Detained Guild member’s son attends SOTU as Omar’s guest

February 27, 2026 by

Union member Eustaquio Orozco Verdusco with his godsons. (submitted photo)

The Trump administration’s chaotic, violent surge of immigration-enforcement activity in Minnesota this winter has upended thousands of lives, Gerardo Orozco Guzman’s among them.

But Guzman, 27, had a rare opportunity to bear witness to that devastation when President Trump delivered his State of the Union address Feb. 24, as one of four guests – all impacted by Operation Metro Surge – invited to attend the speech with Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Guzman’s father, Eustaquio Orozco Verdusco, was abducted on his way to work Jan. 9, and he remained in federal detention at press time. Verdusco is an organizer with the worker center CTUL, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha, and a member of the Minnesota Newspaper and Communications Guild.

For Guzman, attending the State of the Union was an opportunity to bring “light and awareness” to what’s happening both to his family and to his community.

“It is extremely unfair that my dad was taken by the government,” he said. “It’s unfair that our family is having to go through this. It’s unfair that my Minnesota community is having to go through this still.”

Guzman’s father, known to friends and family as “Paco,” has made a career of helping vulnerable workers fight back against abuses in the construction industry.

CTUL is a resource center for workers who experience wage theft, misclassification and labor trafficking, and the organization has a track record of recovering unpaid wages and helping deliver cases to authorities for investigation.

Guzman has built a career as an advocate, too. A legal assistant and mediator for the Minnesota Attorney General’s office, he was named an “Unsung Legal Hero” by Minnesota Lawyer magazine last year.

Guzman, his mother, his sister and his extended family have been scrambling to pursue every legal option possible to get Paco home since his arrest. Lawyers immediately filed a habeas corpus petition for his release, but it was denied by a judge.

After spending weeks in the notoriously dangerous Camp East Montana detention facility, Paco was transferred to a facility in New Mexico, a move that came with greater access to phone calls, Guzman said.

But the family’s concern grows with each day Paco is detained.

“He calls to check in on us and tell us he’s OK, but with every call he does sound more dejected,” Guzman said. “He recognized, I think, that people who he’s met in detention have been there way longer – eight or nine months, if not longer. As time goes on the tone of his voice is not the same, and noticing that change, it’s heartbreaking to say the least.”

Guzman said the family has settled on a multi-pronged legal approach to get Paco home, but costs are adding up. The family launched an online fundraiser, and 6,000 people have signed onto a petition for Paco’s release.

“You want to have faith in the laws and procedures, and at first my dad was hopeful that he would be released, as he should have been,” Guzman said. “We’ve gotten so much support from more people than I know, but if we can get a little more support, get the right kind of support…

“I’ll talk to anyone and everyone. I just want my dad back with us.”

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Carpenters union’s tip leads to felony wage-theft charges

September 22, 2025 by

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi announced charges of wage theft, insurance fraud and tax evasion stemming from work on a public housing site in St. Paul. (photo courtesy Vince Muzik, FCF Minnesota)

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi and law-enforcement leaders credited the local Carpenters union with playing a key role in their investigation of wage-theft allegations on a public housing site in St. Paul, which resulted in criminal charges filed Sept. 3.

Choi’s office charged Jose Herrera, Carrie Gutbrod-Herrera and Joseph Herrera, owners of Bayvista Incorporated, with multiple counts of wage theft, insurance fraud and tax evasion stemming from their firm’s work at the McDonough Homes in 2024. All three owners face felony charges.

According to the criminal complaint, Bayvista procured a contract to provide labor for roofing and gutter improvements at the North End apartment complex, owned by the St. Paul Public Housing Agency, but the company cheated its workers out of over $200,000 in combined wages for their work.

Rather than paying prevailing wages of about $68 per hour for roofers and $84 for gutter installation, as required on the publicly funded project, Bayvista allegedly paid workers between $120 to $200 per day in cash.

Multiple workers told St. Paul Police investigators that “they had been instructed to falsely tell anyone who asks that they were, in fact, being paid at prevailing-wage rates,” according to the complaint.

Seven workers agreed to participate in the investigation, but Choi told members of the media during a press conference that he hopes to win full compensation for 24 victims in all, adding that the investigation is ongoing.

“We can’t hold people accountable if someone doesn’t raise their hand,” Choi said. “Somebody has to say, ‘This happened to me.’

“Thankfully we have a lot of advocates. Unions are very laser-focused on making sure that workers’ rights are upheld in this town. They’re helping us make those reports, but we have to corroborate that.”

A tip from the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters (NCSRCC) sparked the investigation of wage theft on the McDonough Homes project.

The NCSRCC is among several local labor organizations with staff dedicated to monitoring conditions on construction sites across their jurisdictions. Carpenters business representative Woodrow Piner, who attended the press conference, said the council is now tracking about 1,400 projects – active or in the planning stages – in the seven-county metro area.

Piner and other union representatives developed a relationship with several Bayvista workers after an initial visit to McDonough Homes last year. Eventually, he said, workers disclosed that their wages were not meeting the legal standard.

“We knew it was a prevailing wage job, and when you see a group like this, typically they’re not being paid the proper wage,” Piner said, adding that it took time to gain workers’ trust.

“In a world like this, where you could possibly have compromised documentation, you’re terrified to even say what your favorite candy bar is. It takes a lot to develop that relationship.”

Rarely do those conversations at the job site lead to criminal charges, but they often do empower workers with the information they need to protect themselves from wage theft or misclassification, NCSRCC’s Dominic Andrist added.

“Union or nonunion, we’re just trying to uphold the rights of working men and women, to make sure that when they’re out there and it’s 20 below, they’re getting their just due and the pay that they deserve,” he said.

That’s a point St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry echoed during the press conference.

“I think some people think that those folks are just looking out for their membership,” Henry said of local Building Trades unions. “They are not. They are looking out for what’s fair and what’s right out in their community.”

The investigation ultimately expanded from wage theft to charges of tax evasion and insurance fraud, as a newly formed Labor Advisory Council tapped into the Bayvista owners’ payroll records, tax returns and insurance policies. Spearheaded by Choi’s office, the working group brings together law-enforcement agencies, state regulators and worker-advocacy groups.

Mike Wilde, director of the Fair Contracting Foundation of Minnesota, a prevailing-wage watchdog, credited the Labor Advisory Council with helping Minnesota lead the country in “stamping out corrupt practices in our industry.”

“Our public infrastructure must be built first on integrity,” Wilde added. “It’s expected by taxpayers, the lawful contractors who bid on this work and the construction workers who actually build it for us all.”

Choi urged anyone who believes that they have witnessed or experienced wage theft to call 651-266-3371.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , , , , ,

IUPAT’s community outreach led to first criminal wage-theft conviction in Minnesota

April 25, 2025 by

Painters union representative Jordan Fry speaks during a press conference called by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office after it secured Minnesota’s first criminal wage-theft conviction. (photo by Vince Muzik)

The local Building Trades union whose organizing efforts laid the groundwork for Minnesota’s first criminal wage-theft conviction said the landmark case reflects the tip of the iceberg when it comes to worker abuses in the construction industry.

Frederick Leon Newell, a 59-year-old resident of Lakeville, was convicted April 9 of one count of wage theft and one count of theft by swindle, after a bench trial in January.

The court found that Newell’s firm, Integrated Painting Solutions (IPS), underpaid five workers on a publicly subsidized housing development in Minneapolis by a combined $37,000 for work performed between June 8 and Dec. 4, 2020.

It’s the first conviction under a state law passed in 2019 that recognized wage theft as a criminal offense. The law empowers prosecutors to seek justice for workers who, prior to the change, had to fight for damages in civil court.

At a press conference held by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office following the conviction, IUPAT District Council 82 representative Jordan Fry said it strikes a blow against the “underground economy that seeks to destroy worker protections.”

“Most times, workers cannot defend themselves – vulnerable workers who can hardly afford to put food on the table, who cannot afford to miss one paycheck,” Fry added. “This wage-theft law serves as a beacon of hope, a law that turns wage theft from a civil-court fantasy into a criminal-court reality.”

Fry’s union, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District Council 82, connected Newell’s victims with investigators.

In meetings nearly five years ago, union organizers confirmed the workers’ suspicions that they were being underpaid by IPS on the Redwell apartment complex.

The tactics Newell used to steal wages from his workers are familiar to worker advocates in the construction industry. IPS failed to pay prevailing wage as required by county ordinance on the taxpayer-financed project, and the firm illegally misclassified workers as independent contractors.

“Mr. Newell was entrusted with public funds to pay his staff for their labor on a public works project,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said. “Instead, he siphoned their money for himself.”

Labor advocates said they hope the conviction is another step toward preventing labor abuses, particularly in the multifamily residential construction sector.

“We hope the state continues to pursue and take these cases seriously, and that it sends a message to those who benefit from the system of exploitation that exists in construction – like contractors and developers – that they also have a responsibility to take steps to prevent this from happening on their jobsites,” Brian Merle Payne, executive director of the worker center CTUL, said.

The presumptive sentence for Newell’s wage-theft conviction, according to state guidelines, is a stayed sentence of 21 months. But the court also found that Newell had committed “major economic offenses,” which may lead to a more severe sentence.

Fry said the publicity surrounding the landmark case reaches workers, too, with the message that they have rights – and advocates willing to fight for them.

“But you must come forward to tell your story,” Fry said. “We are here, and we will stand up to fight wage theft and other worker exploitation.

“We will speak out and we will stand with you, and we will not back down because we know an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Contractor who stiffed Bricklayers loses license, must pay $70,000

March 12, 2025 by

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi (R) held a media briefing with Bricklayers Local 1 President Doug Schroeder (L) and Fair Contracting Foundation Executive Director Mike Wilde.

A local masonry contractor pled guilty last month to felony tax fraud after a joint investigation by the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office and the Minnesota Department of Revenue found that he failed to report $2.5 million in income and did not pay taxes that should have been withheld from his employees’ paychecks.

As part of the plea, Stillwater Masonry owner Todd Konigson received a sentence of three years’ probation. Konigson must pay over $70,000 in restitution to the state and forfeit his state contractor’s license, and he is barred from holding any position of authority in a construction, remodeling or masonry firm in Minnesota.

The charges stemmed from an investigation into Konigson’s books from 2017 to 2022.

County Attorney John Choi said the investigation began after his office received complaints that Konigson had failed to pay workers, sub-contractors and vendors related to work on the historic Masonic Temple in St. Paul.

Previously, Stillwater Masonry entered into an agreement with Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 1 to become one of the union’s signatory contractors. BAC Local 1 President Doug Schroeder said Konigson signed on to meet the terms of a project labor agreement (PLA) covering a publicly subsidized development in Duluth.

PLAs are pre-hire collective bargaining agreements that establish minimum conditions of employment – like wages and benefit contributions – on a project before contractors begin bidding on the work.

Stillwater Masonry failed to make the agreed-upon contributions to its workers’ health and pension funds on four projects, Schroeder said. The funds have since taken independent civil action to recoup most of what they are owed.

But Konigson’s blatant disregard for his workers was a red flag for investigators, according to Mike Wilde, director of the Fair Contracting Foundation, an independent watchdog in the public construction industry.

“An employer or a contractor, even those bidding on a public contract, if they’re willing to cheat the very people that do the work for them, then they’re certainly OK with cheating their subcontractor, the project owner or the taxpayer at large,” Wilde said during a press conference to announce the plea at the County Attorney’s offices.

Contractors who commit tax fraud aren’t just cheating the system, Choi said. They’re getting a leg up on responsible firms and cheating the public services that rely on tax dollars.

Choi’s office is one of the first in the state to hire a full-time wage-theft investigator, who has been prioritizing payroll fraud, misclassification and similar crimes since 2022.

“If we can develop true partnerships with our labor community, our advocacy community and create the conditions by which people can come forward – and also work out the systems that can investigate and prosecute these crimes – that’s the secret sauce to make (cases) like this happen,” Choi said.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Community, Politics Tagged With: , , , ,

Worker advocates welcome St. Paul’s new wage theft law

December 10, 2024 by

Supporters of a measure to crack down on wage theft were pictured during a rally at the Minnesota Capitol in 2019.

St. Paul will have a new wage theft ordinance on the books Jan. 1.

The measure, pushed by Mayor Melvin Carter and co-authored by all seven members of the City Council, drew praise from labor leaders and worker advocates as a step toward more robust, efficient protections for people working in the capital city.

Construction and service-industry unions, in particular, pushed city officials to add wage theft to the scope of its labor enforcement work.

At a public hearing on the ordinance in October, Carpenters Local 322 member Saben De Smet called wage theft a “competing business model” for too many developers and non-union contractors in his industry.

“Here in Minnesota, a construction contractor using a wage-theft model can underbid other contractors – whether union or non-union – by up to 20%,” De Smet told council members. “This is because they avoid paying worker compensation, unemployment insurance and other costs associated with being above board.

“This is both a leveling of the playing field and a human-rights issue for us.”

Wage theft has come under increased public scrutiny in recent years, after a 2014 report by the Economic Policy Institute estimated that it costs U.S. workers more than $50 billion annually. In Ramsey and Hennepin counties alone, construction workers lose $3 million to wage theft each year, according to a 2022 report authorized by the county attorneys offices.

“If someone was to shoplift or steal a car, you’d expect them to get arrested or get in trouble,” Ironworkers Local 512 member Nick Petrucelle, a co-chair of Minnesota’s Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, told council members. “But employers, they can rip off their employees, they can steal their wages, and it’s really hard to do anything about it.”

St. Paul’s new ordinance largely aligns with state legislation passed in Minnesota five years ago. Hailed at the time as the nation’s toughest wage theft law, it gave state regulators and the Attorney General new powers to investigate wage theft and created stiffer penalties, both civil and criminal.

While St. Paul’s ordinance does not create new requirements for employers, it does complement the city’s unique minimum wage and earned-sick-and-safe-time laws, advocates on the city’s Labor Standards Advisory Committee (LSAC) said.

“City staff should be able to resolve all of these issues together in one package,” LSAC member Rick Varco, political director for SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, told council members.

Varco noted that city investigators pursuing a minimum-wage complaint are well positioned to identify other forms of wage theft, too. But without an ordinance on the books, the city must turn the matter over to state regulators.

“This is better for workers who don’t have to navigate one more bureaucratic maze,” he said. “It is better for employers, especially those who fail through ignorance or capacity issues, to have one stop that can get them back on the right track.”

The city’s Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity (HREEO) will begin handling wage theft complaints when the new ordinance takes effect Jan. 1.

Wage theft occurs any time employers fail to pay wages employees are legally entitled to, including paying below minimum wage, not paying overtime, requiring work without pay, denying legal breaks, misclassification, withholding tips, failing to pay fringe benefits and making illegal payroll deductions.

“Wage theft is one of the largest types of theft in our country and is a pervasive and systemic problem throughout Minnesota,” St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Kera Peterson said. “It affects workers in all sectors of our economy. This ordinance helps to make workers in Saint Paul more secure and helps level the playing field for employers who are following our state laws and local ordinances.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Construction union celebrates new laws to keep ‘bad actors’ from cashing in on public subsidies

July 19, 2024 by

Eduardo Canales brought his daughter, Dariana, to the rally at Callisto Commons in Fridley. The development used Environmental StoneWorks, a contractor that Canales said misclassified him as an independent contractor when he installed stone veneers like the one visible at the Fridley site.

Members of the Laborers union (LIUNA) staged a demonstration June 24 outside a subsidized housing development in Fridley, publicly shaming a construction-supply company they allege has cheated both workers and taxpayers.

Environmental StoneWorks’ veneer product was on full display at the future site of Callisto Commons, a development along University Avenue Northeast where LIUNA members rallied with lawmakers and community supporters.

The action kept the heat on StoneWorks, which faces allegations of discrimination and worker misclassification. But the event also raised awareness of new laws passed this year by the labor-endorsed “trifecta” of state lawmakers, including new labor standards on subsidized housing projects and stiffer penalties for worker misclassification.

“This isn’t about a few bad actors,” Rep. Emma Greenman (D-Minneapolis) said. “This is about a business model that is about extracting from workers, extracting from taxpayers. The business model is what has to change.”

And it likely will, thanks to new laws requiring contractors on developments that access funds through the state’s Low-Income Housing Tax Credit – like Callisto Commons in Fridley – to pay prevailing wages. Minnesota is the first state to tie prevailing wage to the tax credit.

Other measures now on the books will make it harder for contractors with a history of labor violations to bid on publicly subsidized projects, give state regulators new tools to shut down job sites where labor violations are occurring and create new penalties of up to $10,000 for employers that misclassify their workers as independent contractors.

LIUNA members from across the country, in the area for an organizing conference, joined the rally.

That’s what Eduardo Canales alleges happened on job sites where he installed Environmental StoneWorks’ product over a period of four years.

Although he worked exclusively as an installer for the firm, Canales said he was never classified as an employee by the firm. As an independent contractor, he was ineligible for workers’ compensation, collective bargaining rights and overtime pay – even in weeks when he worked 70 or more hours installing the stone veneer.

“It means if there is an accident and someone gets hurt on an Environmental StoneWorks project, it is my problem, not theirs,” Canales said through a Spanish language interpreter at the rally. “There was a guy who broke his foot working for Environmental StoneWorks, and instead of providing medical treatment, he said his boss terminated him.”

StoneWorks’ manufacturing facility, meanwhile, is the subject of a discrimination complaint filed with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. Angel Torres, who worked at the North Branch facility from 2009 until he was fired in December 2023, said the company offered two wage scales, one for immigrant workers and another, higher scale for those born in the U.S.

Torres, also using a language interpreter, told rally-goers that he complained to management that newly hired “American” workers were making $2 more per hour than immigrants who had been working at the plant for several years. “I believe that’s the reason I was fired from this company, for speaking up for the workers,” he said.

Angel Torres (L) said StoneWorks discriminated against immigrant workers at its North Branch manufacturing facility.

“The reason we came to this country is to better our lives for our families, but we should be treated with dignity like any other employees,” Torres added. “That’s why I came here to speak today, to ask the community to not be quiet. We need to speak up in order for things to change.”

On the construction worksite, at least, change appears to be coming.

Lucas Franco, a LIUNA researcher, said Minnesota’s new laws “will, we are confident, break the cycle of unscrupulous contractors and worker mistreatment on publicly funded projects.”

That’s no small slice of the construction industry, either.

An analysis published by NorthStar Policy Action in November 2023 found that $84 million of taxpayer subsidies went to affordable housing developments in Minnesota that used contractors tied to proven or alleged exploitation of workers. And that’s “just the tip of the iceberg,” author Jake Schwitzer said, noting that the Callisto Commons project was not named in the report.

“We’re here today because we know Minnesota can meet its affordable housing needs and development goals without sacrificing worker dignity and safety,” Franco said.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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

Construction wage theft back on MN lawmakers’ agenda

March 17, 2023 by

Alvaro Chavez (L), a member of CTUL, testifies in support of the Construction Worker Wage Protection Act, authored by Rep. Sandra Feist (R).

Construction firms in Minnesota would bear greater legal responsibility for the labor practices of their subcontractors under legislation introduced by DFL lawmakers last month.

Building Trades unions and worker advocacy groups say the measure is necessary in the wake of reported abuses on non-union construction sites, most notably the Viking Lakes development in Eagan, where last year 40-plus workers alleged being cheated out of over $100,000 in combined wages.

Under the proposed Construction Worker Wage Protection Act, tradespeople hired by a subcontractor or labor broker would be empowered to seek unpaid wages from the larger contractors responsible for bringing their boss onto the jobsite.

Advocates say holding so-called “upstream” contractors accountable will create a much-needed incentive to do business with responsible subcontractors. The measure would also give construction firms legal authority to request payroll information from their subcontractors, so they can avoid liability.

“Compliance would finally be incentivized,” the Carpenters union’s Adam Duininck told members of the House Labor Committee during a hearing on the bill March 2.

Minnesota Building Trades unions lobbied to pass the nation’s strongest wage theft legislation four years ago, but Duininck and other labor leaders say the new law has not deterred developers and general contractors, like the Wilf family’s MV Ventures, from turning a blind eye to wage theft on their projects.

A report approved by Ramsey and Hennepin county attorneys last year found “rampant wage theft” in the non-union construction industry, estimating that employers in those two counties steal over $3 million in wages each year and divert over $11 million from Social Security and Medicare funds by misclassifying employees as independent contractors or paying in cash.

During the committee hearing March 2, Alvaro Chavez, with assistance from a Spanish language interpreter, explained to lawmakers how he witnessed the wage-theft model firsthand. After working for several weeks framing the bottom floor of a multifamily development in St. Paul, Chavez said, he and his crew abruptly learned they were being replaced for the project’s next phase.

“They never paid us for the work we had already done,” Chavez said. “When the supervisor of our group called the owner of the company, Strong Framing, who was a subcontractor on this project, he wouldn’t answer the phone.”

Chavez and other members of the crew approached the local worker center CTUL for assistance recovering their lost wages. Their first call was to the project’s developer, Yellow Tree.

“They told us they had contracted with U.S. Framing to do the work and we should call them,” Chavez said. “When we called U.S. Framing, they told us they contracted with Strong Framing, the company of the person who was no longer taking our calls.

“None of these companies wanted to take responsibility for paying our wages.”

Dan McConnell, president of the Minnesota State Building and Construction Trades Council, said that responsibility rightly belongs to those with most control over the construction site. “Managing a project and making sure everybody gets paid is literally what owners pay a general contractor to do,” he said.

But too often, by the time workers like Chavez discover they have been cheated out of their wages, it’s too late to hold their immediate employer accountable, Simon Trautmann, a labor attorney and member of the Richfield City Council, told lawmakers.

“You’ll have the subcontractor who has an LLC with zero assets,” Trautmann said. “That creates a policy problem where there is literally no money and literally nobody (to hold) accountable. This is a business model.”

Members of the House Labor Committee voted to advance the measure, House File 1859. Its companion bill, Senate File 1988, has so far passed through two committees.

“The bottom line is if you control the worksite, then you can prevent wage theft,” said Rep. Sandra Feist (D-New Brighton), the bill’s lead author in the House. “We want to level the playing field so ethical business practices can win the day, and they’re not going to be underbid by unethical subcontractors.”

Filed Under: Community, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Unions back Little in Dakota County Attorney race

October 21, 2022 by

Matt Little

Matt Little supported the state’s groundbreaking wage theft legislation while serving in the Minnesota Senate in 2019. Now, he’s running for Dakota County Attorney to put the new law to work stopping exploitation in the workplace and on the job site.

Prosecuting wage theft cases is “totally within your purview” as county attorney, Little said. “There’s functionally no difference if you walk into someone’s house and steal money off their countertop or if you steal it off their paycheck. It’s the same thing.”

But Little said wage theft hasn’t been a top concern in the County Attorney’s Office. Pointing to allegations of worker exploitation on the Viking Lakes development in Eagan, Little said “the threat of prosecution alone would be helpful.”

Little’s interest in cracking down on labor abuses is among the reasons unions are backing the former state senator and mayor of Lakeville in the first contested election for the Dakota County post in over a decade.

“I’m the only one talking about wage theft as an issue that the Dakota County Attorney’s Office should and could enforce,” Little said. “My opponent has never even mentioned it as a priority.”

Little, whose mother was a steward in the Service Employees (SEIU) union, said he has always sought – and earned – support from organized labor in his campaigns.

“I believe it’s incredibly important to have the support of working people,” Little said. “When I was running for city office, it was true then, and it’s true for this race too. Those are the people doing the work.”

Another reason unions are backing Little is his pledge to fight for more resources and support for the people doing the work in the County Attorney’s Office.

Members of the County Attorney’s staff were among workers who joined an informational picket in September to protest the slow pace of contract negotiations between Dakota County and their unions, AFSCME locals 306, 450 and 693.

“You don’t have to look too deeply to see that there isn’t anybody fighting for staff,” he said. “We’re seeing retention problems as people leave the office for higher paying work. It doesn’t seem like anybody’s sticking up for them at all, and I want to be that voice.

“We need someone who will fight for staff and fight for union members to make sure they’re being paid competitive wages, to make sure they feel like they’re valued and they want to stay and continue putting in high quality work for the people of Dakota County.”

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Uber, Lyft drivers push local lawmakers to regulate their industry

October 19, 2022 by

Abdi Salah (L) and Eid Ali

With a shoestring organizing drive that began just four months ago, Twin Cities Uber and Lyft drivers are pushing elected officials to tighten regulation of the app-based companies, and fighting for safety, transparency and a collective voice in their industry.

The Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association (MULDA) will bring its fledgling campaign to St. Paul tomorrow with a rally at the Capitol, set to begin at 12:30 p.m.

Drivers’ demands include higher pay and greater transparency from Uber and Lyft about how they calculate fares. The companies have slashed rates from nearly $2 per mile to around 85 cents over the last eight years, while scrapping a firm, 20% cap on their commission, drivers said.

Abdi Salah, who drives for both Uber and Lyft, said the companies recently removed fare breakdowns from drivers’ online activity log, leaving them to glean information about their cut from conversations with passengers. He recalled a recent trip from Edina to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, in which he claims he received just $14 out of a passenger’s $50 fare.

“This guy is going on vacation, and he’s pissed off,” Salah remembered. “He’s angry with me, and I was not late. He was mad at me because I was charging him $50. He said it was ridiculous for such a short trip.

“When I dropped him off, I showed him my receipt, and he was shocked. He gave me a $5 tip. Had I not engaged with him, he was going to give me a low rating, and I might not have been allowed to drive again.”

Salah and other drivers have concluded that Uber and Lyft are “charging anything they need to the customer, and the 83 cents per mile minus their (commission), that’s what they give to the driver,” he said.

During an interview earlier this month in the organization’s one-room office, located on the second floor a shopping center in Minneapolis’ Phillips neighborhood, MULDA President Eid Ali said the ride sharing companies’ practices amount to wage theft.

“We don’t trust Uber or Lyft, and there’s good reason why we don’t,” said Ali, who helped lead a successful push to regulate taxi companies in Minneapolis a decade ago. “The public is being ripped off, and so are the drivers. Uber and Lyft are getting as much money as they can from the riders, and in the end giving only a little bit to the driver.”

In meetings with Minneapolis City Council members and Mayor Jacob Frey, MULDA drivers have pushed for an ordinance that would regulate rates, as the city does with taxi cabs, and cap the percentage that ridesharing apps can take out in commission.

Drivers also have reached out to St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and, with the rally tomorrow, hope to take their campaign statewide. MULDA’s first public event, a September meeting at the Embassy Suites in Bloomington, drew about 400 drivers and a handful of elected officials.

“They were really surprised,” Ali said of the legislators in attendance. “They were not expecting this type of organizing effort. Maybe they were underestimating us. Maybe they thought we were invisible, but that’s not true.”

While increasing pay and transparency are at the top of MULDA’s agenda, drivers have also raised concerns about safety and job security – issues they hope to one day address through collective bargaining.

The U.S. Department of Labor last week issued a proposal to bar firms like Uber and Lyft from classifying so-called “gig-economy workers” as independent contractors, which takes companies off the hook for benefits like workers compensation – and bars them from bargaining as a union.

Several drivers who came to MULDA’s meeting last month, Ali said, claimed to have been injured on the job, including a man who said he was shot by a passenger, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

“No one has bothered, not Uber and not Lyft, to help (him) because there’s not any protection, not any work compensation to protect those fellow drivers because we’re misclassified,” Ali said. “Up to today, he’s a piece of garbage in their eyes.”

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

Alleged rape on Wilfs’ Viking Lakes development sparks outrage, calls for change

October 14, 2022 by

Barb Pecks (R), chair of the Carpenters union’s Sisters in the Brotherhood group, embraces Norma Izaguirre during a press conference on the Capitol steps.

A worker on the Viking Lakes project in Eagan came forward last week with allegations that she was raped and harassed while working for a drywall subcontractor on the troubled job site, developed by NFL owners Zygmunt, Mark and Leonard Wilf’s MV Ventures firm.

Unions and worker advocacy groups decried the alleged assault and, in a press conference on the Capitol steps Tuesday, issued an impassioned call for elected officials, developers, contractors and all workers to do more to stop exploitation of workers in the construction industry.

For developers like the Wilfs, that means cutting business ties with contractors that have public records of wage theft, worker misclassification and other labor abuses.

Absolute Drywall, which employed Norma Izaguirre and her alleged rapist, Diego Medina, has been cited for child labor, misclassification of workers and failure to pay overtime. The state Labor Department also found that the firm submitted false and misleading claims in response to an investigation.

Yet when representatives of the Carpenters union and the local worker center CTUL tried to warn MV Ventures about Absolute Drywall’s track record of exploitation, they were instructed to leave the property, CTUL Co-Director Veronica Mendez Moore said.

“They kicked us off the site and wouldn’t even let us go in and talk with workers, to see what the conditions were like,” she said. “They said to us that they could handle this themselves.”

By last spring, more than 40 workers employed on the Viking Lakes project had come forward to report wage theft, alleging Absolute and other subcontractors had cheated them out of over $100,000 in combined wages. Several workers reported their claims to the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry.

Madeline Lohman, a senior researcher for The Advocates for Human Rights, said developers that turn a blind eye to subcontractors’ potential violations of wage rules, safety standards and other worker protections too often foster an “environment of impunity,” ripe for more serious abuses.

“Many of the labor trafficking victims that we have served at The Advocates first came forward because of stolen wages, untreated workplace injuries or child labor that had been overlooked, and only afterwards was the trafficking uncovered,” she said. “If developers and large employers … allow smaller abuses to go unchecked, greater ones will flourish in those gaps.”

In fact, Izaguirre told the Minnesota Reformer website that she is among the workers on the Viking Lakes development who have filed complaints of unpaid wages.

She said Medina lured her to work for Absolute Drywall as a cleaner at Viking Lakes and other developments. After several months, he began making sexual advances and touching her inappropriately, eventually raping her in one of the apartments’ showers, according to her report.

Medina threatened violence against Izaguirre and her family if she reported the abuse. But on the Capitol steps, she stood up to the podium and explained what prompted her to come forward.

“I want everyone in the state of Minnesota to make sure no other woman is treated like I was on a construction project,” she said through an interpreter. “My question for Minnesota developers and construction companies is this: what are you going to do to prevent this from happening to another woman?”

One option for developers is to hire union contractors, whose employees can report abuses to their representatives and whose wages and benefits are spelled out in a collective bargaining agreement.

Or, Mendez Moore said, developers should sign a pledge with the Building Dignity and Respect Standards Council, requiring all contractors on their developments to uphold basic labor standards and agreeing to allow independent monitoring – with legally binding enforcement mechanisms – on their work sites. CTUL is ramping up public pressure on several prominent non-union developers to join the council.

Local elected officials, meanwhile, should require accountability measures on all approved projects to ensure workers are not being exploited in their cities, union officials said.

“If one of the most powerful families in Minnesota is not stepping up to prevent horrific worker abuse, it’s time for local governments and the state Legislature to step in,” said Adam Duininck, director of government affairs with the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters (NCSRCC).

Construction workers – union and non-union – have an important role to play, too, said Barb Pecks, a business representative with the NCSRCC and chair of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters’ Sisters in the Brotherhood committee. She said the union would soon begin working with its contractors to train all members in identifying and reporting labor abuses.

“I can’t say enough about your bravery and courage,” Pecks told Izaguirre on the Capitol steps.

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