Unions warn Trump-aligned ‘Project 2025’ puts target on workers’ rights

October 2, 2024 by

Bart Andersen, executive director of AFSCME Council 5, speaks during a rally against Project 2025.

Project 2025, the 920-page playbook for former President Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House, spells disaster for union members, Minnesota labor leaders and activists warned yesterday.

“Project 2025 is about one thing; it’s about dismantling the rights we’ve fought for, taking away our power and leaving us vulnerable,” AFSCME Council 65 Executive Director Shannon Douvier said during a rally outside the Capitol in St. Paul. “We cannot afford to let this happen.”

Written by a team of former Trump administration officials and funded by the conservative Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 provides a sprawling but detailed blueprint for how a second Trump presidency would wield power.

Unions, labor standards and collective bargaining would be targets of that power, according to an analysis of the document by the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation.

The AFL-CIO highlighted several objectives that would undercut workers’ power at the bargaining table and stifle their voice in the workplace, including a complete ban on public employee unions like AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), Education Minnesota and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which organized the rally in St. Paul.

“The tools we use to keep our workplaces safe, our families healthy, our standard of living and … the equipment we need to get home at night to our families safe and sound are all at risk,” AFSCME Council 5 Executive Director Bart Andersen said. “Our unions and our contracts bring us stability and peace of mind, and right now it’s all on the chopping block with Project 2025.”

The document calls on the Trump administration to defund federal services, eliminate agencies like the Department of Education and scrap civil service rules so that federal workers could be more easily replaced with MAGA loyalists.

Mechell Snider, a member of AFGE Local 899 who works as a TSA agent at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, said voters need to “stop Project 2025 in its tracks” to “protect an apolitical federal workforce” that is loyal to the Constitution, not to Trump.

“We need a federal workforce that has the right to unionize, to bargain in good faith and to show up to do a job safely, for the sole benefit of the American people,” Snider added.

Project 2025 takes aim at private-sector workers’ rights, too, calling for a ban on union organizing by card check, which speeds up organizing drives by allowing employers to recognize majority support for a union voluntarily, without a National Labor Relations Board election.

Project 2025 also supports allowing employers to push decertification campaigns at any time, making it easier to wiggle out of their obligations to workers in the middle of a contract.

Project 2025 also takes aim at union workers’ wages – Building Trades workers, in particular. It calls for a repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires construction companies to pay prevailing wages to workers on federally funded projects.

Additionally, the document calls on federal agencies to stop bargaining project labor agreements – so-called “PLAs,” which set the terms and conditions of employment for construction projects before bidding begins – with unions. That would open the federal bidding process to low-wage, low-road contractors.

Other provisions in Project 2025 would be bad for union and non-union workers alike, from eliminating overtime protections to allowing states to set their own minimum wage below the federal rate. Child labor laws, unemployment insurance programs, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration – Trump’s allies aim to weaken them all, according to Project 2025.

Education Minnesota Vice President Monica Byron, an elementary-school teacher, said Project 2025 is a game plan for making it harder for workers to get ahead and stacking the deck in favor of Wall Street and wealthy CEOs.

“We have a choice to make in this election,” Byron said. “We can support the freedom to come together in union and bargain for better lives and better schools, or we can choose the MAGA agenda of Project 2025 that would give greedy corporations even more control over our lives and decimate unions and public education.”

Learn more about Project 2025’s impact on workers at betterinaunion.org.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Supreme Court ‘weaponizes’ First Amendment to attack public-sector workers

June 27, 2018 by

FB_DecisionDay2In a 5-4 decision along party lines, the U.S. Supreme Court today altered the landscape of public-sector collective bargaining in Minnesota and more than 20 other states.

The high court’s ruling in Janus v. AFSCME makes “right-to-work” the law of the land in all public-sector workplaces, opening the door for more workers to reap the benefits of a union contract without sharing in its costs.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, argued that states like Minnesota, which allowed public-sector unions to assess “fair-share fees” to non-members, violated those workers’ First Amendment rights to freedom of speech – or, in this case, freedom not to subsidize speech on their behalf.

Alito’s decision overturns a precedent more than four decades in the making, and it gives corporate interests and billionaires who bankrolled the legal challenge a victory for which they had been angling for years.

Union leaders in Minnesota warned the decision would make it harder for working people to join together and advocate for their families and communities, rigging the economy even more in favor of corporations and the wealthy.

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Working people rally in Minneapolis, pledging to stick together in the wake of today’s Janus v. AFSCME ruling.

But Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy, the state’s top labor leader, said working people aren’t giving up their voice.

“No court decision will ever stop working people from joining together in union to negotiate a fair return on their work,” he said. “No matter how many roadblocks corporate special interests put in our path, our state’s labor movement will continue to fight for working Minnesotans’ freedom to prosper.”

Public-sector unions have been bracing for a major blow from the Supreme Court for more than two years. During that time, most have taken steps to strengthen their membership and encourage as many fee-payers to become full members as they can.

Janus is the third in a string of decisions weakening public workers’ bargaining power on First Amendment grounds, and Alito has been a driving force behind all three. His arguments in today’s decision are at times nakedly political, blaming collective bargaining for some states’ underfunded public pension systems and the growth of government spending nationwide.

Alito’s decision also draws a disturbingly shallow parallel between public-sector unions and other advocacy organizations that purport to “speak” on behalf of a unique constituency, like the AARP and the VFW. Alito asks: “Could the government require that all seniors, veterans, doctors pay for that service even if they object?”

The point Alito either ignores or misses is that the VFW can offer unique benefits to people who join, while unions are required by federal labor law to provide the same contractual benefits and representation to everyone in a bargaining unit — even workers who choose not to join.

In her dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan accuses Alito and his fellow conservatives on the bench of waging a “6-year crusade to ban (fair-share) fees,” with disregard for precedent the high court has “rarely if ever” seen.

“Unions are — by law — in a different position, as this Court has long recognized” than other advocacy groups, Kagan writes. Fair-share fees “ensured that a union would receive sufficient funds, despite its legally imposed disability, to effectively carry out its duties as exclusive representative of the government’s employees.”

Kagan’s dissent points to equally troubling decisions ahead if the conservative majority continues, in her pointed language, “weaponizing the First Amendment.” She writes:

“Speech is everywhere — a part of every human activity (employment, health care, securities trading, you name it). For that reason, almost all economic and regulatory policy affects or touches speech. So the majority’s road runs long. And at every stop are black-robed rulers overriding citizens’ choices. The First Amendment was meant for better things. It was meant not to undermine but to pro­tect democratic governance — including over the role of public-sector unions.”

Time will tell how Janus impacts public-sector unions in Minnesota. But a string of wildcat strikes by teachers in West Virginia, Arizona, and other right-to-work states this spring prompted some to wonder if the deep-pocketed donors behind Janus are poised to wake a sleeping giant.

“Neither this ruling nor the right-wing groups that will weaponize it, will silence the voices of Minnesota’s professional educators,” Education Minnesota President Denise Specht said. “We will still stand for effective and welcoming schools for our students, proud and healthy communities for their parents, and salaries and benefits that will sustain the families of Minnesota educators.”

 

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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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Jesse Paggen: We can emerge stronger after Janus – and we must

March 1, 2018 by

Jesse Paggen is lead custodian in the Sartell schools.

As a union member with SEIU Local 284 in the Sartell schools, being in a union means having a voice to be heard as a group – even a family – so we can get what we so rightfully deserve. We all just want a piece of the American dream: a well-paying job with benefits for our families. We work hard and deserve to get the best pay and benefits possible.

With our union, we can stick together to not let big business run over the little guys like us.

I’m the lead custodian in the Sartell schools, where I’ve been for 22 years, and I am a proud union steward in Local 284. We all live in our community and care deeply about our public schools. My team and I work hard every day to make sure our buildings are safe and clean for our students.

We’ve had some issues over the last few years, and we voted to authorize a strike in December 2017 in order to make the district understand that it needed to do better. We reached a fair deal in the end and didn’t have to strike, but by sticking together we were able to get better results for our families and our schools than we ever would have alone. That is the power of being in a union.

But now, because of that power, a well-organized group of billionaires and corporate special interests have a case before the U.S. Supreme Court called Janus v. AFSCME, and it could undermine our unions. Basically, these special interests want to make every public sector union into “right to work,” which we all know really is just a fancy way of saying they are trying to destroy our ability to come together and make gains for our families.

The nine Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments in Janus on Feb. 26, and they will rule sometime this spring. Most people assume they will rule for the anti-union plaintiff.

In anticipation, many unions have been making sure working people understand what it means to be a union member – and what we can accomplish together. My union, which brings together over 9,000 school employees across the state, has been working hard to make certain we don’t let any divide-and-conquer techniques rip us apart. We can, and must, come out stronger from this attack.

The groups attacking us think that making it harder for unions to survive will mean that we won’t be strong enough to fight for the things we deserve. They think they can divide us so we won’t have a unified voice, something everyone knows working people need to win a better future for our families.

I think they are wrong. I think no matter what this court case says, our unions are stronger than the divide-and-conquer techniques our opponents are using. More and more people are realizing that our system is rigged in favor of those at the top. They want regular families to be able to make ends meet and have a chance to get ahead. In the richest country in the history of the world, this doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

When we stick together with our unions (and work to get more people the chance to join unions), we can tip the scales back towards working families. If we let them split us apart, I’m scared to see where things will go.

As the Janus case rolls along, let’s prove our opponents wrong and use this moment to build a strong labor movement that sticks together and wins a better future for working families across Minnesota.

– Jesse Paggen is a member of SEIU Local 284 and lead custodian in Independent School District 748.

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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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