Resident physicians call on U of M to get serious in first-contract talks

September 25, 2026 by

Dr. Schuyler Gaillard, a resident in the U of M Medical Center’s internal medicine and dermatology programs, describes first-contract talks as “antagonistic.”

Residents at the University of Minnesota Medical Center are fed up with their employer’s “antagonistic” approach to bargaining a first union contract, and asking for public support in pressuring the U of M to settle a fair deal.

Resident physicians and fellows formed their union with the Committee of Interns and Residents, a Service Employees (SEIU) affiliate, in March 2025. The bargaining unit brings together nearly 1,000 medical-school graduates who treat patients under the supervision of a senior physician while training in specialized care.

Contract negotiations with the university began over a year ago, and union members’ demands include fair wages, better health and dental benefits, and a matching contribution to their retirement savings, as well as language that codifies protections for immigrant and LGBTQ staff members.

But during a press conference last month outside the U’s East Bank hospital, union members said the employer has failed to match their sense of urgency at the bargaining table – slow-walking the process “to the point where they have been union-busting,” CIR bargaining team member Schuyler Gaillard said.

The third-year resident, training in internal medicine and dermatology, offered several examples of bad-faith bargaining by the university, including an attempt to schedule sessions in the middle of the workday without allowing members of the bargaining team paid time off to attend.

The U also has flatly refused to discuss some union proposals, while its own have often been insulting. Supriya Reddy, a resident in the pediatrics program, recalled being among 100 CIR members who showed up to a session where university administrators made their initial wage offer.

“They sat in front of over 100 of us and offered a 1% raise, less than the cost of inflation,” Reddy said. “Moreover, they proposed broad fiscal emergency language that would allow them to get rid of the raises entirely under any circumstances they choose.”

As the university drags its feet at the bargaining table, Reddy said, she and other resident physicians continue to struggle with widespread burnout, understaffing, workweeks that sometimes exceed 80 hours and the rising cost of living – not to mention the burden of a debt load that averages $250,000 for medical school graduates.

“We are proud of the care that we provide to our patients, but it is increasingly harder to be the best version of ourselves,” Reddy said.

A first contract that improves residents’ working conditions, Gaillard added, will improve patient care, too.

“We took an oath to protect our patients, and that starts at the bargaining table,” she said. “We won’t settle for anything less than what we need to continue to provide quality care for our patients.”

Resident physicians and fellows at the U of M Medical Center are asking members of the public to sign onto their petition for a fair first contract at act.seiu.org/a/umn-cir-community-petition.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Boycott of REI’s anniversary sale begins today

May 15, 2026 by

Over 70,000 REI Co-op members have pledged to boycott the outdoors retailer’s anniversary sale, which runs today through May 25, in a show of solidarity with workers at 11 unionized stores across the country, including one in Maple Grove.

REI Union members voted in March to authorize a boycott of the co-op’s largest event of the year and immediately began appealing to shoppers for support. (Take the boycott pledge.)

Workers say the boycott is a response to REI’s decision in February to declare bargaining at an impasse and implement the economic terms of its last, best and final offer, which over 98% of union members voted down in January.

The imposed terms cut benefits, starting wages and raises for many union members. The REI Union’s bargaining team, which brings together members of the Retail, Wholesale and Depart-ment Store Union (RWDSU) and six United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) locals, have called the move union-busting – and illegal.

Jacob Lish, a sales specialist at the Maple Grove store who represents UFCW Local 663 on the nationwide bargaining team, noted that REI implemented only the punitive economic terms of its final offer, not tentative agreements reached earlier in talks that introduced new rights for union workers.

“It’s really important for us that REI hears that its members don’t support the union-busting they’ve been trying to do this whole time,” Lish said.

Union members are hoping the anniversary-event boycott delivers just that message.

In addition to co-opmembers who have taken the boycott pledge, the nation’s largest labor federation, the AFL-CIO, has endorsed the boycott, adding REI to its “do-not-buy” list.

“Their bottom (line) is what they care about at the bargaining table,” Lish said “Even our most modest asks are too expensive; they tell us they can’t afford it.

“So by asking members to withhold their money for those 15 days, we think, is really going to impact REI – and hopefully drive them back to the table to reach an agreement with us.”

Union negotiators say they were “within inches” of a tentative agreement with REI before talks broke down. Management, they say, refused to guarantee union members wages on the same level as their non-union peers – a poison pill designed to thwart future organizing.

More recently, REI has demanded union members accept non-disparagement language in their contracts that would prohibit speaking out publicly against the company.

“REI has refused to offer us a fair contract, despite our willingness to compromise, and instead has insisted on provisions that would prevent more workers from joining the REI Union and that would ban us from speaking out,” Alex Pollitt, a worker at the REI in Bellingham, Wash., said in a statement. “Their anti-union stance is deeply incompatible with the values REI claims to profess.”

In June 2023, REI workers in Maple Grove voted 22-4 in favor of joining UFCW Local 663. After the vote, workers said they looked forward to winning a contract that addressed the rising cost of living, ensured consistent and adequate hours and improved staffing in their store.

Maple Grove was the seventh REI location to unionize. Organizing has continued, with workers at a twelfth store, in San Diego, scheduled to vote in a union election May 27-28.

Despite its reputation as a progressive-friendly retailer, REI has dug deep into the union-avoidance playbook since workers in New York unionized the first store in March 2022.

But the approach has not gone unnoticed by the co-op’s members.

When the REI union campaigned last year to elect two labor-friendly environmental leaders to the co-op’s board of directors, REI refused to put either on the ballot. The union then encouraged members to vote “no” on the co-op executives’ hand-picked candidates, who were running unopposed in the board election.

It worked, as over 115,000 members responded to the union’s appeal.

Two months later, REI agreed to establish a national bargaining structure with the union to settle contracts at its unionized stores – and to provide wage increases and bonuses that it had withheld from workers for the previous three years.

Now, REI members are being asked to deliver a similar message to executives by boycotting their co-op’s anniversary sale.

“We know REI really values themselves as a member co-op, or at least they say they do,” Lish said. “And we already know members support our goal of having some rights in the workplace and basic dignity as workers.

“With that really broad support from the membership, we think this boycott is going to be the most effective way to drive the response we are looking for.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

In unionization push, Alamo Drafthouse workers cut to the chase

April 17, 2026 by

Workers at Alamo Drafthouse in Woodbury (photo courtesy CWA Local 7250)

The time it takes to organize a union is typically measured in months, if not years. Not so for workers at the Alamo Drafthouse in Woodbury, who voted March 27 to join Communications Workers (CWA) Local 7250 in a process that took a mere six weeks.

It was as quick an organizing drive as anyone at CWA could remember and, according to workers, an indication of just how miserable a new digital ordering system has made the Alamo Drafthouse experience for both employees and moviegoers.

“It really eliminates the guest-to-server interaction – the community that comes with being part of the Alamo,” support crew member Isabelle Hernandez, 22, said. “The team, the movies and even our regulars really make the Alamo as special as it is, and we don’t want to lose that.”

Alamo Drafthouse operates 40 cinemas across the U.S. that provide moviegoers with the big-screen experience in a bar-and-grill setting.

The corporation has been gradually introducing a new business model at its locations over the last year, replacing servers who take tableside food and drink orders with a mobile app.

That change came to the Woodbury location, which employs about 60 people, on March 3.

For workers, it’s meant reduced hours, with no guarantee of even one shift per week. And for former servers like Hernandez and Max Chitwood, who previously earned tips, it’s meant a pay cut. Instead of taking hushed orders in the theater – and earning tips from customers – they now run food and drinks from the kitchen to the tables and clean theaters between screenings.

Chitwood’s hourly wage increased from $13 to $22 per hour after the change, but she said it’s not enough to cover the loss of her tips.

“For a lot of the former servers, it’s cut our paychecks in half, at least,” Hernandez said.

Guests have noticed the change too. Phone use, previously forbidden, is now encouraged by a QR code at each table.

“Alamo’s big thing has always been no talking and no texting,” Hernandez said. “They play that before every single movie. It’s just not the Alamo that we used to know and love. There are so many times now that I’ve caught people on their phones who weren’t ordering food.”

Hernandez isn’t alone. An IndieWire review last week blasted the changes: “Once America’s most promising movie theater chain, the Alamo Drafthouse has become a QR-coded symbol of corporate ens***tification.”

Aware that other Alamo Drafthouse locations had organized unions with CWA, Woodbury workers reached out to Local 7250 in February after getting “offer sheets” from management outlining their new terms of employment.

Within 24 hours of obtaining authorization cards from the local, half of eligible workers at the theater had signed one. Within nine days, they had petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for a union election, with support from a supermajority of 72%.

“They told us we set a CWA record for fastest total time between taking the first steps toward unionizing to filing,” Chitwood, 24, said.

Alamo Drafthouse tried to pump the brakes on workers’ momentum in the month between filing their petition and voting.

The corporate office sent a representative to Minnesota to “watch us and talk to us about why the union wasn’t a good idea,” Hernandez said. And local managers attempted one-on-one communications with staff members to persuade them to vote against the union.

Both efforts, workers alleged, crossed the line between appropriate and inappropriate behavior. The corporate representative was recalled, and two workers quit over private messages from local managers that made them uncomfortable.

“It was nothing explicitly bad or outright aggressive, just very passive-aggressive, and it made the work environment uncomfortable or unsafe for those workers who left,” Hernandez said. “They were both really good team members, and we miss them.”

Ultimately, workers voted 33-14 in favor of forming a union, with one challenged ballot.

When negotiations on a first contract begin, union members hope to address wages, staffing and, of course, the new business model. Hernandez said other bargaining units have pushed for a hybrid ordering system that offers guests a choice between the QR code and in-person service.

Chitwood said the goal is to improve the Alamo Drafthouse experience for everyone, adding that many moviegoers who have learned about the union drive have responded with “a resounding hell yes, good luck in bargaining.”

“It’s reflective of how united we are as a team and how much we care about our co-workers and even the company itself,” Hernandez added.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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

Research into union busting in MN nursing homes draws lawmaker scrutiny

April 17, 2026 by

Minnesota nursing home workers attend a Senate Labor Committee hearing on rampant union-busting in the heavily subsidized industry.

Authors of two recently published reports on union busting in Minnesota nursing homes presented their findings to the Senate Labor Committee last week, raising concerns among some lawmakers that public funds are being used to stifle worker voice.

Committee Chair Jen McEwen (D-Duluth) called the new research “kind of a bombshell.” Sen. Sandy Pappas (D-St. Paul) said she was “pretty shocked.”

But the findings came as no surprise to about two dozen nursing home workers in the hearing-room gallery, many of whom had been on the business end of management’s union-avoidance playbook.

Addressing the committee, Cassandra Thomas, a certified nursing assistant at Chapel View Home in Hopkins, described the changes she and her co-workers saw after they petitioned for a union election last year, like town-hall meetings with free food and regular check-ins with an out-of-town consultant.

The message, Thomas said, was clear. “They kept talking about how much the union would cost us,” she said. “But I wondered how much all this cost them, instead of just giving us that raise.”

Chapel View workers won their union election in December, joining SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa. They are working toward a first contract that delivers that raise – and addresses concerns over staffing, safety and client care that sparked their organizing drive.

But the anti-union campaign left a bitter taste in workers’ mouths – especially after they learned the estimated price tag of Chapel View’s union-avoidance campaign: as much as $400,000, or $2,800 per worker, according to Labor Lab researcher Teke Wiggin, who also addressed the Senate committee.

“It was so frustrating to hear how much they spent to try and stop us,” Thomas told lawmakers. “This all happened while we were working short. They could have spent that money on staff to care for our residents.

“How is this OK?”

Wiggin presented findings from Labor Lab’s new report, “The Price of Repression,” which studied five union-busting campaigns at nursing homes in Minnesota from 2022 to 2025.

The report uses anti-union consultants’ public disclosures, industry billing rates, campaign manuals and independent research to estimate the price tag of those union-busting campaigns, which ran from $140,000 to over $400,000.

Wiggin compared those costs to the amount employers could have spent on wage increases for impacted workers had they recognized the union voluntarily, an amount that ranges from 3.5% to 20% – or $1,400 to $7,300 per worker.

“Our report underscores that when nursing homes really want to find money and resources, they do,” Wiggin told lawmakers.

In a separate report on Minnesota nursing homes, Columbia University researchers surveyed 2,000 certified nursing assistants statewide and uncovered a “pattern of anti-union tactics” in the industry – especially in nursing homes that rely heavily on public funding.

Sociologist Adam Reich, one of six researchers who worked on the Columbia report, walked lawmakers through two case studies of union-busting in Minnesota nursing homes.

The report includes firsthand accounts from workers reacting to their bosses’ anti-union campaign, including misinformation, so-called “captive audience meetings” and, most shockingly, appeals to nursing home residents and their families to encourage caregivers to vote “no.”

At one nonprofit nursing home with a religious affiliation, an administrator leaned on Biblical proverbs to suggest that union organizers were wolves in sheep’s clothing.

“One story that sticks in my mind is a worker whose manager told them that they were going to talk to the pastor of the church they both attended about how this worker was organizing,” Reich said.

Asked by lawmakers what policy recommendations might come out of the two reports, Reich suggested a precise analysis of how nursing homes are using public funds, and whether they are being used to thwart organizing efforts.

“That seems deeply problematic in a state that I know cares deeply about the integrity of public funding,” he said.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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

Report exposes union-busting in Minnesota nursing homes

March 20, 2026 by

Minnesota nursing home workers who don’t have a union on the job have launched a new advocacy group, Nursing Home Workers United. Organizers rallied March 12 in St. Paul before a meeting of the state’s Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board. The new organization formed, in part, as a response to employer groups’ legal effort to disband the board altogether.

Researchers at Columbia University issued a report last week that shines a light on rampant union-busting in Minnesota’s nursing-home industry, particularly in facilities that rely heavily on public subsidies.

The report, “Democracy Denied at the Bedside: Union Avoidance in Minnesota’s Nursing Home Sector,” draws on years of qualitative research and a statewide survey of nearly 2,000 certified nursing assistants to reveal a “pattern of anti-union tactics” in the state’s nursing homes.

Columbia Labor Lab sociologist Adam Reich, one of six researchers who worked on the report, said the team began digging into labor relations in Minnesota’s nursing-home industry shortly after the pandemic, which sparked a surge in union-organizing efforts among health care workers.

In addition to analyzing data – from their CNA survey, from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and from the Minnesota Department of Health – researchers embedded themselves into multiple union organizing efforts from 2021 to 2025.

The report includes firsthand accounts from workers reacting to their bosses’ anti-union campaign, including misinformation, so-called “captive audience meetings” and, most shockingly, appeals to nursing home residents and their families to encourage caregivers to vote “no.”

At one nonprofit nursing home with a religious affiliation, an administrator leaned on Biblical proverbs to suggest that union organizers were wolves in sheep’s clothing.

“One story that sticks in my mind is a worker whose manager told them that they were going to talk to the pastor of the church they both attended about how this worker was organizing,” Reich said.

But the report’s key finding is the crossover between homes that receive public funds and those that run union-avoidance campaigns. It’s already raising questions among unions in the industry about whether public funds are being used to stifle workers’ voices.

Rasha Ahmad Sharif, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa’s executive vice president, said workers deserve answers.

“While not surprising, we are still outraged to see that money that workers have been pushing to go to essential workers caring for Minnesotans is being spent trying to stop workers from forming unions because employers are too scared of their workers practicing their federal rights and gaining the bare minimum that their employers refused to give them,” Ahmad Sharif said.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , ,

As baristas warn of strike, Starbucks closes MN’s first unionized store

October 17, 2025 by

Baristas walk the picket line with community supporters at the unionized Starbucks in St. Anthony.

Starbucks has closed its café at 300 Snelling Ave. South in St. Paul, where baristas became the first in Minnesota to win a union election in April 2022.

The closure was part of a corporate restructuring in September that saw about 500 locations shut down.

Union shops, including Starbucks’ flagship coffee house in Seattle, were disproportionately impacted by the closures.

Starbucks Workers United represents over 12,000 baristas at 650 stores, roughly 3% of Starbucks locations in the U.S. Unionized locations made up about 14% of shuttered stores.

Phil Rienstra, who worked in the St. Paul store for two years before it closed, said he and other baristas learned on Thursday, Sept. 25, that the location would shut down for good that weekend.

Phil Rienstra is a former barista at the 300 Snelling store.

“It was sudden, it was callous and it was cruel,” Rienstra said of the abrupt closing. “Months and years of work for the company have been cast aside.”

Starbucks has yet to settle a first contract with any of the bargaining units that began forming at cafés across the country in late 2021. Workers at the St. Paul store briefly negotiated with the company’s representatives, who walked out of the meeting after about five minutes.

Talks shifted away from local bargaining teams in February 2024, when the company and Starbucks Workers United announced they would begin bargaining a national framework contract. The process shifted to mediation earlier this year and has stalled out under the leadership of new CEO Brian Niccol.

Union negotiators were able, however, to win an improved severance package for members impacted by the latest restructuring. In effects bargaining last month, Workers United secured, among other gains, severance pay for union baristas even if they turn down a transfer offer – a guarantee not extended to non-union baristas.

Rienstra said he and other union members were disappointed but not deterred by the closure, and he pledged to keep organizing for a union contract at Starbucks, wherever he ends up next.

Abby Haland says baristas at the St. Anthony Starbucks are ready to strike for a fair first contract.

“This round of layoffs created hundreds of angry but capable people, ready to fight for what they are owed and do whatever it takes to make our union heard,” Rienstra said. “Starbucks does not get to just ignore us.”

To that end, union baristas picketed outside a Starbucks in St. Anthony and in 35 other cities across the country during the week of Sept. 30, giving the company a taste of what could be coming if it doesn’t settle a fair contract soon.

The action in St. Anthony drew about 40 picketers – union members and community supporters – to the Starbucks at 3704 Silver Lake Rd., where they chanted, “no contract, no coffee!” and drew honks of encouragement from passing drivers.

As rush-hour traffic whizzed by, several baristas took the bullhorn to voice their contract demands – like better staffing, more reliable hours and higher pay. Abby Haland, a St. Anthony barista, told the crowd she’s ready to strike for a first contract – and asked for their support.

“Take the pledge, ‘No Contract, No Coffee!’” she said. “And pledge to stand with us on the picket line if we have to go on strike, which we are prepared to do.”

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

TSA officers say Trump’s move to terminate their contract about fear, not safety

April 10, 2025 by

Members of AFGE Local 899 who work as transportation security officers at MSP International Airport held copies of their union contract – terminated by the Trump administration last month – during a press conference.

In a surprise, early-morning announcement March 7, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stripped collective bargaining rights from 47,000 transportation security officers at airports across the country.

Overnight, TSOs lost their union contract, and officers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, members of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 899, said they felt the impact immediately.

Upon arriving to work that morning, Local 899 Secretary Sharif Mehanna was ordered to clean out the office space he and other stewards used for union work, like grievances and arbitration.

Union fliers had been taken down, and managers told workers wearing lanyards with AFGE’s logo to remove them. Some supervisors even confiscated them, Mehanna said.

Several rank-and-file officers at MSP said they have noticed a new glint in their managers’ eyes since Noem’s announcement.

“They’ve been very aggressive,” Mehanna said. “There’s been lots of discipline going on.”

Teresa Jakubowski said she and other TSOs feel “treated like children” since their contract became void, with supervisors pressing issues that seem petty. One recent directive instructed officers to carry their mobile phones in their side pockets and not their back pockets.

The net effect, Mehanna added, is increased fear and distraction – and dwindling morale –among the workers tasked with keeping MSP Airport safe.

“It’s been very difficult to focus on the task in front of us with all of this going on around us,” he said.

But AFGE is fighting back, filing a lawsuit seeking to block the termination of TSOs’ contract.

The union alleges that Noem’s actions were “unconstitutional retaliation” by the Trump administration for AFGE’s advocacy on behalf of thousands of probationary federal workers fired by Elon Musk’s “DOGE” team. In a separate lawsuit, AFGE won a temporary restraining order that deemed many of those firings illegal, derailing DOGE’s efforts.

That restraining order came Feb. 27. It was no coincidence, AFGE President Everett Kelley said, that Noem stripped TSOs of their bargaining rights just eight days later.

“Tearing up a legally negotiated union contract is unconstitutional, retaliatory and will make the TSA experience worse for American travelers,” Kelley said. “These attempts by the administration to silence everyday workers across this country through retaliation and intimidation will not succeed.”

The lawsuit also alleges that terminating TSOs’ bargaining agreement violates their constitutional rights to free speech and due process.

Neal Gosman

Neal Gosman, treasurer of Local 899, which represents about 1,000 TSA workers in Minnesota and the Dakotas, waved a copy of AFGE’s lawsuit – and the U.S. Constitution – during a press conference with other groups of MSP workers March 17. Like many of the agency’s workers, Gosman said, he’s a military veteran.

“Over 50 years ago, when I first put on the uniform, I swore the same oath as when I put on the uniform of TSA: to uphold and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic,” he said. “It is time for the current administration in Washington to follow that same oath that they also took.”

As the courts consider whether Noem acted legally, union members at MSP said they worry about access to their sick time, airport parking and other benefits that they bargained into their contract.

They also worry the Trump administration and Republican majorities in Congress will undo a measure approved by the Biden administration that brought TSOs’ pay scale in line with other federal employees, beginning in July 2023. Some officers saw their pay increase by 30%.

Ultimately, Jakubowski said, she fears the administration’s ultimate goal isn’t to bust their union, but to privatize airport security altogether.

“People are upset about everything, but mostly we are worried that this is the beginning of privatization,” she said. “They want to get rid of our union first – and then begin privatizing.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Seeking ‘strength in numbers,’ Roseville baristas vote to join Starbucks union

March 19, 2025 by

Starbucks workers showed off their union petition outside the Roseville location. (SWU photo)

Baristas at two Starbucks cafés on opposite sides of Highway 36 in Roseville are now part of the same union.

In balloting overseen by the National Labor Relations Board on March 6, workers at the Starbucks south of Highway 36 and Fairview Avenue voted 16-3 to join Starbucks Workers United, which represents over 10,500 workers across the U.S.

Baristas formally requested union representation Feb. 3, less than 2 months after a worker from the Starbucks north of the interchange – unionized since August 2022 – picked up a “borrowed shift” at their café, according to Andraya Skelley, who has five years of experience working for the company.

“He talked to a few of my co-workers that night, and then they brought it to me,” Skelley said. “They were like, ‘Hey, you’re someone who’s been here for a long time. What do you think of us unionizing?’”

Skelley said she and other baristas had previously considered the idea, but momentum “fizzled out” after they watched the company illegally retaliate against the first wave of workers who unionized, withholding their raises, denying them credit-card tips and firing several union organizers.

The company was also slow to engage its workers in contract talks. When Starbucks finally agreed to bargain in 2023, its representatives stonewalled union negotiators in Minnesota and around the country, walking out of over 100 meetings shortly after they began.

But in February 2024, Workers United secured an agreement with Starbucks that expanded credit-card tipping and raises to its unionized locations, and laid out a timetable for negotiations on a framework for bargaining single-store contracts. In January the two sides enlisted the help of a mediator in that process.

Baristas at her Starbucks location, Skelley said, hope their overwhelming vote to join Workers United lends strength to the union in those negotiations.

“There’s strength in numbers,” she said. “The more stores that do unionize, the more Starbucks has to listen. The more the numbers keep going up, it becomes harder and harder to ignore.”

When the time comes to bargain a contract in Roseville, workers hope to address concerns around scheduling and wages. Skelley said that understaffing at the café, particularly during the midday shift or when a team member calls in sick, too often leaves baristas feeling “overextended.”

“I value this job, and I love interacting with the customers,” she said. “On a good day, it feels really good, and I hate how many bad days there’s been lately due to staffing issues. It feels like we don’t have enough support from upper management.”

Not surprisingly, upper managers gave their store plenty of attention in the runup to workers’ union election.

“We had our district manager in all the time; she was really up in our space,” Skelley said. “I wouldn’t say there was super obvious backlash, but it was kind of funny. She would ask if you have any questions, and we were just like, ‘Cool, thanks, I’ll let you know.’”

The newly organized Starbucks in Roseville brings the number unionized cafés in Minnesota up to 13.

Workers at the Starbucks on Snelling and Stanford avenues in St. Paul were the first to win a union election, in April 2022. Other unionized locations include Starbucks in Chanhassen, Duluth, Edina, Fridley, Mall of America, Minneapolis, Moorhead, St. Anthony and St. Cloud, where workers took a vote Feb. 25.

Workers at a 14th Minnesota location, in Sartell, are scheduled to hold a union vote April 7.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Workers call out ‘anti-union activities’ at Minnesota nursing homes

October 23, 2024 by

Union and non-union nursing home workers rallied outside Monarch’s offices as representatives sought a meeting with executives inside.

As Minnesota nursing homes continue to draw scrutiny for low wages, high turnover and staffing shortfalls, members of the state’s largest health care union are calling on one of the state’s largest nursing home companies to join them in working toward a solution.

SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, which represents over 50,000 health care workers, staged an hourlong rally Sept. 27 outside Monarch Healthcare Management’s corporate offices in Eagan, bringing together over 100 union and non-union nursing home workers and community supporters.

Two workers entered Monarch’s offices and briefly met with an executive to relay the group’s demands.

“We told him that we are fed up with working short every day, day in and day out, in these nursing homes,” Isaac Sant said. “It’s not safe for us as workers; it’s not safe for our residents. Things have got to change.”

Conditions are poised to change in the state’s nursing home industry, thanks to the work of a new Workforce Standards Board, authorized by DFL legislative majorities last year.

The board recently took the first steps toward setting a $20.50 minimum wage in all nursing homes, with higher rates for positions like LPNs and CNAs. The board also voted to require that nursing home workers receive time-and-a-half pay on all 11 state holidays.

But employer representatives on the board did not support the higher standards. And as the state’s rulemaking process grinds on, conditions inside nursing homes remain challenging for both staff and residents, workers at the rally said.

Bolanle Adedeji, who is training to work at a Monarch facility, said short staffing often prevents nursing home workers from offering the personalized care they want to give.

“At times, they want to share their minds, they want to talk with you, they want to relate to you,” she said. “But because of time constraints, you cannot let them. Some of them are weeping, some of them are crying that we are not there for them. So this short staffing has to stop now.”

One way to bring change, workers at the rally said, is by organizing a union. But SEIU representatives said Monarch is notorious for “anti-union activities” in its non-union facilities where workers show an interest in bargaining for better wages, benefits and staffing.

“The boss has the message that we’re here, and enough is enough with the short staffing, low pay and poor working conditions,” said Isaac Ngafua, who works at an assisted living facility in Brooklyn Center.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Organizing Tagged With: , , ,

Unions call out Delta for ‘unethical and illegal anti-union activities’

June 12, 2024 by

Union supporters rallied near Delta’s employee parking lot, near Terminal 2 at MSP International Airport. The Machinists union, which is supporting the union effort among ramp workers at the airline, organized the event.

BLOOMINGTON – Delta Air Lines is the only major U.S. carrier with a mostly non-union workforce, but baggage handlers, flight attendants and mechanics at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport are looking to change that.

Delta employees based at MSP are leading a nationwide campaign to bring together over 50,000 frontline workers into three unions: the Machinists (IAM), the Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) and the Teamsters.

MSP is among Delta’s operational hubs, and it has been a hotbed of union support since the “Organize and Fly Together” campaign began in November 2022.

During a rally with the Machinists union near Terminal 2 last month, MSP-based baggage workers projected that 80% of eligible employees at their job site would sign union cards before year’s end.

Some local union activists, like cargo lead Miles Dousette, are even traveling on their own time to other airports, where they join organizing rallies and go door to door to ask fellow Delta workers to sign union cards.

“It’s a cause we all believe in, we all want to be a part of,” Dousette said. “And we know we can win.”

Management, Delta workers say, has responded to the organizing drive with a relentless union-busting campaign, cracking down on pro-union speech and flooding the workplace with disinformation. Nabil Kablaoui, a Delta ramp agent, said he feels like supervisors are trying to intimidate workers at MSP.

“They’ve stood behind workers who are talking about a union,” Kablaoui said. “I’ve seen a manager take pro-union fliers out of people’s hands or out of their bags on tables in our break room, where we should have free movement.

“They might not seem large, but especially to new workers, who are maybe a little nervous about these things, that’s going to scare them off from their legal right to a union.”

Leaders of the three international unions behind the organizing drive accuse Delta of crossing the line – both legally and ethically – in trying to remain mostly union free. “Delta has consistently and unabashedly violated our federally protected right to organize,” read a flier handed out during the rally May 29.

The allegations have drawn attention from several members of Congress, including Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District.

In a March 2024 letter, Craig urged Delta CEO Ed Bastian to enter into a neutrality agreement with unions that would prohibit managers from engaging in “pre-election activities that influence workers’ freedom to form a union” – activities that could run afoul of federal labor laws.

“Unfortunately, I have heard from my constituents regarding Delta’s history of deploying union-busting tactics, including distributing anti-union literature … and hosting an anti-union website citing ‘unions’ empty promises,’” Craig wrote. “These actions are hostile to workers’ rights, and I urge you to commit to implementing a neutrality agreement with regard to these union organizing efforts.”

Although workers at the Machinists rally were skeptical that Delta would commit to remaining neutral, the facts, they said, are on their side.

Delta is the most profitable airline in the U.S., but many working groups lag their peers at other domestic carriers in pay and benefits. The one group that doesn’t? Members of the Air Line Pilots Association International union.

“Delta makes 40% of the industry’s profits, but we are not the highest paid, we do not have the most vacation time and our health care plan has changed three times in three years,” baggage handler Pat Gores said. “That is unacceptable for industry leaders. Our pilots are the best paid in the industry, and do you know why? Because they have a union contract.”

“We’re not out here asking for the whole pie, just a whole piece,” Dousette added. “We’re tired of fighting for the crust. We just want our fair share.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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