Here’s how labor activists plan to celebrate Super Bowl week

January 26, 2018 by

Today marks the kickoff of Super Bowl events in the Twin Cities, and organizers plan a 10-day run of concerts, parties, conventions and other events leading up to the big game Feb. 4 at U.S. Bank Stadium.

What you won’t find listed on the Super Bowl Host Committee’s online calendar are several opportunities to support working people organizing for dignity, respect on the job and quality public services.

“Minnesota’s Super Bowl shouldn’t just be about entertaining the rich and the powerful,” said bakery worker Travis Reinhart, whose union-busting employer will host a star-studded celebrity fundraiser in St. Paul next Saturday.

Already, the St. Paul Federation of Teachers is promoting a social media campaign targeting two of the Super Bowl committee’s biggest corporate sponsors: Ecolab and U.S. Bank. Teachers are in a difficult round of contract negotiations with the St. Paul school district, which is facing a multi-million dollar budget shortfall.

“Money has been stolen from our schools over the last 20 years … and that money has been going into tax breaks for corporations,” SPFT President Nick Faber said.

Kirinda Anderson, a parent active in union-led efforts to address the district’s racial disparities, called on Ecolab and U.S. bank to “step up and be better partners with the schools and the students … and to support public education in the same way they’ve supported this game.”

Here’s a rundown of events you won’t find on the Super Bowl committee’s website:

• The Pre-Game: Our lives over their game. Monday, Jan. 29, 6 to 8:30 p.m. Hamm Plaza, St. Paul.

Unions and worker groups are teaming up with racial-justice, climate-defense and immigrant-rights organizations to plan a march and rally outside the NFL’s Super Bowl Opening Night party in St. Paul.

Activists like Antonia Sanchez, a member of the Twin Cities low-wage worker center CTUL, are calling on the corporations sponsoring Super Bowl week to do more in their community than hold a round-the-clock party for ultra-rich.

“The millionaires are just going to get richer, and we’re not going to get anything out of it,” Sanchez said at a press conference announcing the groups’ Super Bowl plans. “These corporations are grinding us all down.

“We want to demand that these corporations … support raising the minimum wage in St. Paul to $15 an hour. We want them to support ending wage theft in Minneapolis and St. Paul.”

• Super Bowl Protest: Tackle Corporate Greed! Friday, Feb. 2, 4:30 p.m. Home Depot, 1520 New Brighton Blvd, Minneapolis.

Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank owns the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, making Super Bowl week the perfect time for janitors who clean Home Depot stores in the Twin Cities to renew their demand that the retailer adopt a responsible contractor policy.

CTUL, which is organizing janitors who clean Home Depot, has negotiated policies with Best Buy, Target and other retailers, paving the way for 500 retail cleaning workers to form a union last year.

Most people working in retail cleaning are immigrants, and CTUL is teaming up with immigrant-rights group Navigate MN to demand Home Depot use its lobbying clout to support so-called Dreamers’ protected status, pass a clean immigration reform bill and end immigration raids dividing families across the country.

• Super Bowl Breakfast: Support $15 and Workers’ Rights! Saturday, Feb. 3, 7 a.m. Hilton Minneapolis, 1001 Marquette Ave.

As the Super Bowl Committee and its corporate sponsors hold a breakfast inside the hotel to honor the NFL’s “positive legacy” of community service, worker groups will gather outside for a “people’s breakfast to honor the worker leaders and community members in Minneapolis and St. Paul who fight for living wages rights on the job for themselves, their families and their communities.”

The event will call attention to the need to fund enforcement of Minneapolis’ new minimum-wage ordinance, and lift up the campaign for a $15 minimum wage – without a tip penalty – in St. Paul.

• A Taste of Justice. Saturday, Feb. 3, 5 p.m. St. Paul Labor Center, 353 W. 7th St.

Workers at Franklin Street Bakery have been trying to organize a union for over two years, looking to improve wages and working conditions in the Minneapolis facility. Their campaign has drawn a stifling – and sometimes illegal – response from management, which recently sent a labor lawyer to intimidate one worker in his own home, according to a report from Bakery Workers Local 22.

Bakery owner Wayne Kostroski holds a hunger-relief event – “Taste of the NFL” – with celebrity chefs, NFL players and wealthy executives each year during Super Bowl week. Last year, bakery workers countered with a fundraiser of their own, and this year they plan to do it again, only blocks away.

“While helping food shelves is a good thing, Wayne pays many workers as little as $11 an hour, forcing us to use food shelves,” Reinhart said. “I know I’ve been there. The Taste of the NFL’s slogan is ‘kick hunger.’ We have a simple answer for Wayne: Kicking hunger starts at home.”

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As Super Bowl approaches, NFL players take sides in local labor standoffs

January 12, 2018 by

As Minnesota prepares to bask in the Super Bowl spotlight, pro football players are using their platform to lift up Minnesota workers fighting for justice and a voice on the job.

Through their union, the NFL Players Association, the athletes are standing in solidarity with bakery workers fighting for a union in Minneapolis and Teamsters weighing a strike at University of Minnesota campuses statewide.

DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFLPA, sent letters this week putting bosses at the university and Franklin Street Bakery on notice that the players stand squarely – and publicly – on the side of working people in Minnesota.

“The NFLPA is a labor union,” Smith wrote to U of M President Eric Kaler on Monday. “In that regard, we do what is necessary to protect the rights of our members and support the efforts of other unionized workers across America.”

At the university, that means supporting members of Teamsters Local 320, who voted in November to authorize a strike after the U balked at their request for contract language strengthening protections against workplace harassment.

The roughly 1,500 custodians, food-service workers and groundskeepers will vote soon on the university’s final contract offer. Union leaders say a vote to reject the offer would trigger a strike, creating a potential conflict for the NFLPA, which plans to hold an event at the U’s alumni center during Super Bowl week.

“We would not have signed the contracts for this event had we known of the pending local labor issues,” Smith wrote to Kaler. “My hope is that the University will resolve all remaining issues with Teamsters Local 320 soon.”

Smith sent a letter Thursday to the CEO of the Super Bowl Host Committee outlining concerns with the glitzy “Taste of the NFL” event, organized annually by Franklin Street Bakery co-owner Wayne Kostroski as a fundraiser for food pantries nationwide. Kostroski, who received a copy of the letter, “doesn’t practice what he preaches” when it comes to his own employees, Smith warned.

“Many Franklin Street Bakery workers are reportedly paid as little as $11 per hour, well below what it takes to sustain a family, raising the real possibility that some of Mr. Kostroski’s own employees are often forced to visit the same food pantries for whom he raises money,” Smith added.

Smith also noted Franklin Street Bakery’s track record of breaking labor law to prevent its workers from organizing for a voice on the job. After the National Labor Relations Board investigated dozens of charges filed by bakery employees, Kostroski and his co-owner last year agreed to a settlement providing $20,000 in back pay to three workers unjustly fired or disciplined for union activity.

But the settlement hasn’t put a stop to bakery workers’ organizing efforts. While Kostroski hobnobs with celebrity chefs and corporate sponsors Feb. 3, his workers will hold a separate event – the “Taste of Justice” – at a union hall just blocks away.

Last year’s “Taste of Justice” raised $1,200 for the food shelf closest to Franklin Street Bakery. The event is free and open to all community supporters. Click here to RSVP on Facebook.

“We stand in full solidarity with our brothers and sisters of the Franklin Street Bakery,” Smith wrote.

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Workers to give Franklin Street Bakery owners a ‘taste of justice’

January 27, 2017 by
Rosa Baires, pictured speaking at a press conference outside FSB in December, used to work at the bakery, but after taking time off to be with her dying ex-husband, the company told her she no longer had a job – an example, she said, of why workers there need a union.

Rosa Baires, pictured at a rally outside FSB in December, used to work at the bakery, but after taking time off to be with her dying ex-husband, the company told her she no longer had a job – an example, she said, of why workers there need a union.

Fighting hunger is a worthy cause, but workers at a local bakery say their bosses should start by paying them a living wage.

Workers at Franklin Street Bakery in Minneapolis are planning “A Taste of Justice” next Saturday, Feb. 4, the same night their bosses, Wayne Kostrowski and Mark Haugen, will throw their glitzy fundraiser, the “Taste of the NFL,” in Houston. The event raises money for hunger relief each year in advance of the Super Bowl.

The bakery owners have vigorously – and illegally, according to NLRB charges – opposed workers’ efforts to improve their wages and working conditions by organizing for a voice on the job with Local 22 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union.

Workers have filed 50 unfair-labor-practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board related to the organizing drive, and many report earning so little that they have to use food shelves themselves.

Union and community supporters are invited to attend the “Taste of Justice” Feb. 4, from 5 to 8 p.m. at Waite House, 2323 11th Ave. S., Minneapolis. Food will be provided at the event, but people who attend are also welcome to bring a dish to share.

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