Workers strike at South St. Paul tannery that supplies Red Wing Shoes

October 16, 2025 by

Striking members of Workers United Local 150 walk the picket line at Twin City Tanning.

About 65 workers at a tannery in South St. Paul that supplies leather for Red Wing Shoes are in the second week of a strike for higher wages.

Members of Workers United Local 150 walked off the job Oct. 9, accusing their employer, Twin City Tanning, of refusing to bargain in good faith. The union’s previous contract expired earlier in the month after workers agreed to a temporary extension.

The two sides met with a state mediator Oct. 14 but failed to reach an agreement. Local 150 representative Esau Chavez said another session was scheduled for Friday, Oct. 17.

Picket lines will remain up from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day except Sunday until the strike ends. The union welcomes community support on the line, located at 501 Malden St. in South St. Paul.

[Click here to sign a petition to Red Wing Shoes demanding support for striking workers.]

Bargaining began in late August, and Chavez said union members presented their full proposal at the first meeting. But Twin City Tanning failed to respond until a third session in September.

That response was an insult: raises of 25 cents per hour in the contract’s first year, 15 cents in the second and 10 cents in both the third and fourth. Union members entered bargaining with a demand of $3-per-hour raises, plus an increase to the regular bonus workers receive for perfect attendance.

Both sides moved some in sessions that followed, Chavez said, but workers voted down the employer’s last, best and final offer, with annual raises that averaged 80 cents over a three-year deal.

“We think we made a modest, fair proposal given the hard work that’s done here and the inflation we’ve seen since our last contract,” Chavez said. “These guys deal with chemicals, toxins, cow hides. It’s not easy work.”

The union, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, was picketing from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day except Tuesday and Sunday.

Rallies on the picket line drew support from elected officials in the area and members of other unions, including United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1189, which represents workers at Red Wing Shoes. Local 1189 had advised its members to honor Twin City Tanning workers’ picket line.

Twin City Tanning has been a union shop since 1990.

On the picket line, workers said plant management had turned over since the last round of contract negotiations. Mark Aufderhar, who has about 10 years of experience at Twin City Tanning, said the new plant manager may be “looking to make a name for himself by saving money.”

Aufderhar said he’s seen a similar approach – alarmingly – in his role on the facility’s safety committee. After a chunk of concrete fell onto the shop floor, he alerted the safety manager, but all the manager could do, Aufderhar said, “is write an email to the higher-ups just to cover their butt.”

“They just don’t want to spend the money on fixing these things,” he added. “This round of negotiations, it’s the same thing. It’s way different than the one before. It’s bad.”

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Twin City Tanning $1,920 for a “serious” citation in July.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Organizing, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , ,

HealthPartners workers strike at Stillwater Medical Group

July 8, 2025 by

SEIU bargaining team members Heather Eggers (L) and Ellie Conway lead a rally on the picket line at Stillwater Medical Group.

United “like never before,” a bargaining unit of 80 workers at HealthPartners Stillwater Medical Group began a four-day strike this morning, escalating their campaign for a new union contract that delivers wage gains and longevity bonuses.

Members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa on strike at SMG include licensed practical nurses, certified medical assistants and other workers in the facility’s family-medicine, OB/GYN, pediatrics and specialties departments.

On the picket line, union members said they felt stung by HealthPartners’ decision to fork over money to temporary workers and pay overtime wages, rather than meet their bargaining team halfway and avoid a strike.

Workers voted last month, with near-unanimous support, to authorize a strike. In talks since then, the employer “has barely moved in their proposals,” LPN and bargaining team member Kelly Parent said.

“We tried to come down with our numbers,” CMA Ellie Conway, another member of the bargaining team, added. “Unfortunately, they didn’t reciprocate.”

Heather Eggers, a CMA and union negotiator, said SMG workers have taken on more responsibilities in recent years, as the facility struggled with short staffing. She said HealthPartners needs to offer more than just a “thank you.”

“The cost of living is rising, and we need HealthPartners to step up,” Eggers said. “They keep saying we are working together for the common good. If that’s the case, then why isn’t our leadership working for us, the workers?”

Workers walk the picket line at HealthPartners Stillwater Medical Group.

Although SMG is under the HealthPartners umbrella, workers’ wages and benefits lag behind those earned by many of their peers in the system. SMG workers bargain on their own, outside a larger SEIU contract that covers over two dozen HealthPartners sites in the metro.

“We’re doing the same work for the same company,” said Conway, who has worked at SMG for over five years. “We believe we deserve the same wages and bonuses.”

SMG workers don’t expect to make up the difference with one contract, but Conway said they intend to do better than the “chump change” in HealthPartners’ most recent proposal, which amounts to raises of less than $1 per hour for many in the bargaining unit.

“We refuse to accept that this is the best HealthPartners has to offer us,” she said. “It feels like the money makes its way to corporate leadership but skips right past the front line.”

The unit came into contract negotiations this spring fired up, having beat back an attempt to decertify their union just weeks before bargaining began. Workers voted to keep their union, with 72% support.

“The employer was very vocal in the decertification about how they could work with us so much better without a union,” Conway said. “Fortunately, the members saw through those empty promises.

“Like never before, our union is ready to stand together and demand better working conditions.”

Union members plan to picket from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day of the strike, scheduled to end Friday. SMG is located at 1500 Curve Crest Blvd.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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MN nurses authorize strike as hospitals stonewall safe-staffing proposals

June 24, 2025 by

Jes Busselman, a nurse at Abbott Northwester, speaks during MNA’s press conference to announce results of their strike vote.

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association at 11 Twin Cities hospitals voted yesterday to authorize a strike, escalating their campaign to bargain enforceable nurse-to-patient staffing ratios into their union contracts.

Hospital representatives have outright refused to engage with the union’s staffing proposals – members’ top priority – during negotiations, leaving nurses feeling demoralized and disrespected.

Jes Busselman, a surgical and oncology nurse at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, said she and other nurses in the Allina Health system have “poured our hearts out” trying to describe the “brutal reality” of what understaffing in their units means for patient care and nurse morale.

“We’ve given tearful testimony,” she said. “We’ve been brutally honest. And still, Allina’s leaders sit across from us, disinterested, dismissive and unwilling to even have a conversation.”

MNA members allege the hospitals are not bargaining in good faith, and the union has filed several charges of unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board, protecting nurses from being fired or permanently replaced if they do go on strike.

MNA has not set a strike date, and the union must notify hospitals 10 days before any work stoppage begins.

Nurses at Aspirus St. Luke’s and Essentia Health hospitals in Duluth also voted to authorize a strike yesterday, as did MNA bargaining units bringing together clinic and hospice nurses and advanced practitioners in the area.

Altogether, about 15,000 MNA members were eligible to vote. The union does not make specific balloting results public, but said the authorization was “overwhelmingly” approved.

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OPEIU members decry ‘culture of fear’ at HealthPartners, set May 5 strike deadline

April 29, 2025 by

Members of Local 12 held informational picketing outside HealthPartners’ headquarters in Bloomington last November.

For the second time since negotiations began last September, members of Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Local 12 have warned HealthPartners that they intend to strike unless the two sides make meaningful progress toward a new contract.

The union, which represents about 1,000 workers across the Twin Cities, is planning a 10-day strike, beginning May 5.

Union leaders said picketing would touch all 31 HealthPartners facilities, including its headquarters in Bloomington and local clinics, where union members staff the check-in desks and work in back-office positions like scheduling, claims and accounting. The union was arranging a “click-it line” for members in telework positions.

Local 12’s bargaining team scrapped plans for a three-day strike in March after HealthPartners negotiators improved their economic proposal. But progress has stalled since then, representative Cesar Montufar said during a press conference April 18.

HealthPartners’ lowest-paid workers, he said, “are fed up, and they’re ready to go.”

OPEIU’s bargaining team has pushed hard for wage increases to keep up with inflation, pointing to a Local 12 analysis that estimates members have lost $3.50 per hour in buying power since their last contract took effect three years ago.

HealthPartners’ initial offer of 0.25% annual raises sparked outrage across the bargaining unit. The offer has since increased to 4%.

But bargaining team members said that pay increases given to executives like CEO Andrea Walsh, whose compensation grew from $1.4 million in 2017 to $3.8 million in 2023, prove the not-for-profit organization can do better.

“These executives are drawing the line for our members at 4%,” Montufar said. “That’s 4% for someone trying to survive on $30,000 a year, but $400,000 raises for the executives? That is the definition of corporate greed.”

Members of Local 12’s bargaining team are also demanding accountability for what they described as an increasingly hostile work environment.

At the press conference, current workers and union representatives alleged that HealthPartners has retaliated against union activists, used aggressive discipline to push veteran employees into lower-paying positions and established a “culture of fear” under Walsh’s leadership.

A 26-year veteran of HealthPartners, Janell Kelly said she recently took a “huge pay cut” to transfer into the dental clinic. The move came after a supervisor in her previous department, during a one-on-one meeting, chided Kelly because she “wasn’t smiling anymore” after the unexpected death of her son.

“My supervisor was making my life miserable,” Kelly said. “I knew that job well and was confident in doing it, I just couldn’t take the way I was treated.”

In the dental clinic, Kelly has encountered management issues of a different kind.

“When my supervisor found out I was on the bargaining team, she began a campaign to fire me, including fabricating evidence and secretly making changes to my timecard in an attempt to steal wages,” Kelly said. “Their behavior is unacceptable.”

Kelly isn’t the only HealthPartners worker to chafe at a changing attitude among management. Union representative Kelsie Morgan described a trend of “more punitive discipline than legitimate corrective action” doled out to members she represents over the last decade.

HealthPartners fired one probationary employee because she “smelled like cigarettes and perfume and didn’t adhere to a break schedule,” Morgan said. But when she followed up with the worker, Morgan heard a much different story: she was in the middle of trying to leave an abusive relationship.

“Work was her safe space,” Morgan said. “The day she was not adhering to her break schedule was the day she was working to get on the phone with her lawyer and find help with her situation.”

Paula Moyer, a union steward, recalled attending disciplinary meetings with a co-worker who was awaiting surgery for a congenital spine condition. Rather than offering compassion and support, Moyer said, her manager wrote the worker up for missing the window to report excused absences by mere minutes.

“You think most people would kind of want to help, you know?” Moyer said. “Maybe bring over a hot dish. But no, not this supervisor.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Union members push bill to give striking workers unemployment benefits

March 22, 2024 by

Autoworkers in Hudson, Wis., picketed during their union’s “Stand Up Strike” in 2023.

After a wave of collective action saw American workers improve their pay and working conditions by going on strike, Minnesota lawmakers are weighing a change to the state’s unemployment insurance system that would lighten the economic hardship union members here face during a labor dispute.

Legislation introduced earlier this month by DFLers in the House and Senate would make some workers in Minnesota eligible for unemployment benefits when they are on strike.

Advocates, including several union members who testified in support of the bill last month, said giving workers more leverage at the bargaining table is good for working families, local communities and the economy as a whole.

The cost to the state’s unemployment insurance fund, meanwhile, would be “negligible,” according to Jake Schwitzer, director of the North Star Policy Action, a research group that issued a report on the idea earlier this year. That report estimated the proposed expansion would amount to 0.3% or less of existing unemployment claims.

The benefits, union members said, would far outweigh those costs.

More equal footing

More often than not, employers enter a work stoppage from a position of strength, with deep pockets to cover any losses in productivity. Workers, particularly those in low-wage jobs, begin feeling the impact of lost wages almost immediately.

That dynamic, workers told lawmakers, gives employers an incentive to wait things out and force workers to capitulate to their demands. It’s what Dean Benson, a retired St. Paul Park refinery worker, said Marathon tried to do to members of Teamsters Local 120 when they went on strike for safety and job security three years ago.

“We won that strike, but only because we had the support we needed to keep that fight on,” Benson said during a Senate committee hearing on the bill March 13. “That isn’t always the case because Marathon did what many large corporations try to do when their workers are seeking a fair contract. They tried to starve us out.”

Minnesota’s unemployment benefit covers about 50% of a worker’s average weekly wage, up to a maximum of $890. That’s the right amount, AFSCME Council 5 Interim Executive Director Bart Anderson said, to give workers more bargaining power while keeping the strike a last resort.

“Going on strike will still be financially challenging, but at least workers won’t be starved back to work,” Anderson said.

Community gains

Other supporters argued that the legislation could reduce the number of work stoppages in Minnesota. Employers would know that union members have access to a partial wage replacement if they strike, giving them reason to bargain a timely, equitable contract.

With record profits in the bank, the Big 3 automakers could have reached a deal before members of the United Auto Workers went on strike last September, UAW member John Kontzelmann told lawmakers.

“The strike didn’t have to take five weeks because these employers knew what their top offer was,” said Kontzelmann, who was on strike at the Twin Cities Stellantis parts facility. “Managers didn’t sacrifice a penny while they tried to starve us out, and despite pleading poverty for weeks they ended up agreeing to a record four-year contract.”

The autoworkers’ contracts, with wage increases of 25% or more, also show the ripple effects of union power at the bargaining table. After the UAW settled, non-union automakers across the U.S. moved quickly to increase their wages by double-digit percentages – the so-called “UAW bump.”

“This bill benefits not just workers, but the entire economy,” Rep. Kaela Berg (D-Burnsville), lead House author of the bill, said. “When workers are earning a living wage, they are contributing to the local economy.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

St. Paul educators set March 11 strike deadline, seek community support

February 28, 2024 by

SPFE members rallied for a contract before a school board meeting in January.

Union educators in the St. Paul Public Schools are giving the district two weeks to settle their contracts. Otherwise, the St. Paul Federation of Educators’ 3,689 members – teachers, education assistants and school professionals – will go on strike March 11.

Outside the state Bureau of Mediation Services, where union representatives on Monday filed an official notice of their intent to strike, SPFE President Leah VanDassor said the district would need to significantly improve its contract proposals on wages, health insurance and student supports to prevent a strike.

“This is about retention,” VanDassor said. “This is about stability. This is about valuing what goes on in those classrooms in our schools.”

Representatives of SPFE and the district will meet with a state mediator Friday – their last scheduled session before the union’s strike deadline, although other dates could be added.

Last Friday, the two sides held their first mediation session since SPFE members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike Feb. 15. The vote, VanDassor said, should have sent a powerful message that educators are “enthusiastically ready” to stand together “to show, as a working group, that we need to be respected,” she said.

But district leaders continue to claim educators’ demands – even a scaled-back economic proposal passed across the table last Friday – exceeded the amount SPPS has budgeted for the contract, despite a record $56 million funding increase delivered by state lawmakers last session.

“While we agree that our staff deserve more for their hard work on behalf of our students, we also have to live with the resources available to us without compromising the services and programs that our students need and deserve,” Halla Henderson, school board chair, said during a press conference yesterday.

The board met in closed session Monday to discuss negotiations.

SPFE, meanwhile, has set up an online form for supporters to email board members. VanDassor said District negotiators “claim the Board of Education sets the parameters” for how much of the SPPS budget can go toward the educators’ contract.

“If that’s what happening here, then the board needs to change those parameters,” she said. “We have an educator shortage that’s only getting worse, not better. We’re asking for a budget that reflects that reality.”

VanDassor also asked supporters, especially parents of SPPS students, to offer their solidarity to educators and staff as the strike deadline nears, whether in person at a school or online via the union’s social media channels.

She emphasized that educators do not take the decision to set a strike deadline lightly.

“Our bargaining team is doing everything in its power to reach a settlement before that time and will continue to do so,” she said.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Nursing home workers plan to strike as new industry standards board ramps up work

February 23, 2024 by

Workers at nursing homes across the Twin Cities are voting to stage a one-day strike March 5 over unfair labor practices, escalating their fight for pay and benefit increases that they say are needed to address staffing shortfalls in their industry.

Two local unions, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 663, had announced workers at 10 nursing homes would join the strike when the March edition of The Union Advocate went to press. Leaders said strike-authorization votes at other facilities were still in the works.

At a press conference Feb. 20 outside Saint Therese in New Hope, nursing assistant Monyou Taye said she voted to strike because “workers and our residents deserve better.”

“We don’t have enough staff and equipment to keep up with the work,” Taye said. “Over the years we have had to do more and more … because not enough people want to do this important work under the current wages and benefits.

“It makes us feel burned out and stressed. It makes us feel angry.”

In her 15th year working at Saint Therese, Taye still earns less than $20 per hour, and a survey of 1,300 Minnesota nursing home workers conducted by SEIU last fall suggests she’s not alone. Half reported making less than $20 per hour, 80% said they make less than $25 per hour and nine out of 10 said they struggle to afford basic needs.

A strike is sure to draw the attention of Minnesota’s new Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board, which began meeting last fall and is tasked with setting minimum employment standards in the industry.

The board, established by state lawmakers last year, is ramping up its work, and dozens of union members turned out for its first in-person meeting Feb. 21 in Brooklyn Park.

SEIU Healthcare members voted last year to push for a $25 wage floor in the industry, plus affordable health and retirement benefits.

“We know that these changes are possible, and we know that without them we are going to continue the staffing crisis that plagues the nursing home industry,” Jamie Gulley, the union’s president, said outside Saint Therese. “Workers are fed up, and that’s why we’re standing up and saying enough is enough. We are ready to strike.”

At press time, two nursing homes in the east metro, Cerenity in St. Paul and the Estates of Roseville, were among the locations where workers planned to strike March 5.

Teresa Brees, a Roseville worker with 25 years of experience in the industry, tore a tendon in her bicep after working 23 straight days last year. She and other long-term care workers “are at our breaking points,” she said, due to short staffing, and it won’t get better without better pay and benefits.

“How many more good people will we lose because of the low pay, lack of benefits and ongoing disrespect?” she said.

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Hudson GM workers ‘just waiting to get the call’ to join Big 3 strike

September 15, 2023 by

UAW members picketed at GM’s Hudson facility in October 2019.

Autoworkers at General Motors’ parts-distribution facility in Hudson, Wis., are not on strike today, but union members say they are ready to walk if their international union directs them to the picket line.

“We’re on standby right now, just waiting to get the call,” United Autoworkers (UAW) Local 722 President Steve Frisque said. “If we have to go out, we’ll be ready to go.”

The UAW’s contracts at GM, Ford and Stellantis, covering about 146,000 workers, expired overnight, and the union responded by calling strikes at three of the automakers’ most profitable plants.

International union leaders succeeded in keeping the location of those strikes a secret, part of a new targeting strategy that the UAW hopes will maximize the impact of its strike fund. It means members of Local 722, who work in Hudson and at Ford’s parts facility in Menomonie, Wis., won’t know they’re going on strike until just before they walk off the job.

But if they do get the call, Frisque expects all 81 workers at the Hudson facility and all 42 in Menomonie to be on the picket line. Even though Wisconsin is a right-to-work state, Local 722 has full participation in its bargaining units.

“The thought of going on strike, it’s a little scary, but the older people are already taking the younger people under their wings so they know what it’s about,” Frisque said. “We’re unified and we’re ready to go out. We will walk that picket line for as long as it takes.”

Although the parts-distribution shops are small by comparison to Big 3 manufacturing facilities, the ripple effect of a potential strike in Hudson would extend to dealerships in 11 states.

“It would shut dealerships down,” Frisque said. “And unfortunately, it would hurt customers trying to get their cars fixed. But if it gets to the point where that’s what it takes to get GM to listen to us, then that’s what we might have to do.”

GM workers in Hudson went on strike four years ago over many of the same issues that have emerged as sticking points in current talks between the UAW and the Big 3, with union members seeking to claw back concessions made when automakers were on the brink of insolvency 15 years ago.

The contracts’ use of two-tiered wage scales is among those concessions autoworkers want scrapped. In Hudson, workers hired since 2007 are paid on a lower scale than so-called “legacy workers.”

The starting wage at the facility was $19 per hour in 2007, Frisque said. It’s $17 today.

“Working next to some guy in a union shop doing the same job and making two different wages – that’s not what the union was based on,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to get rid of.”

Meanwhile, the Big 3 have netted $250 billion in profits over the last decade, and they are projected to add another $32 billion to their haul this year. CEO pay is up 40% over the same period.

“The idea was, when we gave those concession, that when GM became viable agan, started making money again, we’d get those things back,” Frisque said. “But we never have.”

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Uncategorized, Union Events Tagged With: , , ,

Metro Transit workers vote to authorize strike

September 13, 2023 by

Members of ATU Local 1005 rallied in July outside a Met Council committee meeting in Minneapolis.

Metro Transit workers have voted overwhelmingly to authorize their union leaders to call a strike, holding firm to their demand for wages that outpace inflation.

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, which represents about 2,000 operators, mechanics and other workers in contract negotiations with the Twin Cities’ transit agency, reported that 94% of members who voted Sept. 10-11 supported strike authorization.

Bargaining began in March, and Local 1005 President Ryan Timlin said Metro Transit’s first offer left a lot of union members “very pissed off.” The agency has proposed a 3% raise in the contract’s first year and 2% in the following two years, according to Timlin.

That’s a similar wage package to the one approved by union members in their previous three-year contract, which expired July 31. But with inflation outpacing their earnings, transit workers are looking for more this time around.

Potential new hires are doing the same, Timlin said. The agency has struggled to hire despite plans to expand the local transit system, with Local 1005’s membership down about 400 since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

“Their offer isn’t reaching market value,” Timlin said. “And among our members, there’s still a lot of anger about how management worked from home during COVID. Everything’s been building.”

Local 1005 members voted a year ago to make a “COLA +1” wage formula their union’s top priority at the bargaining table in 2023. Rather than fixed raises, the proposed contract language would determine wage increases by adding 1% to the current rate of inflation.

“It gives us a safety net in this uncertain economy,” Timlin said of the proposal. “But the members ultimately will have the final say.”

ATU’s bargaining team is also seeking a higher shift differential for workers clocking overnight hours, as well as new health and safety protections for operators exposed to drug use on the transit line or dangerous weather during mid-route shift changes.

“Drivers who do relief, they go to a specific bus stop and wait until the bus pulls up to take it over,” Timlin explained. “We’re trying to get management to agree to provide a vehicle they can drive between Metro Transit garages and those relief points, to reduce any safety issues that might pop up.”

Local 1005 and Metro Transit have bargaining sessions scheduled Sept. 22 and Oct. 5.

Before a strike could begin, the two sides would have to try mediation. The union must also give Metro Transit 10 days’ notice of any work stoppage.

Metro Transit workers last went on strike in 2004, shutting down bus service in the Twin Cities for about six weeks.

Both locally and nationally, unions are taking strike votes to show employers that their bargaining teams have the support of rank-and-file members – and to pressure management to meet the union’s demands. Timlin said ATU members “have been paying attention” to historic contract gains made by Teamsters at UPS and other unions.

“Our message to Metro Transit is let’s get back to the table and really start negotiating,” Timlin said.

Filed Under: Organizing, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , ,

Local Teamsters show they’re ready to strike for fair share of record UPS profits

July 21, 2023 by

Hundreds of members of Teamsters Local 120 and Local 638 joined a rally and “practice picket” July 8 at the UPS hub in northeast Minneapolis. Real picketing could begin Aug. 1.

With “practice picketing” outside UPS facilities across the Twin Cities this month, local Teamsters are showing the company that they are prepared to strike – if necessary – when the contract covering 340,000 union members nationwide expires July 31.

“I don’t think anyone wants to go on strike, but we’ll do what we have to do,” Gunnar Johnson, a UPS driver and member of Teamsters Local 638, said while walking a picket line July 8 in Minneapolis. “We’re not asking for the moon. UPS can end this today if they want.”

That would mean settling a contract that meets Teamsters’ key demands: fair wage increases, elimination of a two-tier wage structure and no more mandatory six-day workweeks.

“I don’t think that’s asking too much of any employer, especially one that we’ve sacrificed so much to keep afloat,” Eagan-based loader Rikki Schreiner said. “They are the most successful and most reliable shipping company there is because of Teamster labor. We’ve taken good care of them, and now it’s time for them to take care of us.”

UPS reported record profits of $11.3 billion in 2022, with revenues exceeding $100 billion. CEO Carol Tomé earned $19 million in total compensation. Those numbers make Robert Cristino, a feeder driver in Maple Grove, confident UPS can do better by full- and part-time workers when it comes to wages and work-life balance.

Gunnar Johnson (L) and Robert Cristino, who work at the Maple Grove UPS hub, walked the practice picket line.

“The big lie is that everyone at UPS makes $94,000 or whatever a year. That’s what UPS likes to tell the media,” Cristino said “Sure, maybe you can make that, but you’ve got to work six days a week to get it. It’s too much all the time, and you never get a break.”

Johnson said an arrangement that allows UPS to deny pay increases to part-timers needs to go. “There are part-time drivers doing the same job as me, getting paid less,” he said. “You can go to Costco right now and make more. We just want everyone treated fairly.”

Talks between the union and UPS broke down at 4 a.m. July 5. After two weeks of Teamster picketing, the company finally called the union back into bargaining July 19, as this issue went to press.

In balloting across the country earlier this summer, 97% of Teamsters voted to authorize their bargaining team to call a strike, which would have a widespread impact on the U.S. economy and beyond. UPS delivers 24.3 million parcels daily, on average; that’s on par with the U.S. Postal Service and more than twice as many as FedEx delivers.

Rikki Schreiner is a union steward at the UPS facility in Eagan.

“We want – and we’re going to get – what we’ve got coming to us,” said Teamsters Local 120 President Tom Erickson, who serves as a vice president of the international union. “During the pandemic UPS had no problem taking advantage of our workers, and that stops on Aug. 1, one way or another.

“We’re either going to have a contract, or we’re going to be out on the street fighting for what we’ve got coming to us.”

Schreiner, who has worked at the Eagan facility since 1999, said she’s hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

“I’m ready,” she said. “We have to stand up for what we deserve. If we don’t, they’ll step all over us.”

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