Shar Knutson: It’s time for Senate to act on minimum wage

February 4, 2014 by

mug-knutsonWhen the Minnesota Legislature reconvenes on February 25th, lawmakers will be greeted by hundreds of people from Labor, Faith, Non-Profit, and Community Groups calling on them to increase Minnesota’s minimum wage to at least $9.50 per hour.

The hundreds of Minnesotans gathered at the Capitol will be there because of one underlying principle; nobody who works full time should have to live in poverty. They’ll be gathered there because in 2013, the Minnesota Senate failed to act on a meaningful minimum wage increase.

[Click here to register for the Feb. 25 rally and to find volunteer opportunities with the Raise the Wage campaign near you!]

In 2013, the Minnesota House passed legislation that would increase the state’s minimum wage to $9.50 per hour by 2015, increase the rate each subsequent year based on inflation, conform the state to the federal 40 hour work week, and protect tipped workers from having their wages cut. Governor Mark Dayton went on record saying he would sign a $9.50 minimum wage increase.

Unfortunately, the Minnesota Senate decided to pass a bill to raise the wage to $7.75, only 50 cents higher than the federal minimum wage. By the time session ended, a final bill was still left on the table.

Since the end of the 2013 legislative session, a broad and growing coalition of community, faith, labor, non-profit and service-based organizations has come together to make sure a minimum wage increase to at least $9.50 is on Governor Dayton’s desk early in the 2014 session. We’ve been having conversations with Minnesotans all year and are finding that a significant minimum wage increase enjoys broad support. During the state fair, more than 5,000 people signed postcards showing their support. We’re knocking on doors. We’re making phone calls. We’re showing up at town meetings. This is a campaign with serious momentum.

The time is right. On January 28, President Obama signed an executive order raising the minimum wage on all new federal contracts to $10.10 per hour and called for a federal minimum wage increase to $10.10 in his State of the Union Speech.

With the President of the United States, the Governor of Minnesota, the Minnesota House, the Minnesota DFL Party, and a clear majority of Minnesotans all supporting a minimum wage increase of at least $9.50 per hour; this should be an easy and smart decision for a Minnesota Senate with a DFL majority.

The clock is ticking. There is still much work to be done. It is vital that we continue to tell our State Senators that a minimum wage increase to at least $9.50 per hour is passed early in the 2014 session. Please visit the coalition website at www.raisethewagemn.org to get in contact with the campaign, volunteer for a phone bank, and to contact your Senator.

– Shar Knutson is president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, the state’s largest labor federation with more than 1,000 affiliate unions representing more than 300,000 working people.

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

Rebuffed by Medtronic, striking Cretex workers take message to marathon course

October 3, 2013 by

1382194_584318081615458_361069045_nOne of Cretex’s key business partners won’t meet with workers on strike at the company’s Shakopee plant. So on Sunday those workers will take their message to Medtronic’s highest-profile event of the year: the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon.

Thousands of marathon runners and spectators will find a billboard placed prominently along the route at Hennepin and 7th Street downtown Minneapolis, calling out the title sponsor for failing to listen to Minnesota workers.

More than 40 members of Laborers Local 563 have been in a marathon struggle of their own for the last 15 weeks. They went on strike June 19 after Cretex refused to budge from its demand they give up retirement benefits many workers had been self-funding for years.

[Click here to show your support for Local 563 workers on strike at Cretex.]

How does Medtronic fit into the dispute? The Minneapolis-based company buys a wide range of medical products manufactured by Cretex. If Medtronic talks, Local 563 Business Manager Tim Mackey said, Cretex will listen.

That’s why workers, rebuffed in previous attempts to meet with Medtronic executives about how they could help resolve the dispute, will use Sunday’s marathon to try again.

“An event like this gives us the chance to make another appeal to Medtronic and get them at the very least sit down with us and hear our side of the story,” Mackey said in a press release earlier this week.

Leaders across the state are echoing Mackey’s request. In a letter to Medtronic, Shar Knutson, president of the 300,000-member Minnesota AFL-CIO, said the company’s response shows “profound disrespect for those employees, for organized labor and for working people.”

Striking workers met with Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton about the dispute – and its possible effect on the state’s construction projects – last week.

The billboard features a parody of Cavity Sam, the character from the classic board game “Operation,” telling Medtronic it’s time to step in and help bring the strike to a conclusion.

“We support all the runners who are participating in the 32nd Annual Twin Cities Marathon, and we hope they will support our members whose endurance has been tested as they fight for their retirement security,” Mackey said.

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Unions honor March on Washington with a renewed call for justice

August 28, 2013 by
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison urges young people at the March on Washington anniversary event to take up the struggle for social justice.

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison urges young people at the March on Washington anniversary event to take up the struggle for social justice.

Fifty years after the March on Washington, the march toward justice continues.

That was the tone struck by union members, elected officials and civil rights advocates who gathered on the Capitol grounds in St. Paul today to honor the 50th anniversary of the watershed event in the civil rights movement.

Nearly 200 people participated in a march from Boyd Park to the Capitol’s South Mall, site of a program that featured speeches, prayers, music and a reading of the “I Have a Dream” speech delivered by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years ago.

Cherrish Maxon, 12 years old, reads MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech.

Cherrish Maxon, 12 years old, reads MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

“The fight must continue,” U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison said, drawing a connection between the struggle to end discrimination and inequality 50 years ago and several issues facing the nation today, like voting rights, marriage equality and immigration reform.

Minnesotans led the way last year, according to Ellison, when they rejected constitutional amendments that would have limited access to the ballot box and denied same-sex couples the freedom to marry.

“We said a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” the 5th District DFLer said. “This is the kind of thing that will happen if you stand up for what’s right and you don’t back down.”

Abraham Kone, a janitor and member of Service Employees International Union Local 26, was among the speakers who called members of Congress to “honor the civil rights movement by passing common-sense immigration reform” with a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million undocumented workers.

“Congress must act because without reform, millions of immigrants will be relegated to a permanent underclass,” Kone said.

Sponsored by the SEIU Minnesota State Council’s African-American caucus (AFRAM), the event underscored the labor movement’s commitment to civil rights. “If we do not have an economy that works for all, we do not have justice,” said Carol Nieters, director of SEIU Local 284.

"There were union members in that march," Minnesota AFL-CIO President Shar Knutson says.

“There were union members in that march,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Shar Knutson says.

“There were union members in that march too,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Shar Knutson added. “They marched for racial justice, social justice and economic justice.”

The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, has considered strengthening its commitment to civil rights by inviting organizations like the NAACP and the Hispanic civil-rights group La Raza under the federation’s umbrella.

“We’ve got to keep on marching – and marching together,” Knutson said. “If we do, we can make more strides so that every man, woman and child is achieving and prospering.”

“Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin walked so Barack Obama could run. Obama ran so that we all could fly,” said Bobby Kasper, president of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation. “I ask you now, are you going to fly? Are you going to fight? Are you going to achieve the dream?”

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Union agenda includes minimum-wage hike, privacy protections for Minnesota workers

January 29, 2013 by
Meslissa Tesora, a physical therapist and member of the AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America, supports raising the state minimum wage to $10.55 to make the middle class more accessible to people in low-skilled jobs. “People want to work, but the current minimum wage makes it prohibitive for less-skilled workers to support their families and attend school – and ultimately attain higher-skilled jobs," the St. Paul resident said.

Meslissa Tesoro, a physical therapist and member of the AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America, supports raising the state minimum wage to $10.55. “People want to work, but the current minimum wage makes it prohibitive for less-skilled workers to support their families and attend school,” the St. Paul resident said.

Emboldened by victories won at the polls in November, the state’s largest labor federation will push an ambitious legislative agenda that calls for hiking the state’s minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits for locked-out workers and expanding the freedoms and protections Minnesotans enjoy in the workplace.

The Minnesota AFL-CIO, which represents more than 1,000 affiliate unions and more than 300,000 members statewide, unveiled its “Agenda for Middle Class Dignity and Fairness” at a Capitol press conference today.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Shar Knutson said the agenda’s “common-sense proposals” – along with the proposed state budget outlined by Gov. Mark Dayton earlier this month – represent a positive alternative to the attacks on workers that marked the previous 2011-12 legislative sessions.

Dayton’s budget “puts middle class families first by recognizing the need for new investments, but also raising revenue fairly to pay for those investments,” Knutson said. But, she added, there are other steps lawmakers should take to “level the playing field” for middle class workers. Those steps include:

• Raising the minimum wage to $10.55 per hour and “indexing” it, so that the rate is adjusted for inflation in the future.

Minnesota has the “unfortunate distinction,” Minnesota AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Steve Hunter said, of being one of four states with minimum wage rates lower than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. (Five southern states have no minimum wage laws at all.)

Workers in Minnesota can be paid as little as $5.25 per hour, according to the Department of Labor.

Raising minimum wage to $10.55 per hour would restore the buying power it had in 1968.

“Hard work should be supported with a wage that can support a family, and it’s ridiculous to think that someone can support a family at $7.25 an hour,” Hunter said.

• Extending workers’ unemployment benefits for the duration of a lockout – and adding a penalty to the unemployment tax paid by employers who lock out their workers.

“As long as the clock ticks, an employer has an incentive to lock workers out, while also putting a strain on the state’s Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund,” Knutson said. “This is what’s happened to the 1,300 employees of American Crystal Sugar.”

Becki Jacobson, who has been locked out of her job by the Moorhead-based sugar beet cooperative since Aug. 1, 2011, said many of her fellow union members opted to leave the region or take early retirement after their unemployment benefits ran out last year.

Knutson said the Minnesota AFL-CIO is working with lawmakers on a bill to hold accountable employers, like Crystal Sugar, that choose to force workers onto unemployment rather than engage in contract negotiations – and also “give employers pause” before they engage in such a war of attrition.

• Protecting Minnesota workers’ credit privacy and workplace freedoms.

Knutson and Hunter said they hope to see two bills introduced in the coming weeks: the Worker Freedom Act, which would give employees the right to walk out of workplace meetings aimed at changing their vote, religion or union affiliation; and the Credit Privacy in Employment Act, which would ban the use of credit checks in employment-related decisions.

“This is really a fundamental workplace protection that all Minnesotans should have,” Knutson said.

Several examples of bosses telling their employees how to vote emerged during the 2012 presidential campaign, most notably the case of a Florida timeshare company CEO, who warned his 7,000 workers via e-mail that layoffs would be the result of a victory for President Obama.

The use of credit checks in employment decisions – from hirings and firings to promotions – is also on the rise. A July 2012 survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 47 percent of U.S. employers run credit checks on their job candidates.

The practice creates a catch 22 for job seekers who have faced financial crisis.

“This recession forced many people into financial situations that have impacted their credit scores,” Hunter said. “That credit score can sometimes be the only reason somebody is not a hired for a job that would return him or her back to the middle class.”

Click here to read the full Agenda for Middle Class Dignity and Fairness.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Statewide labor convention opens with political call to action

September 17, 2012 by

Election-year politics dominated Day 1 of the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s 51st Constitutional Convention in Rochester yesterday, as speakers, including U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, urged delegates to take action in support of labor-endorsed candidates up and down the Nov. 6 ballot.

Klobuchar, whose campaign for a second term has the state labor federation’s endorsement, said unions will succeed in the 2012 elections by sticking to their vision for the U.S. economy – one that creates shared prosperity, preserves opportunities for all and rewards those who work hard and play by the rules.

“As hard as this (economy) is, it could be so much worse,” Klobuchar said. “We have to keep focused on the economic agenda, and that’s what I’ve done.”

Klobuchar and other speakers drew a sharp distinction between President Obama’s economic plan and the vision offered by Republican nominee Mitt Romney. One candidate puts middle class families first, she said; the other serves the interests of the richest 1 percent.

“In order to bring the debt down – which it actually doesn’t do – they’re proposing $250,000 in additional tax cuts for people making over $1 million,” Klobuchar said. “That’s totally the opposite of what we need to do.”

Liz Shuler, secretary-treasurer of the national AFL-CIO, called Romney the “outsourcer in chief.”

“At Bain Capital he destroyed jobs and bankrupted companies like they were toys in his personal toy chest,” Shuler said, adding that Romney “even outsources his own bank accounts to Bermuda and Switzerland and other tax havens so he doesn’t have to pay his fair share to support this country.”

Delegates to the convention also heard about political efforts closer to home, including the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s plan to rebuild labor majorities in both houses of the Minnesota Legislature. Republicans in the House and the Senate, Minnesota AFL-CIO President Shar Knutson said, have done much over the last two years to divide workers, weaken unions and make it harder to vote – but they haven’t done much to create jobs.

“They tried to throw everything they could at us,” Knutson said. “They tried to weaken collective bargaining, gut prevailing wage, reduce safety standards and attack the professionals that educate our children… There were hundreds of attacks.”

Ultimately, DFL Gov. Mark Dayton helped stave off most attacks on workers. But as Nov. 6 draws closer, Knutson said, union members must remember how narrow Dayton’s election was.

“If 2.4 percent of union members had voted for Emmer instead of Dayton, Tom Emmer would be governor, and our state would look just like Wisconsin,” she said, referring to the all-out attack on collective bargaining that took place after Republicans swept control of that state’s government in 2010.

“If we do what we need to do – knock the doors, make the calls, get those fliers out at the worksite, talk to our friends and neighbors – we will elect a pro-worker majority to the Minnesota Legislature that will put us, middle class families, to work,” Knutson added. “If we fail, Right to Work will come back with a vengeance.”

After the conclusion of business Sunday, the convention floor became the site of a brief Labor 2012 campaign phone bank, as delegates called fellow union members on behalf of endorsed candidates from Southeast Minnesota.

The Minnesota AFL-CIO’s convention continues today. Delegates participated in workshops this morning, and were scheduled to hear from more speakers, including Dayton, this afternoon.

Today’s schedule also includes presentations on union organizing, the campaigns to defeat both constitutional amendments on the Nov. 6 ballot and the lockout of 1,300 American Crystal Sugar workers in Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa.

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