U of M relents in contract talks as workers stick together for raises and respect

December 11, 2015 by
Teamsters and AFSCME members rallied on the Twin Cities campus earlier this year as part of their joint campaign for fair contracts.

Teamsters and AFSCME members rallied on the Twin Cities campus earlier this year as part of their joint campaign for fair contracts.

Frontline workers at the University of Minnesota stood together for nearly six months, waging a contract campaign for raises and respect.

Now that strategy is paying off, as three bargaining units – Teamsters Local 320 and AFSCME Locals 3800 and 3801 – have announced tentative agreements with the U that include 2 percent wage increases, equitable family leave policies and other union demands.

Bargaining teams for all three local unions are recommending members vote to ratify the two-year contracts in the coming weeks.

By sticking together and staging several public events, workers were able to move the U’s negotiators, who for months held firm that they had no interest in discussing expanded family leave and could do no better than annual raises of less than 1 percent.

“We arrived today in bargaining on Dec. 10 and found that the university was finally willing to negotiate over our core issues,” Local 3800 President Cherrene Horazuk said in a video announcing the union’s tentative agreement, posted online.

“It is because (of) the efforts of all of us collectively that we were able to get the best contract that we have achieved in years,” she added.

Local 3800 and 3801, which represent clerical workers at the U, won tentative agreements that include a $15 minimum wage, annual wage and step increases amounting to about 2 percent and no increases in workers’ health insurance premiums.

Clerical workers also won six weeks of paid parental leave for birth mothers – a four-week increase that achieves equity with faculty and administrators – and a memorandum of understanding with the university regarding bullying in the workplace.

“This is a contract that, we believe, begins to address the disparities between employee groups at the university,” Horazuk said.

Local 320, which represents custodial, food service, animal and land-care workers at campuses across the state, reached an agreement with similar wage increases and benefit terms earlier this month.

“By standing with AFSCME, we showed the university that it’s no longer business as usual,” Local 320 said in a statement. “We showed the university that frontline workers at the university are ready to fight for a fair contract.”

AFSCME Local 3937, which represents technical workers at the university, resumes bargaining Monday. AFSCME Local 3260, which represents non-professional health care workers at the U of M, is also in negotiations.

All told, the contract negotiations affect about 4,000 workers at the U.

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Trumka at U of M: ‘There’s a way for workers to win, and it’s together’

November 19, 2015 by
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka speaks at the U of M's Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka speaks at the U of M’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

In a policy address at the University of Minnesota yesterday, the nation’s highest-ranking labor leader pointed to “thousands of little groundswells” from across the country, including in the Twin Cities, as signs of a renaissance for collective action in American culture.

“Right now workers are standing together and asking for a better life – and standing together to get that better life,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. “There’s a way for workers to win, and it’s together.”

Trumka offered his remarks, entitled “The Right Deal for America, and the Political Path to Get There,” to students, faculty, labor leaders and other dignitaries, including former Vice President Walter Mondale, at the U of M’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

The labor leader’s visit came a day after frontline workers at the university, members of AFSCME and the Teamsters, escalated their campaign for a fair contract with informational picketing on campus.

But Trumka did not shy away from standing in solidarity with their campaign for raises and respect. And he praised U of M faculty – his “soon to be brothers and sisters” – for taking steps to organize a union with SEIU Local 284 and gain a voice in shared governance at the university.

U of M workers, Trumka said, are among 5 million union members bargaining contracts this year, the most in recent history. It’s an opportunity, he said, for workers to get their “fair share” of an economic recovery built on their productivity and sacrifice.

“Raising wages will kick start the greatest engine of economic growth the world has ever seen: a well-paid American workforce,” Trumka said.

The address touched on public policies and political issues that affect U.S. workers, including rising income inequality, legal challenges to collective bargaining, and trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership that put corporate profits before middle-class jobs.

Those and other challenges, Trumka said, reflect the overwhelming influence of corporate money and the so-called “1 percent” on U.S. policymaking.

“The 1 percent have used every political and economic tool to drive down wages and divide working people … and they aren’t finished,” Trumka said. But he also likened corporate power to “a dinosaur that’s lived past its time” – big, vicious and “about to be pushed into extinction.”

Trumka poses for a photo with St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Bobby Kasper (L) and Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy.

Trumka poses for a photo with St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Bobby Kasper (L) and Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy.

How? Trumka pointed to the AFL-CIO’s Raising Wages Agenda, which “we’re pursuing right here in Minneapolis and St. Paul with a real vigor.”

The federation has come out strongly in favor of policies like a $15 minimum wage, fair scheduling and earned sick and safe time, and it’s given allies from outside the labor movement – worker centers and other groups advocating for gender equity, racial justice and immigrant rights – a real voice in the AFL-CIO’s power structure.

Trumka acknowledged flexibility and openness haven’t always been characteristics of the 60-year-old labor federation.

“There are a million little fires out there,” Trumka said. “It used to be if we couldn’t control them, then we didn’t want anything to do with them.”

After his address, Trumka answered questions in an informal exchange with Morris Kleiner, professor and AFL-CIO Chair in Labor Policy at the Humphrey School. The U of M established the position after receiving a contribution from the AFL-CIO in 1985, and it remains the only public affairs school in the U.S. with a dedicated AFL-CIO chair.

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

U of M workers: ‘Less than 1 percent won’t pay the rent’

September 29, 2015 by
Mary Austin, president of AFSCME Local 3937, reports on negotiations with the U of M during a rally outside Morrill Hall.

Mary Austin, president of AFSCME Local 3937, reports on negotiations with the U of M.

 

Unions representing about 4,000 workers in contract negotiations with the University of Minnesota took new momentum into a bargaining session today, after workers, students, faculty and other supporters rallied behind their fight for raises and respect.

“We’re only going to get what we’re organized to take,” Mick Kelly, a cook at Centennial Hall, said from the steps of Morrill Hall on the Twin Cities campus.

Workers are more organized than ever during this round of contract negotiations. Kelly’s union, Teamsters Local 320, planned the lunch-hour rally with four local AFSCME unions. Together, they represent clerical, technical, health care, facilities management, food service and other workers at U of M campuses across the state.

web.UofM-rally.crowdBut so far, talks with the university have made little progress. Unions report that management’s wage proposals amount to raises of less than 1 percent per year – “less than bus change,” Kelly said.

Workers’ top priorities also have met resistance, including equity in paid parental leave – administrators and faculty get six weeks, clerical workers two – and restoration of full funding for the Regents Scholarship, which supports tuition for workers’ dependents.

But what do workers mean by “respect”? Claire Thiele, a Teamster who works in the U’s veterinary lab, said it includes fair, honest sick-leave practices.

“My co-worker has two kids, she’s a single mother. Last winter they both got sick. They got her sick,” Thiele said. “She stayed home with them, and when she got back to work, she got written up by our bosses for using too much sick time.”

Frontline workers deserve better, students and faculty at the rally said, pledging their support for the contract campaign.

Grad studentCharmaine Chua: "Damn, my clerical workers are great! I am always learning from my clerical staff."

Grad studentCharmaine Chua: “Damn, my clerical workers are great! I am always learning from my clerical staff.”

Charmaine Chua, a graduate student at the Twin Cities campus, rolled off a long list of tasks – some in the job description, others not – that clerical workers in the political science department handle on daily basis. “You’re the invisible infrastructure that this university refuses to recognize,” Chua said.

“We know that the university wouldn’t run (without AFSCME and Teamsters workers), that it would shut down,” adjunct professor Michelle Lekas said. “(Administrators) need to know that too.”

AFSCME Council 5 Executive Director Eliot Seide warned U of M President Eric Kaler against pleading poverty in negotiations.

“It’s not right to give a $300,000 raise to the coach of the football team,” Seide said. “It’s not right to give a big raise to the coach of the basketball team, which when I last looked hadn’t even made it into the tournament. We should take that, Mr. President, and apply it to these contracts.”

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