New state board sets $20.50 wage floor in nursing home industry

June 10, 2024 by

SEIU member Nessa Higgins spoke during a press conference at the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, as (L to R) Teresa Brees, T.J. Hart, Michelle Armstrong and Labor Commissioner Nicole Blissenbach looked on.

Thousands of nursing home workers across Minnesota are likely to see their pay dramatically increase over the next three years after the state’s new board to oversee workforce standards in the industry authorized a $20.50 minimum wage April 29.

The new wage floor will phase in over the next three years, with higher minimums for certified nursing assistants ($24 per hour), trained medication aides ($25) and licensed practical nurses ($28.50).

DFL state lawmakers passed a bill last year establishing the Nursing Home Standards Board, the first of its kind in the U.S. It was a top political priority for three unions representing nursing home workers: SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and the United Steelworkers.

At a press conference following the board’s vote, workers praised the new standards as historic. Some became emotional in discussing the implications for themselves, their fellow workers and nursing home residents across Minnesota, where the industry has seen some of the worst staffing shortfalls in the nation.

“I have been doing this work for most of my lifetime, and I have seen the consistency of staff drop over time,” said Michelle Armstrong, a nurse and member of Local 1189 who served on the standards board. “We’ve lost the continuity of care, which hurts workers and residents.

“We need to do everything we can to change things, and today, I hope, is a big step forward.”

Nessa Higgins, who works at the Estates of Chateau in south Minneapolis, said that over her 25-year career, she has watched executives increase their own pay while struggling to attract and retain workers to frontline jobs. She said some of her co-workers now work multiple nursing-home jobs to make ends meet for their families.

“When that wage goes up, that’s them spending more time with their families because they don’t have to work two or three jobs,” she said. “We give everything that we’ve got, and it never trickles down to us – it just stops with the higher-ups.”

“I make $17.68 an hour, and I’ve been working at this facility for seven years,” Roseville Estates laundry worker Teresa Brees, an SEIU member, said. “That’s all I make. Thankfully, the Standards Board, (when the wage floor begins phasing in) will see that at least I get above $19. That’s really important to me.”

In addition to the wage floor, the new board also mandated that nursing home workers receive time-and-a-half pay on all 11 state holidays – a move T.J. Hart, who works in food service at a non-union nursing home, described as a matter of fairness.

“Long-term-care facilities are 24-7 facilities, and it’s not management who’s working on holidays,” Hart said. “We are the ones that are working on holidays and taking time away from our families and friends while we’re serving our residents.”

Higgins, an SEIU member, said she has struggled with the question of whether to leave her current position for a higher-paying job – a choice she hopes she won’t have to make now, with the new standards poised to take effect.

“Some of my best friends are residents at that nursing home,” Higgins said. “I’m there every day. I know I look forward to seeing them, and they look forward to seeing me. I want to stay right there with the family that I have been with.”

The nine-member board approved the higher standards with three worker representatives and three government representatives voting yes, while three employer representatives abstained.

Rasha Ahmad Sharif, a vice president of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and leader of its long-term care sector, called the board’s vote a “revolutionary moment seeing nursing home workers – union and non-union alike – standing up and demanding change.”

“We stand by and support this board and are excited for these new standards,” Ahmad Sharif added. “We still have a lot of work to do, but this is an amazing step forward for nursing home workers and residents all across Minnesota.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Essential workers deserve a good contract, Cottage Grove Steelworkers tell 3M

August 19, 2020 by

Members of United Steelworkers Local 11-00418 hold informational picketing outside 3M’s plant in Cottage Grove.

Steelworkers at 3M’s Cottage Grove plant agreed this week to a two-month extension of their previous union contract, but members are putting the company on notice today that the fight for a contract that rewards their essential work has just begun.

Informational picketing outside the plant, where some 370 members of United Steelworkers Local 11-00418 work, drew a large crowd during a shift change early this morning, and union members plan to be back outside for another info-picket this afternoon. 

“Everyone’s together on this,” John Helkamp, the local’s financial secretary, said. “We’re essential workers. We’d like a fair contract.” 

Talks between the two sides got off to a bitter start.  

First, Helkamp said, management took a combative stance over supplying workers with masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. While non-union workers at the plant received free masks, 3M pushed local union leaders to sign a memorandum of understanding before issuing masks to union members – a stance 3M, a global supplier of masks, later walked back, Helkamp said. 

Around the same time, union leaders approached management about an accommodation for workers whose premium pay on weekends was scheduled to disappear abruptly.  

A provision in the previous union contract included premium pay rates for workers who clock 12-hour shifts on Saturdays and Sundays, but it also included a sunset clause phasing out the provision when the contract expired. That happened this week, and some union members soon will lose as much as 18 hours’ worth of wages from their paychecks.  

“We asked about some kind of an accommodation,” Helkamp said “The company first said it had to be done in negotiations. Then we got to negotiations, and they said it’s not something they’re going to negotiate.” 

Now, Steelworkers are resisting several of 3M’s contract demands, Helkamp said. Management wants the power to change start times and shift lengths at will, which could move all workers into 12-hour shifts. And 3M wants the power to eliminate job classifications unilaterally, an issue that bogged down negotiations four years ago, when management sought to kick custodians out of the bargaining unit.  

In all, 3M brought 100 stipulations to the bargaining table, according to the union. The two sides have reached agreement on roughly 30, with 30 others being set aside for economic talks.  

Those have yet to begin, but local leaders say their talks in Cottage Grove are progressing at about the same pace as negotiations at comparable facilities across the U.S. have taken.  

The two sides have scheduled 11 bargaining sessions during the contract extension, which runs through Oct. 16. 

The Cottage Grove facility produces chemicals, tape, film, abrasives and other products. 

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Building a clean economy ‘on the high road’

March 5, 2020 by

When the U.S. House of Representatives passed the PRO Act last month, the labor movement celebrated – and for good reason. The measure would give working people a fairer shot at organizing unions, bargaining better wages and fighting back against rising income inequality.

But the PRO Act would be a win for the planet, too. That’s according to the BlueGreen Alliance (BGA), which lobbied for the PRO Act on behalf of 13 labor and environmental organizations.

Why? To address the climate crisis, the U.S. and other countries will need to replace fossil fuels with clean energy, and they will need to do it quickly. Mustering public support for that kind of massive political effort won’t happen, BGA Executive Director Jason Walsh said, unless there’s something in it for working people.

“We have to rebuild our infrastructure, we have to retool our manufacturing and we have to repower our grid with clean sources,” Walsh said in an interview for the March 2020 issue of the The Union Advocate. “That’s daunting, but it’s also an opportunity. And if we do it right, if we build this clean-energy economy on the high road, we have the ability to make this a more just and equal country and economy.”

Jason Walsh is executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance.

UA: The BGA works to advance policies that protect workers and the environment. That seems like divisive terrain right now. Where do you see potential to cut through the tension?

JW: Environmentalists and labor activists agree on much more than we disagree on. There have certainly been fights and disagreements. I’m not ignoring that. Those are hard, and they’re hard right now in places like Minnesota. But fundamentally, our labor partners and our environmental partners understand the interconnectedness of the fight for workers’ rights and environmental protection.

The PRO Act is an example of that. It’s obvious why our labor partners would support the PRO Act. Our environmental partners understand workers who are organized and empowered fight not only for their wages and benefits and job security, they also fight for things like making sure their plants don’t blow up, making sure that industries are not egregious polluters. Unions like the Steelworkers were some of the most important supporters of our bedrock environmental laws, like the Clean Air Act, because their members lived it and worked it.

UA: What does the clean-energy economy look like, and how do those jobs need to change?

JW: Not enough of the jobs created or promised are family-sustaining jobs. In 2019 only 4% of workers in solar electric power generation were union members, and only 5% of workers in wind power generation were union members. Obviously, the clean economy is much bigger than that, but those are the two fastest-growing sectors within it.

Companies within the clean-energy economy have just flat-out violated their employees’ rights to unionize. There’s Tesla, of course. There was also a solar company, Bright Power, in New York City, where workers were trying to join IBEW and were fired. And last year we saw at a company called Gestamp Wind in Texas, the company unlawfully firing and suspending employees, making threats, engaging in surveillance… It was so egregious that the National Labor Relations Board under the Trump administration ordered them to bargain with (Plumbers and Pipefitters) Local 404.

Why do those companies do that? They do it because they can, because our existing labor laws are completely toothless. That is why the PRO Act is so important as we make this monumental shift to a clean-energy economy.

UA: What’s the scope of this change our economy will need to go through?

JW: We’ve barely scratched the surface. We’ve seen a shift in the last 10 years within the power sector to renewable sources, but zero-emission power is still below 20% of the total. We have a transportation sector that is now the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country. And we’ve got an industrial sector that is the fastest-growing source of emissions.

We’re going to have to shift all of them to zero-emissions sources by 2050, and we’ve never done anything at that scale before in this country.

UA: What potential is there for working people?

JW: To give a taste, just take the offshore wind industry, which is potentially enormous. There is, at this point, one offshore wind facility in this country, off of Block Island, Rhode Island, and it was built with union labor. This was just five turbines, but it created 300 jobs – electricians, welders, ironworkers, pile drivers, backhoe operators. That wind farm is now producing enough clean, local electricity to power 17,000 homes. We’ve got to do that by orders of magnitude more across the country.

There is a ton of work here, but we’re at this inflection point as to whether we’re going to continue what we’ve seen – mostly low-road, often low-quality jobs, almost exclusively nonunion – or build this economy along the high road.

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Labor rallies to support striking Steelworkers in Blaine

November 8, 2019 by

About 220 production and maintenance workers are on strike at Carley Foundry in Blaine.

BLAINE – Bosses at Carley Foundry learned an important lesson today. Pick a fight with one Minnesota union, and you’ll get a fight with them all.

About 220 members of United Steelworkers Local 63B began an unfair-labor-practices strike Saturday at the Blaine plant, which supplies parts to aerospace and other firms. Their picket line swelled with supporters over the lunch hour today, after a call for solidarity circulated throughout the local labor movement.

Among those who answered the call: seven union autoworkers from Hudson, Wis., who recently went back to work after a strike of their own at General Motors.

Steven Frisque, a steward in United Autoworkers Local 722, said the labor community’s support never wavered during their 40-day strike. Now, UAW members are motivated to pass that solidarity “back to the people who showed up for us,” he said.

“We just feel it’s what we need to do,” Frisque added. “Whoever else goes on strike, we’re going to be out there helping, showing that we have solidarity with them.

“Workers here (at Carley Foundry), they’re going through the same thing we are. And it’s everywhere. It’s a common theme in this country.”

UAW Local 722 members (L to R) Dashawn Ramsey, Tony Smith, Steven Frisque, Dan Norton, Cristie Blodgett and John Koehler join the solidarity picket in Blaine.

Indeed, just as UAW members made eliminating wage tiers from their contract a rallying cry during the GM strike, Local 63B says a major sticking point in negotiations with Carley has been the company’s demand for a new, lower wage tier for new hires.

But instead of dividing foundry workers, United Steelworkers District 11 Director Emil Ramirez said the company’s push for a  wage tier and other concessions has only inspired them to stick together.

“Carley has broken federal labor laws in its drive to force workers to accept its unfair and unnecessarily concessionary proposals, and we are standing up to demand the fair contract USW members have earned,” Ramirez said. “As one, we will deliver the message to management that our work has dignity and we deserve the company’s respect.”

The work stoppage at Carley Foundry comes amidst an uptick in the number of strikes happening across the U.S.

Last year, more American workers were involved in major work stoppages than in any year since 1986. Last month alone, some 80,000-plus workers were on strike at GM and in the Chicago Public Schools.

The wave of workplace activism reflects dissatisfaction with the return working people have seen on the last decade of economic growth, said Brad Lehto, secretary-treasurer of the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

Minnesota AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Brad Lehto walks the Steelworkers’ picket line outside Carley Foundry. (photo courtesy Chris Shields)

“Broadly speaking, during the recession there were a lot of concessions given by working people, including by these folks, to help companies survive,” Lehto said. “Now, employers generally are doing well and making more money than ever, but they don’t want to give anything back.

“We’re out here today to say no more. We’re not taking any more of this.”

Union autoworkers ended their strike after ratifying a new contract that, although it didn’t include everything they wanted, did succeed in reducing the gap between veteran workers and their more recently hired co-workers. Frisque called it a “stepping stone” that, he hopes, union negotiators will look to build on the next time they negotiate with GM.

“The younger people and the temps did get some improvements in vacation and pay, and the company would not have given us those things just because they like us,” Frisque said. “That’s not how it works. It’s going to be a fight every step of the way, as I’m sure it is for these guys here.”

The good news for Carley Foundry workers? They’re not fighting alone.

“One union’s fight is every union’s fight,” Lehto said. “Hopefully, the employer will do the right thing. But we’re here, along with all the other unions standing in solidarity with the Steelworkers, to make sure they do.”

The Steelworkers union says the best way for supporters to show solidarity is to join them on the picket line at 8301 Coral Sea Street Northeast in Blaine. Striking workers also welcome donations of hot food and beverages.

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Steelworkers plan solidarity rally in Minneapolis for Idaho miners on strike

February 15, 2018 by

Members of United Steelworkers Local 5114 on the picket line in Mullen, Idaho. (Facebook photo)

Striking miners from Idaho will bring their fight for a fair contract to Minneapolis this month, and local activists are making plans to bolster their ranks.

About 250 members of United Steelworkers Local 5114 employed by Hecla Mining went on strike last March, after working a full year without a new contract. The company has demanded – and unilaterally imposed – radical changes to Steelworkers’ working conditions, job security and health benefits.

The strike, a legally protected action in response to charges of unfair labor practices, has driven a wedge through the small town of Mullan, Idaho, site of Hecla’s Lucky Friday Mine.

Striking workers will extend their picket line from Mullan to Minneapolis during a national mining trade show Feb. 25 to 28. Hecla is sponsoring the event, staged at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

Local Steelworkers plan solidarity actions throughout the trade show, and they are inviting supporters from other unions to join a rally at noon Feb. 26 in front of Lobby Door B at the convention center.

The Lucky Friday mine began operations in 1942, and until the strike began last year, it was producing silver at historic levels, according to reports by the company. Hecla turned a profit of nearly $70 million in 2016, and CEO Phillips S. Baker, Jr. rewarded himself with a robust compensation increase, from $4.7 million to $6.4 million.

But production at Lucky Friday has ground to a near-halt since the work stoppage.

In a letter to Hecla shareholders, union members warned that a “90 percent production drop” at the mine is proof the strike is not benefiting anyone. Stock in Hecla has lost 40 percent of its value over the last year.

“Neither our local union nor our elected international leaders will allow Hecla to silence our voices,” Steelworkers wrote in a letter dated Jan. 5. “The company’s attack on our contract was unprovoked and unnecessary, does nothing to increase production or improve the safety of employees but so far has cost the company and its shareholders millions of dollars.”

Read more about the Lucky Friday strike.

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#NAW2016: Apprenticeship helps MN manufacturers boost skills, stay competitive

November 17, 2016 by

Pictured on the Hood Packaging shop floor in Arden Hills: (L to R) USW’s Gerry Parzino, Beth diGrazia, USW member and apprentice Larteng Kong, apprentice Dave Frisk, USW member and apprentice Andy Ramirez, Mike Ramirez and Local 264 President John O’Neil.

Pictured on the Hood Packaging shop floor in Arden Hills: (L to R) USW’s Gerry Parzino, Beth diGrazia, USW member and apprentice Larteng Kong, apprentice Dave Frisk, USW member and apprentice Andy Ramirez, Mike Ramirez and Local 264 President John O’Neil.

 

About 85 percent of registered apprentices in Minnesota are employed in the construction trades, but federal grant funds are helping more of the state’s manufacturers harness the power of apprenticeship to boost their employees’ skills – and remain competitive in a global economy.

Hood Packaging is among a growing number of firms taking advantage of a free registered apprenticeship program for industrial workers, sponsored by the AFL-CIO’s Working for America Institute.

A privately owned company with 20 production facilities in the U.S. and Canada, Hood employs about 86 people at a facility in Arden Hills, where members of United Steelworkers Local 264 print and laminate poly-film packaging for salted snacks and pet food.

When the Steelworkers came to Operations Manager Michael Ramirez with a pitch for the apprenticeship program, Ramirez and human resources officer Beth diGrazia jumped at the opportunity.

“For a lot of our workers, this isn’t just a job they’re going to leave; these are careers,” diGrazia said. “We want to keep them here, so if we have folks who want to learn more, we want to give them that opportunity.”

Four Hood employees – three Steelworkers and a manager – are currently enrolled in the fourth semester of the 18-month program. Every Thursday evening, they assemble in a conference room with two large screens and connect via Skype with an instructor, as well as apprentices from other Minnesota manufacturing firms.

Coursework ranges from safety to quality control and beyond, and it’s typical for apprentices to receive up to six hours of homework each week. They take quizzes and tests, and receive a grade at the end of each course.

So far, all four Hood apprentices are keeping their grade point average above 3.0.

“They’re doing their work,” United Steelworkers representative Gerry Parzino said. “I don’t think you get those grades by accident.”

If they keep it up, the apprentices, who are paid for the time they spend in class, will complete the program – and receive their journeyperson cards – in June 2017.

“These guys are showing the initiative,” diGrazia said. “They’re stepping up. And we hope they’ll never leave the company, but it is something that’s transferable, and it definitely looks good on their resume.”

For Ramirez, the apprenticeship program is providing Hood with future leaders ready to help train their co-workers, troubleshoot problems on the shop floor and keep an eye out for safety issues. He’s already seeing results: Hood sent 15 employees through the apprenticeship’s safety course last January, and the Arden Hills facility hasn’t had a safety incident since then.

“It’s the longest stretch we’ve ever gone at this facility without any recordable or lost-time incidents,” Ramirez said. “And that’s a direct effect of these guys going through that program and using that info on the floor. The results speak for themselves.”

Parzino wants to see other union employers take advantage of the industrial apprenticeship program, which Ramirez called “a big win-win for all of us.”

“To be competitive, we need the highest trained workforce we can possibly have,” Parzino said. “In Wisconsin, some of these programs have brought back products that were being manufactured in India. So we know this can have an impact.

“It’s all about job security, quality and being competitive, and we can keep these manufacturing jobs. We think by working with the employers and with our members to keep them as trained as possible, these kinds of programs are going to keep us competitive.”

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Cottage Grove Steelworkers overwhelmingly reject 3M’s contract proposal

October 5, 2016 by

Terry Fredrick drove 45 minutes from Woodville, Wis., to join informational picketing outside the 3M plant in Cottage Grove, where he's worked for over six years.

Terry Fredrick isn’t scheduled to clock in today, but he drove 45 minutes from Woodville, Wis., to join pre-dawn picketing outside the 3M plant in Cottage Grove, where he’s worked for over six years.

 

Two days after voting 3M’s contract proposal down, Steelworkers at the company’s Cottage Grove chemicals plant are putting their informational picket lines back up.

Members of United Steelworkers Local 11-00418 said they hoped the overwhelming opposition to 3M’s proposal, rejected by a 5-to-1 margin, delivers a message to the company, which made nearly $5 billion in profits last year.

“We aren’t going to accept some of the concessions that they’re looking for,” Local 11-00418 President Mike Schanks said. “We’re willing to bargain, but some of the things they want are just too much to ask.”

R to L: Jeff Puhl, Jeremy Hackbarth and Josh Noltin stand up for a fair contract outside 3M's Cottage Grove chemicals plant.

R to L: Jeff Puhl, Jeremy Hackbarth and Josh Noltin stand up for a fair contract outside 3M’s Cottage Grove chemicals plant.

About 380 Steelworkers work inside the Cottage Grove facility, and they’ve ramped up their campaign for a fair contract in recent months, hoping to fight off steep concessionary demands from 3M.

The company wants to roll back several provisions of workers’ previous contract, including premium pay for weekend work and seniority-based layoffs during slowdowns at the plant. 3M also wants to reduce its contribution to workers’ 401(k) retirement plans – and the power to force workers to take extra shifts without paying overtime wages, even on scheduled days off.

In addition to picketing outside their plant, Steelworkers have rallied outside 3M’s headquarters in Maplewood and marched together in community parades. Last month, they voted to authorize their leadership to call a strike if necessary.

The contract proposal voted down Monday came without a recommendation from the local’s bargaining team.

“We left it up to people to vote on their own,” Schanks said. “It was, in my 30 years of working at 3M, the highest turnout for a contract vote I’ve ever seen. These guys are holding tough.”

Their previous contract with the company has expired, but the two sides have agreed to extend the agreement, in seven-day increments, as long as negotiations continue. They are scheduled to meet with a federal mediator Oct. 11.

web-3m-cg_14

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‘On the ropes,’ 3M’s Cottage Grove workers say they’re ready to strike

September 21, 2016 by

Steelworkers who staff 3M's Cottage Grove plant picket outside corporate headquarters in Maplewood.

Steelworkers who staff 3M’s Cottage Grove plant picket outside corporate headquarters in Maplewood.

 

UPDATE 9/29/16 – United Steelworkers Local 11-00418 announced on its Facebook page that its members will vote on a contract proposal from the company, reached during bargaining Monday.

The local is withholding details of the proposal until the ratification vote Oct. 3, but acknowledged that it made some concessions to the company:

“You all know the company we work for. You know that they didn’t spend all day with us apologizing for the last 3 months. You know that they didn’t see the error in their ways, and offer us a contract with no takeaways.”

*****

Frustrated by management’s cuts-only approach to contract talks, Steelworkers employed at 3M’s chemicals plant in Cottage Grove voted overwhelmingly Sept. 1 to authorize their bargaining team to call a strike if necessary.

But members of United Steelworkers Local 11-00418 aren’t waiting for a strike to call out 3M publicly.

For the second time this month, workers staged informational picketing outside 3M’s corporate campus in Maplewood today. They have picketed the Cottage Grove plant several times in recent weeks, and union leaders say picketing will continue until workers get the contract they deserve.

“We’re serious,” Local 11-00418 President Mike Schanks said. “We’re not going to give up without a fight.”

The union represents about 380 workers at 3M’s facility, the largest private employer in Cottage Grove. Their previous contract with the company has expired, but in bargaining Friday the two sides agreed to extend the agreement, in seven-day increments, as long as negotiations continue.

Common ground has been hard to come by in talks so far, and workers say it’s because 3M insists on rolling back several key provisions of their previous contract, including premium pay for weekend work and seniority-based layoffs during slowdowns at the plant.

Additionally, the company wants to reduce its contribution to workers’ 401(k) retirement plans – and the power to force workers to take extra shifts without paying overtime wages, even on scheduled days off.

“Right now if you come in on a day off, it’s automatically time and a half,” Steelworkers staff representative Brian Ecker said. “We have concerns about the safety aspect of working 12-hour shifts and then being forced to work on your day off.”

web-3m-usw2Schanks added: “Half of the facility is a chemical factory. We’re concerned about long hours, injuries and spills.”

So far, the company has shown little interest in meeting the union halfway, refusing to take up several proposals workers thought would be easy asks of the company.

“We actually have a proposal on the table about honorably discharged veterans being granted a day off per year – not even with pay, using their vacation – and they won’t even give us that,” Ecker said. “That’s kind of how this has gone. We’ve been on the ropes pretty hard.”

Schanks laughed at the notion 3M needs concessions out of its Cottage Grove workers to stay profitable.

“They’ve got record profits,” he said. But after so many other manufacturers have picked up and left the area for cheaper labor markets abroad, 3M is “kind of using fear as a tactic.”

“They’re being very greedy this time around,” Schanks said. “They want to take the whole pie and leave us a few crumbs.”

Negotiations are scheduled to resume Saturday and, if necessary, next Monday. Schanks said he doesn’t foresee a strike “as long as progress is being made” at the bargaining table.

To find out when and where union members are picketing the company – and join them on the line – monitor Local 11-00418’s Facebook page.

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

Public finally gets a look at TPP – and it isn’t pretty

November 5, 2015 by

web.tpp-aboveLabor, environmental and other fair-trade activists are getting their first look at the Tran-Pacific Partnership, released to the public overnight. Their initial reaction?

It’s worse than expected.

“It’s absolutely not a progressive trade deal,” Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition director Kaela Berg said after an early analysis of the text.

“It’s clear that TPP will perpetuate offshoring of our jobs and stagnation of our wages. There aren’t strong, enforceable labor and environmental standards, which have been a constant worry since NAFTA.”

[Tell your members of Congress to oppose the TPP! Click here to take action.]

The public release of the TPP, a 12-nation trade agreement covering about 40 percent of the global economy, starts the clock on a 90-day review period, after which Congress may approve or reject – but not amend – the pact.

Berg said the Fair Trade Coalition, which unites family-farm, environmental and labor groups, would use the review period to educate the public about what’s at stake in the TPP – and to lobby Minnesota’s Congressional delegation to vote “no.”

All seven DFLers in Congress voted against so-called “fast track” authorization, which positioned TPP for a simple up-or-down vote, over the summer, and Berg was cautiously optimistic they would vote to reject TPP as well. Republican Reps. Tom Emmer and Erik Paulsen are “poster boys for corporate free-trade,” she added, and likely to vote “yes.”

“All the officials are going to want to look at the text and see what’s in there,” Berg said.

Many union officials were busy doing the same today, leading to a chorus of warnings about the TPP’s impact on jobs, wages, public health and more.

“This much is clear,” said Rick Ryan of the Minnesota State Council of Machinists after a first read through the TPP. “The rich get richer as we race to the bottom.”

Citizens Trade Campaign, a fair-trade advocacy group, said the TPP would force U.S. workers to compete with workers abroad who, in some member countries, earn less than $1 per hour. It also would ban laws that encourage government agencies to buy American-made or locally made products.

“TPP will do nothing to promote manufacturing jobs here in the U.S.” Bob Ryan, a Minnesota-based representative of the United Steelworkers, said. “In fact, it will promote more job loss through outsourcing to low wage countries.”

Nurses warned of a provision in the TPP that protects multinational pharmaceutical companies by delaying the introduction of generic drugs into the market, making health care more expensive and life-saving medicines harder to access. In fact, the TPP would roll back some of the protections for access to medicine included in trade agreements negotiated during the George W. Bush administration.

National Nurses United President RoseAnn DeMoro likened the provisions to “gifts to the billionaire drug companies,” and called the TPP “a cruel and disgraceful threat to the lives of millions of people.”

The TPP also threatens U.S. sovereignty, critics said. It would grant corporations new powers to challenge U.S. laws, regulations and court decisions in an extrajudicial tribunal known as the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) court.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the highest-ranking labor leader in the U.S., pledged unions would “join with our allies to defeat the TPP.”

“From what we have already seen, it is clear that the threats of this expansive new agreement outweigh its benefits – for good jobs, for democracy, for affordable medicines, for consumer safety, and for the environment,” Trumka said.

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Solidarity action targets Chipotle festival in Minneapolis

August 14, 2015 by

10801624_590245211102866_6669760419938965241_nChipotle claims its motto “food with integrity” applies throughout its supply chain. But workers who make burrito bowls at a plant outside Los Angeles say the company has turned a blind eye to their fight for respect and a voice on the job.

The workers have been organizing with the United Steelworkers for over a year, seeking fairness, better wages and safer working conditions at a plant owned by Finland-based packaging conglomerate Huhtamaki in Commerce, Calif.

Huhtamaki operates several unionized plants in the U.S. and abroad, but it’s waging a relentless anti-union campaign in Commerce, workers say. Charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board accuse the company of retaliating against pro-union workers.

Twin Cities activists will stand in solidarity with Huhtamaki’s workers during a demonstration Saturday, Aug. 22, at Chipotle’s Cultivate Festival in Minneapolis. Supporters will meet at 1 p.m. Click here to view the event page on Facebook.

The demonstration, Los Angeles-based organizer Graham Fortier told delegates to the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation earlier this week, will keep the pressure on Chipotle to “talk to Huhtamaki as their supplier, and make them respect their own code of conduct.”

“Chipotle puts a high price on social responsibility,” Fortier added. “Recently, the company cut a contract with its pork supplier because they were abusing pigs. What we’re asking is that they also look into the people who are actually making their product.”

Huhtamaki workers have repeatedly sought meetings with management to address substandard working conditions at the Commerce plant, including oppressive heat and arbitrary discipline. Management refused their request – and doubled down on a union-avoidance campaign.

According to the Steelworkers, Huhtamaki spent $500,000 on legal fees for a union-busting law firm last year, spied on workers, forced them to sit through anti-union meetings and mailed anti-union propaganda to their homes.

“We had one woman who fainted from heat exhaustion and the company sent her home, then disciplined her for missing part of her shift,” Fortier said. “That’s the kind of attitude they have toward their workers.”

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