Bobby Kasper: Super Bowl will showcase union workers

May 29, 2014 by
Bobby Kasper

Bobby Kasper

It doesn’t take most people very long to realize I’m not a native Minnesotan. My New York accent is usually a dead giveaway. But after living here for 20-plus years, Minnesota is the place I’m proud to call home. That’s why I was thrilled to learn the Twin Cities will play host to Super Bowl LII in 2018. The biggest sporting event on U.S. soil is our opportunity to show off to the world the multitude of reasons Minnesota is a great place to live.

The Super Bowl will be a showcase for the work Minnesota’s union members do every day to make Minnesota the “quality-of-life state” it is. Just think of the many ways union workers will be on the front lines of the effort to showcase Minnesota to the rest of the world.

Our hospitality workers will be the first point of contact for the 100,000-plus visitors expected to descend on the region for the Super Bowl, including fans, media members and industry professionals. Members of UNITE HERE, the hospitality workers’ union, can be counted on to provide visitors with professional service in our hotels, bars and restaurants.

Members of Building Trades unions, of course, will have built the stadium in which the Super Bowl will be played, and members of the Service Employees International Union will keep it clean. Stagehands, members of IATSE Local 13, will ensure the circus of events leading up to the big game goes off without a hitch. Bus drivers and train operators, members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, will see that visitors get to all of their destinations safely, conveniently and on time.

Our public employees, members of AFSCME, will help the Twin Cities region roll out the welcome mat, readying our infrastructure, making our parks and public building shine, and plowing the snow and ice from our roads and bridges if necessary.

Speaking of ice, it’s rumored that our brothers and sisters in the Building Trades will once again tackle the tall task of building an eight-story Ice Palace in St. Paul. Nothing has been confirmed yet, but the palace could go up during Winter Carnival and remain for the Super Bowl. Volunteers from the Building Trades constructed the world’s largest ice castle the last time the Super Bowl came to Minnesota, in 1992.

So regardless of whether you’re a football fan or not, as Minnesotans we have plenty of reasons to be excited about Super Bowl LII coming to town. Sure, it will be cold. And yes, it will be crowded. But if we put our best foot forward – and with union members on the job, I’m confident we will – the Super Bowl has the potential to attract more visitors, more conventions and more big events to our region down the road. That’s good for hospitality workers, good for our local economy and good for tax revenues.

– Bobby Kasper is president of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, with more than 150 affiliate unions representing more than 50,000 union members in the East Metro.

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Politics take center stage at state Building Trades convention

July 20, 2012 by

Minnesota Building Trades Council President Harry Melander watches as Gov. Mark Dayton addresses the convention.

One by one, DFL state lawmakers took the podium on the opening day of the Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council’s annual convention July 19-20 in St. Cloud. Invariably, each offered his own variation on three common themes:

• DFLers salvaged the 2012 legislative session by providing the votes – or the veto power – necessary to create construction jobs and fend off attacks on union members’ wages, work conditions and collective-bargaining rights.

• None of the victories achieved in 2012 would have been possible without the support, leadership and activism of Building Trades members.

• Little of it will matter if DFLers do not reclaim in November the Legislative majorities they lost two years ago.

“Please recognize the importance of this election,” Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton said. “Help your members to recognize the importance of this election, and let’s win this election.”

Delegates to the Building Trades Council, which represents 50,000 union members in construction trades statewide, greeted Dayton with their warmest reception of the convention. Council President Harry Melander praised the governor’s leading role in efforts to pass a bonding bill and finance construction of a new Vikings stadium – initiatives that will create thousands of jobs for union members.

Dayton deflected the praise back to his audience. “You really were stupendous on turning out, standing up, letting (lawmakers) know where you were at,” Dayton told delegates, pointing to rallies staged at the Capitol by unions in favor of bonding and stadium bills.

Dayton also praised delegates for stepping up in one battle the governor was powerless to fight: Republican efforts to put a constitutional amendment regarding Right to Work on the November ballot.

“That was absolutely your victory, achieved by strong leadership, by standing strong together and by putting the pressure on (Republicans) – and they backed off,” Dayton said.

Bipartisan spirit?

Melander warned that Right to Work “will continue to rear its ugly head” until voters install pro-labor majorities in the Minnesota House or Senate. For now, he added, the council must continue to count on relationships with members of both political parties.

But Rep. Tim Mahoney, a DFLer and a member of St. Paul Pipefitters Local 455, said it is becoming increasingly difficult to work across party lines at the Capitol. “This crew that came in last election, they had all the answers,” he said. “They didn’t really bother to talk to anybody. I’ve been there 14 years, and I’ve never seen that kind of behavior before.”

Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk, a former member of the Carpenters Union, cautioned delegates about the risks of backing Republican candidates on the ballot this fall. Operating Engineers Local 49, one of the state’s largest Building Trades unions, announced July 12 it will support Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack in the 8th Congressional District, a seat targeted by Democrats this election cycle.

“I’m concerned about some of the endorsements I see coming down… It confuses our membership,” Bakk said. “(Republicans) don’t share the same values about improving the standard of living of working class people.”

House Minority Leader Paul Thissen, a Minneapolis DFLer, said keeping their majorities in the Legislature will embolden Republicans to wage more attacks on unions and their members next session.

“After the Wisconsin recall election, the very next day, House Speaker (Kurt) Zellers was on the radio saying (the results) are a signal to us of what we can accomplish if we’re in the majority next year,” Thissen said. “If they hold on to their majority, we are going to see a Right to Work constitutional amendment coming – undoubtedly.”

Jobs on the horizon

Although election-year rhetoric dominated much of the convention’s first day, some speakers looked forward to the jobs soon to be created on major construction projects throughout the state.

Lester Bagley, the Minnesota Vikings’ vice president for public affairs, said the process of building a new stadium in Minneapolis is entering the design phase, with groundbreaking following as early as April 2013. The team plans to begin play in the new stadium during the 2016 season.

“We look forward to building an iconic facility, and we look forward to building it with union labor,” Bagley said.

Noting that the stadium bill passed both the House and Senate with a majority of DFL votes, Bagley also made a point of thanking Building Trades delegates. “A lot of that was due to (DFLers’) vision of doing the right thing and creating thousands of jobs, but it was also because of their relationships with you,” he said.

The $475 million infrastructure jobs bill – also known as the bonding bill – will create about 14,000 jobs for Building Trades members. Dayton said he takes pride in seeing Building Trades members working on public-works jobsites as he travels the state.

But the governor couldn’t resist pointing out that the bonding bill could have created more jobs, had Republicans in the Legislature accepted his proposal for a $786 million package.

“They cut a third of it out,” Dayton said. “They left 7,000 jobs sitting on the table at the Capitol (because) it doesn’t fit their ideology.

“They don’t get that the public sector, we the people, have a role to play in creating jobs. The role of government is to make things happen… It’s we the people, pooling our resources together to accomplish things we can’t accomplish by ourselves.”

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UNITE HERE Local 17: Bottom line is Vikes stadium will create jobs

June 20, 2012 by

The Vikings Stadium deal is done, and the members of UNITE HERE Local 17 are happy about that. We are happy about the jobs that it will provide over the next few years while it’s being built and about the jobs it will provide over the next 30+ years for our members.

Local 17 represents workers in the hospitality industry, including sports arenas. When Target Field opened, there was no doubt what that did for the hospitality industry in downtown Minneapolis, with people eating at restaurants, shopping, and staying in hotels. Our union, which was hit hard in a bad economy, regained members, saw wages rise and people called back from layoff. Target Field employs as many as 800 of our members at each game, many of them coming from inner city neighborhoods where unemployment is high.

As we listened over several months to the endless debates, opinions, and commentary about the jobs that would be created once the new stadium was built, we also heard a lot of misconceptions and untruths about the type of jobs these would be. Some politicians and some labor people described them as “dead end, low wage jobs.”

We need to respect all workers and not allow politicians to look down their nose and create “jobism.” We should not be taking a position that working in a stadium or a hotel is somehow less important. Not everyone will be a teacher or a lawyer or a skilled professional, and some who are will continue to vend the beer, sell the hotdogs and work in the bars, restaurants and clubs that will be part of the new stadium.

The fact is, for each of the jobs created at the site, many more are truly created; it’s a ripple effect that could hardly be quantified. Think of it this way: for every hotdog sold, not only is the cook and the server of the hotdog working, but the person who delivered the hotdogs to the stadium. There’s a person that keeps that person’s truck running and in good tires and brakes, which someone else makes, and then there’s the farmer who raised the pigs or cows to make the hotdogs and the people who make and print the bags they come in and the makers of mustard, ketchup, pickles and onions. And let’s not forget the bakers of the buns. We could go on and on.

This is how the economy is built. One job relies on the job of another and then expands to create more jobs. It is shallow and shortsighted to claim that we are giving billionaires millions. We are giving ourselves millions in pride in our community that cannot be estimated in dollars.

– Nancy Goldman is president of Twin Cities-based UNITE HERE Local 17. Martin Goff is senior vice president of Local 17. For more information on their union and the workers it represents, go to www.uniteherelocal17.org.

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