Fight for $15 strikes: Legal, protected, effective

  From fast food to retail, workers in low-wage jobs around the country, including Minnesota, are increasingly staging short-term, high-profile strikes to advance their movements for higher wages and a voice on the job. Walking off the job in protest is a costly, risky tactic to employ – even for one day. In addition to […]

Twin Cities workers will join fast-food strikes nationwide

The next wave of fast-food strikes will include Twin Cities workers. Organizers with CTUL, the low-wage workers’ center based in the Twin Cities, announced today that area fast-food workers will walk off the job Thursday, joining a nationwide campaign to raise wages and improve conditions for the industry’s frontline workers. CTUL has not announced which […]

After years of fighting, janitors celebrate historic agreement with Target

Retail cleaning workers celebrated a hard-fought victory yesterday in their campaign for better wages and working conditions, as the Twin Cities-based worker center CTUL announced Target had agreed to hold its cleaning contractors to a new set of standards designed to protect workers’ rights. In a letter to CTUL organizers last week, Target agreed to […]

With skyway march, activists put bullseye on Target’s poverty wages

One day after a rally in support of raising Minnesota’s minimum wage rocked the Capitol rotunda, nearly 100 activists took their message to the skyways of Minneapolis, calling on Target and other corporations to join the fight against poverty wages. The lunch-hour march yesterday snaked through the skyways and into Target’s flagship store. Inside, demonstrators […]

Minnesotans to support fast-food workers’ strike for better wages

Building on a string of public actions last week calling out poverty-wage employers across the state, Minnesota activists will stand in solidarity tomorrow with fast-food workers planning one-day strikes in more than 100 cities nationwide. Organizers today laid out plans for solidarity demonstrations tomorrow outside two McDonald’s restaurants around the metro area: • In Northeast […]

Call to end poverty wages rings out from Black Friday protests in Twin Cities

Hundreds of people flocked to the Midway Walmart in St. Paul today, but it wasn’t deep discounts or door-buster deals they wanted. It was justice for workers who make the holiday season happen. Black Friday protests in the Twin Cities took on a renewed vigor this year, as activists from labor, faith and community groups […]

Study finds taxpayers subsidize big-box stores at cost of $150 million per year in Minnesota

Retail workers and activists who join the protest outside Walmart in St. Paul on Black Friday will be armed with a scathing new report shedding light on the public cost of poverty-level wages paid by Walmart, Target and other big-box department stores. “At What Cost,” released Nov. 12 by the union-backed Minnesotans for a Fair […]

Retail workers’ Black Friday wish list includes higher wages, a voice on the job

On Black Friday, will you shop for doorbusters? Or protest union-busters? Twin Cities labor activists have announced their plans for the unofficial kickoff of the holiday shopping season, which in recent years also has become a day of action for unions and worker-advocacy groups fighting back against big-box retailers’ crazy hours, frenzied working conditions and […]

Twin Cities cleaning workers join nationwide call for higher wages

Angela Macario doesn’t work for a fast-food restaurant, but she knows what it’s like trying to support a family on low wages. That’s why she joined a demonstration in Roseville today in support of striking fast-food workers in 50 cities nationwide. Macario works for the cleaning contractor KBS Until recently, Macario worked for Star City Commercial, […]

School employees target Kline in fight to restore special education cuts

John Kline has enough influence in Congress to make reversing federal cuts to education a priority. But who has influence enough to get the 2nd District Congressman’s attention? Target Corporation does, according to members of Service Employees International Union Local 284. In an unannounced visit to Target’s West St. Paul location yesterday, activists attempted to […]