas that will create problems for schools and communities for many years.”

Some pressing issues, like home health care, never even made it into the final budget bill, despite mounting evidence that low wages and lack of benefits are contributing to a shortage of care workers in the state.

“Home care workers and our clients came to the Capitol throughout the session to make sure our elected officials understood the crisis facing families in every corner of the state,” said Dawn Burnfin of Chisolm, a member of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota. “Make no mistake, inaction means more pain, frustration and heartache for families across Minnesota.”

Finishing on a positive note

Gov. Dayton mugs with AFSCME members after signing the pension bill.

Although gridlock hampered progress on most issues, Dayton “firmly cemented his legacy as a champion for working people” with the pension and infrastructure-jobs bills he signed this week, McCarthy said.

Dayton signed the pension bill, which passed both the House and Senate without dissent, during a public ceremony at the Capitol today.

The measure requires current workers, employers and retirees to share in the sacrifice of fully funding public pensions in Minnesota over the next 30 years. It increases employee and employer contributions, reduces cost-of-living adjustments and draws some state funding, and it will immediately clear $3.4 billion in unfunded liabilities off the state’s books.

A coalition of public-sector unions, including AFSCME and Education Minnesota, supported the bill. Council 5’s Bleyhl called it a “towering achievement” that will keep the state’s pension system solvent for decades to come.

“With the signing of this bill, public workers are now assured of a secure and dignified retirement, which they’ve earned through their dedicated years of work serving the public,” she said.

The $1.4 billion bonding bill invests in college and university facilities, roads, bridges and other public projects. Dayton signed the bill despite criticizing it for being too modest.

“I am signing this bill, despite my objections, because areas throughout Minnesota need the projects and the jobs, which it will provide,” he said.

Melander said the Building Trades supported the governor’s more robust bonding proposal – “the bigger the bill, the more opportunities people have to feed their families” – but remain appreciative of the compromise measure.

“Minnesota’s Building Trades members are grateful for all of the good work that Gov. Dayton has done for the last eight years,” Melander added. “He will always be remembered as a great governor for Building Trades members.”

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Day of action unites working people in St. Paul, nationwide

February 24, 2018 by

Hundreds rally at the Capitol in support of worker freedom and economic fairness, joining a nationwide Working People’s Day of Action.

Working people filled the Capitol rotunda in St. Paul today, celebrating their freedom to join together for a voice on the job and pledging to fight corporate attacks with urgency and solidarity.

“Unions are here for the common good,” former St. Paul teacher Mary Cathryn Ricker, now vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, told hundreds of people gathered for the Working People’s Day of Action. “And we are here for good.”

The rally in St. Paul was one of more than two dozen across the country highlighting the benefits of collective bargaining and the critical role union members play in their communities.

Anne Bipes, who works as a secretary in a west-metro school district, attended the rally with members of her union, Service Employees Local 284. She said strong unions mean more than “just pay and benefits” for workers like her.

“It’s about equity and justice within our society, about equality for working people,” Bipes explained.

 

The day of action comes two days before the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a lawsuit, bankrolled by corporate special interests, challenging the ability of Local 284 and other public sector employee unions to collect fair-share fees from workers they are legally required to represent.

The court’s conservative majority is likely to side with the plaintiff in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, and the decision, expected as early as April, could make right-to-work conditions in the public sector the law of the land.

But public-sector workers aren’t cowering. They traveled in busloads to the Capitol, wore their union colors and carried signs vowing that no court ruling will keep them from joining together to fight for themselves and their communities.

Jim Glazer, a teacher in the South Washington County Schools and member of Education Minnesota, joined the rally to be “part of the energy” fueling actions across the country today.

“Janus is really going to test our unions’ ability to stick together,” he said. “That’s the point of it, to drag us apart. But we have a common cause here: workers’ rights and freedoms.”

Public-sector workers aren’t standing alone either. Private sector union members bolstered their ranks at the Capitol, as did allies from immigrant rights groups, faith organizations and the business community.

“What affects public workers will affect all workers,” said Deb Haugen, a registered nurse at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis and member of the Minnesota Nurses Association. “For many years unions have set the standard for conditions in the workplace. If our voice is weaker, it’s not only going to be felt by union workers, but by all of us.”

Wendy Anderson, a Century Link retiree who remains active in her union, Local 7201 of the Communications Workers of America, said the landscape for unions is changing, but she thinks working people are up to the test.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re in the same union as me,” Anderson said. “We’re brothers and sisters, and we support each other.”

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State employees to lawmakers: You got your raises, now approve ours

February 20, 2018 by

MAPE members led a rally on the Capitol steps on Day 1 of the 2018 legislative session.

State workers rolled out the welcome mat for lawmakers returning to St. Paul today, four months after a legislative subcommittee pulled the rug out from under their collective bargaining process.

Hundreds of state workers, members of AFSCME and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, rallied on the Capitol steps over the noon hour. Union members called on lawmakers to approve their contracts, and to quit treating state employees like a political football.

“It’s disheartening and discouraging to feel like the Legislature doesn’t value the work we do,” said MAPE member Angie Arnold, a grant officer at Normandale Community College.

The two unions, which represent about 29,000 state employees, reached tentative agreements on 2017-19 contracts with the state last summer, and members voted overwhelmingly to approve the pacts in August. They include annual wage increases of 2 and 2.25 percent, raises that are fully funded by the state’s budget and smaller than those in state workers’ previous contracts.

The raises are considerably smaller, too, than the 45 percent pay increase lawmakers are pocketing this year. In fact, one of the Republican subcommittee members who joined a party-line vote to reject the contracts last fall sued the state to make sure she got a pay hike of her own.

“That raises my blood pressure,” said Nikki Engen, a MAPE member from Ely who works as a collections officer for the Department of Revenue.

 

MAPE member Nikki Engen of Ely calls on lawmakers to pass state employees’ union contracts.
Angie Arnold, a grant officer at Normandale Community College, called the contract delay “disheartening and discouraging.”
“If lawmakers want us to do our jobs, they should let us know they really appreciate us,” said Sarah Bistodeau, a member of MAPE Local 902 who works in the state’s infectious disease lab.

Calling for fiscal responsibility while pocketing your own big raise is textbook hypocrisy, Engen added, noting that state employees agreed to a pay freeze during the state’s budget crisis a decade ago.

“My house payment doesn’t make itself. My daughter’s dance tuition doesn’t pay itself,” she said. “Costs go up, and we remain the same.”

MAPE and AFSCME members continue to work under the terms of their previous contracts, which expired June 20. Union leaders say they have no plans to return to the bargaining table and renegotiate the tentative agreements.

“There’s no reason not to approve this contract,” Arnold said. “We bargained with the governor’s team in good faith. This is what we get when we follow the rules and do the process the way it’s supposed to be done?”

Many at the rally worried that delaying state employees’ wage increases – and putting them in the middle of a political fight – would make it harder for the state to recruit qualified applicants to fill job openings.

Rep. Deb Hillstrom, a DFLer from Brooklyn Center, noted that wages in the private sector increased more, on average, than the raises negotiated by state employees. Private-sector wages increased 3.1 percent last year, and the increase is expected to be even greater in 2018.

“You are the people that make Minnesota work and that make Minnesota great,” Hillstrom told rallying workers. “You deserve better.”

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AFSCME members defend public services during annual lobbying day

April 5, 2016 by
Workers who have been injured or assaulted on the job at a state mental health facility stand up during AFSCME Council 5's Day on the Hill rally.

Workers who have been injured or assaulted on the job at a state mental health facility stand up during AFSCME Council 5’s Day on the Hill rally.

 

No one knows more about public services in Minnesota than the workers who deliver them, and state lawmakers had access to an abundance of wisdom today during AFSCME Council 5’s annual lobbying blitz.

“The experts in public service are coming to the Capitol,” Council 5 Director Eliot Seide said at the close of a rally at St. Paul’s RiverCentre. “The legislators better get ready.”

Council 5 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 43,000 public-service workers statewide, usually holds its Day on the Hill rally in the Capitol rotunda, but remodeling work has restricted public access to the building this session.

Eliot Seide speaks at AFSCME Council 5's Day on the Hill rally.

Eliot Seide speaks at AFSCME Council 5’s Day on the Hill rally.

Instead, buses shuttled nearly 1,000 union members from RiverCentre to the Capitol after the rally. In meetings with their representatives, AFSCME members pushed several key priorities, including investments in public services and transportation infrastructure.

Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposed budget includes $47 million in Local Government Aid funding to ensure Minnesotans have access to quality public services “no matter where they live,” AFSCME Local 1842 President Koami DaCruz said.

DaCruz, a City of St. Paul employee, said that without LGA, communities “would have to lock up parks and libraries and lay off vital police and firefighters. That’s how they do it in Wisconsin.”

Eric Halverson, a member of AFSCME Local 789 from Morris, urged support for a comprehensive, long-term investment in transportation. Too many Republicans at the Capitol, Halverson said, want to “patch potholes with students and seniors,” citing proposals to cut education and human-services funding in order to spend more on transportation.

AFSCME members also called for a statewide ban on private prisons, student-debt relief, support for public pensions and increased staffing at the state’s mental health facilities.

Local 1842 President Koami DaCruz

Local 1842 President Koami DaCruz

Jackie Spanjers, a member of Local 1307, said assaults on staff have doubled at her workplace, the Anoka Regional Treatment Center. One such attack left her with a torn rotator cuff and ruptured biceps. Dozens of others in the crowd stood up to indicate having suffered similar experiences on the job.

“Hundreds of us are taking a beating inside the mental-health facilities. We feel like punching bags,” Spanjers said. “But we don’t have to suffer in silence anymore. Our union is organizing online and in workplaces to increase staffing levels and change policies so we can be safer at work.”

Council 5’s show of force at the Capitol puts a human face on the work of public service, Local 1092 member Jessica Langhorst said. And in an era of increased attacks on workers – especially public-sector workers – that’s more critical than ever.

“Public workers are not the culprits,” Langhorst said. “We live here. We pay taxes here. We work hard to support our families. We’re not the problem, and we’re not the enemy.”

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Drazkowski threatens to derail state contracts with Right to Work ‘poison pill’

April 1, 2016 by
Union members packed the room during a House committee hearing on Right to Work for state employees.

Union members packed the room during a House committee hearing on Right to Work for state employees.

 

It’s fair to say state Rep. Steve Drazkowski has a reputation for advancing extreme ideas. He’s supported logging in Minnesota’s state parks and eliminating the Pay Equity Act, even floated the idea of replacing health care workers with baby monitors.

The Mazeppa Republican is at it again this session, inserting Wisconsin-style Right to Work language into a routine bill to approve new union contracts covering about 30,000 state workers.

The bill, House File 3585, received a hearing before a House committee on government operations yesterday. Union members from both the public and private sector packed the room, showing lawmakers a united front against any attempt to roll back workers’ rights.

“Rep. Drazkowski, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, is attempting to tear down working people and their aspirations for a better life,” Eliot Seide, director of AFSCME Council 5, warned lawmakers in testimony before the committee.

Drazkowski’s bill threatens to derail approval of collective bargaining agreements negotiated last year with four state-employee groups: AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, the Minnesota Nurses Association and the Middle Management Association.

Taken on their own, the contracts are not particularly controversial. Most workers will see annual wage increases of 2.5 percent while taking on a greater share of their health insurance costs.

But Drazkowski has attached several “poison pills” to the contacts, including language that would bar unions from charging “fair share fees” to cover the cost of representing state workers who choose not to become members. Such fees were ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court Monday.

Drazkowski also would require the state to negotiate union contracts in public, make it illegal for state employees to bargain for retroactive wage increases and restrict union members who work for the state from participating in political activities during unpaid time off.

As Seide and others pointed out to lawmakers, the bill mirrors many of the so-called “reforms” Walker took up in his first days as governor of Wisconsin six years ago. Since then, Wisconsin has struggled with state budget deficits, a sluggish economy, teacher shortages and corruption charges – issues that undermined the governor’s short-lived presidential campaign.

In addition to being bad public policy, Drazkowski’s poison-pill proposals are offensive to the people who work in public service, Leanne Kunze, assistant director of AFSCME Council 65, said.

“This unfair, unsafe and unnecessary legislation hurts workers, their families and our communities,” Kunze said. “Just look at our neighbors to the east to see the devastating ripple effect of unnecessary and unwarranted changes to longstanding collective bargaining history.”

DFL lawmakers on the committee, including Rep. Laurie Halverson of Eagan, worried that drastic changes in the state’s approach to dealing with its employees – especially changes designed to weaken their voice on the job – might disrupt labor peace.

“Anyone around this table who’s an employer knows they’re going to do better if their employees are happy and doing well,” Halverson said.

“I don’t understand what problem is looking for the solution that Rep. Drazkowski is trying to impose here,” Seide added. “Public-service workers work 24 hours a day, seven days a week for their state. They never quit. They ought not be constantly under attack and denigrated … as if they’re some kind of foreign enemy.”

Lawmakers took no action on Drazkowski’s bill yesterday, but it will be back on the agenda when the committee meets again next week.

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