NLRB: North Memorial responded to staffing campaign with harassment, retaliation

North Memorial Hospital illegally retaliated against union nurses and health care workers who participated in a campaign to fight staffing cuts and protect patient safety at the Robbinsdale hospital, according to a complaint issued this week by the Minneapolis-based Regional Director of the National Labor Relations Board. The complaint finds merit to charges of unfair […]

Collective Bargaining: Under attack in Wisconsin, on the rise in Minnesota

Jeff Johnson, the Republican nominee for governor, provided a glimpse of his leadership style May 15, telling a Tea Party group he would “go all Scott Walker on Minnesota” if elected Nov. 4. But what is it about Walker’s Wisconsin that Johnson believes is worth replicating? To answer that question – and to get a […]

Home care workers win election, take momentum into contract talks

Home health care workers in Minnesota have spoken, and they voted decisively to form a union, the state’s Bureau of Mediation Services announced yesterday. Now the fight to improve the lives of home care workers and the people they serve shifts from the organizing field to the negotiation table – and back to the State […]

St. Paul home care worker Maggie Doran: Why I’m voting ‘yes’

On July 8, home care workers from across the state came together to file a union petition that triggered what will be the largest union election in the history of our state. Ballots will go out to more than 26,000 home care workers on August 1, and we will have our election results before Labor […]

Home care workers ‘invisible no more’ after filing for historic union election

When home care workers in Minnesota launched their campaign to form a statewide union less than two years ago, they set out to raise wages, improve working conditions and bring legitimacy and respect to a career path seen as critical to meeting the needs of an aging population. They may not have set out to […]

Nurses, support workers unite for safe staffing at North Memorial Hospital

ROBBINSDALE – Rankled by North Memorial Hospital’s plan to cut their staffing levels, nurses and support staff united for informational picketing outside the facility here today. Hospital management, union leaders say, has moved unilaterally to cut staffing among nurses, dietary aides, housekeepers and other support workers to dangerously low levels. Nurses, for example, are now expected […]

Unions: Dayton, DFL legislators delivered for working families

Progress is what Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton promised he’d deliver if given pro-worker majorities in the Legislature. Progress on job creation, better schools, economic justice and budget stability is what Dayton and House DFLers will point to when they campaign for re-election this fall. In the 2014 session, Dayton and legislators picked up where they […]

A stinging defeat on labor relations bill 75 years ago

The Minnesota Federation of Labor held an emergency special convention for the first time in its history April 3, 1939. On the agenda? How to defeat a labor-relations bill making its way through the Legislature that winter and considered by The Advocate to be “one of the most vicious anti-Labor bills ever introduced in the middle […]

Crystal Care workers: ‘We’re not going to stop fighting until we get our money’

The union working to organize home-care workers statewide is lending its support to employees who accuse Richfield-based Crystal Care Home Health of failing to pay their wages. Some claim they worked up to three months for the company without pay. SEIU Healthcare Minnesota helped organize a picket Wednesday morning outside Crystal Care, and more than […]

Health care local celebrates 80th anniversary, welcomes PCAs into union

The nation’s oldest union of health care workers marked its 80th anniversary Sept. 20 by welcoming a new group of members, home care workers, into the local. For the first time ever, roll call to open SEIU Healthcare Minnesota’s convention included a unit of personal care attendants who are hired by their clients and paid […]