Bobby Kasper: New year offers promise, but only if we stay engaged

We know the political pendulum doesn’t swing our way unless working people get out there and push it.

On right to work and prevailing wage, it’s Walz … or Wisconsin

“People will tell you, ‘I’m not into politics,’” Walz told tradespeople. “You tell them too damn bad because politics is into you.”

Labor unites behind Walz for governor

Unions are joining forces to elect one of their own to the state’s highest office.

Walker’s anti-union Act 10 dealing major blow to WI public schools, report finds

A new analysis of Wisconsin’s public schools reveals several alarming trends since the state adopted legislation stripping teachers and other public service workers of most collective bargaining rights in 2011. “Gov. Scott Walker and Republican elected leaders in Wisconsin said that Act 10 would benefit schools and families alike,” said David Madlan, co-author of the […]

AFSCME Council 5’s founding director to step down – but keep fighting

Eliot Seide was even more fired up than usual when he sat down for a Thursday-morning interview at AFSCME Council 5’s South St. Paul offices last month. News had just broken that the U.S. Supreme Court would hear a case with the potential to weaken public-sector workers’ collective bargaining power, and it had Seide and […]

Friedrichs is history (maybe), but Minnesota workers aren’t letting their guard down

  Labor History Month kicked off in St. Paul last night with a discussion of history in the making, as panelists offered insight into public-sector workers’ recent push to breath new life into their unions and defend their right to a voice on the job. The public forum, titled “The Friedrichs Case and the Future […]

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

  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 […]

In Minnesota, public-sector workers building power from the inside out

They may no longer be on the brink of a Supreme Court-imposed Right-to-Work rule, but Minnesota’s public-sector union members aren’t celebrating. They’re organizing. “What we got was a reprieve, not clemency – and surely not a pardon,” Education Minnesota attorney Meg Luger-Nikolai warned a standing-room-only audience of activists last night at the East Side Freedom […]

Holding steady in Minnesota, union density plunges in Right-to-Work Wisconsin

Union members made up 14.2 percent of Minnesota’s wage-earning and salaried workforce last year, a membership rate unchanged from 2014, according to an annual report released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. A similar trend played out nationwide, as the union membership rate held steady at 11.1 percent of the U.S. workforce. But […]

Bernie Hesse: Politicians, bad laws can’t stop workers from organizing

Our union, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1189, organized a new group of workers in Luck, Wis., the day Gov. Scott Walker signed a Right to Work for Less bill. The workers at Pioneer Care Center, a nursing home in Luck, voted overwhelmingly for a union. The worker win was the bright spot on […]