Posts tagged Minnesota
RESEARCH: Minimum Wage Laws and App-Based Workers
March 30, 2024 // Rideshare apps are not too different. They generate revenue by taking a share of the total cost paid by riders to drivers. What is less clear is how large that fee is and how that fee has changed over time and across platforms. Rather than seeking out a rigid wage floor, a fee floor could stand in for the sense of fairness across platforms of different types. If workers on platforms are truly entrepreneurs, picking and choosing when, where, and how to allocate their labor across multiple platforms, doing more to ensure that markets offer a fair share of revenue can get the job done far more efficiently than attempting to mandate any particular amount.
Union workers push for health care and insurance bills following coordinated strikes
March 15, 2024 // After thousands of Twin Cities union workers went on strike last week, workers are pushing for changes at the Capitol — including public health insurance open to all Minnesotans and insurance for striking workers. About 200 unionized health care, education and property service workers with the SEIU Minnesota State Council met with legislators Wednesday for an organized lobby day. “I would make the case that over the last few years here in Minnesota because of the leadership of SEIU and our allied partners, we have maybe made more progress than we have in a generation around workers and union rights,” said Gov. Tim Walz,
Palo Alto Medical Foundation Nurses Vote Union Out at Sunnyvale and Mountain View Facilities
March 14, 2024 // Victory continues string of successful union decertification attempts by healthcare workers across the country Palo Alto Medical Foundation Nurses Vote Union Out at Sunnyvale and Mountain View Facilities
600 Activision QA workers unionize, Microsoft voluntarily recognizes
March 13, 2024 // “Now under Microsoft with the neutrality agreement they signed with CWA, it’s a lot easier,” Fannon said. “We don’t have to be concerned about any form of union-busting tactics. Microsoft made sure all managers were trained on neutrality. We knew that if we encountered union busting, we could bring it up so it’s addressed.” The other positive is that neither Activision’s QA workers nor Microsoft management have to go through the union election process with the National Labor Relations Board, which can sometimes take a while. Instead, Activision QA workers have been voting since Feb. 22 with either a union authorization card (a document, physical or digital, indicating approval of the union) or a confidential vote through an online portal.
Activision QA workers form the largest US video game union yet
March 11, 2024 // Organized with the help of the CWA, Activision Quality Assurance United has 600 members across Texas, California, and Minnesota.
Minnesota unions plan to wage simultaneous strikes
March 8, 2024 // Nearly 10,000 workers from a coalition of separate unions, working for a diverse group of employers, are planning a series of coordinated strikes in Minnesota this week and next. Their aim: Exert leverage at the bargaining table.
Albany Starbucks Employees Seek Vote to Kick Out SBWU Union
March 1, 2024 // Dowey and her colleagues join Starbucks partners and other coffee company employees across the country in banding together to vote out SBWU union officials. In the past year, Starbucks employees in Manhattan, NY; two Buffalo, NY locations; Pittsburgh, PA; Bloomington, MN; Salt Lake City, UT; Greenville, SC; Oklahoma City, OK; San Antonio, TX; and Philadelphia, PA, have all sought free Foundation legal aid in filing or defending decertification petitions at the NLRB. Foundation attorneys have helped employees at independent Philadelphia coffee shops Good Karma Café and Ultimo Coffee successfully oust Workers United union officials, who are affiliated with SBWU. Many employees of Starbucks or other coffee establishments are requesting decertification votes from the NLRB roughly one year after union bosses attained power in their workplaces, which is the earliest opportunity afforded by federal law to do so.
WASHINGTON DEMOCRATS ADVANCE BILL TO PERMIT ELECTRONIC UNION ORGANIZING
February 26, 2024 // The real problem with SB 6060 is that it doesn’t go far enough. The state agency administering Washington’s collective bargaining laws for public employees — the Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) — processes three kinds of representation petitions: (1) petitions filed by unions seeking to represent groups of non-union employees; (2) petitions filed by unions seeking to supplant an incumbent union; and, (3) petitions filed by employees seeking to decertify the union currently representing them. To proceed, state law requires that each of these three petition types be supported by signatures from at least 30 percent of the affected employees. Under SB 6060, unions could use electronic signatures in their efforts to unionize new groups of employees while those seeking to change unions or remove an unwanted union would still have to gather John Hancocks the old-fashioned way. But if the goal is to “empower” public employees to choose whatever union representation they wish, shouldn’t electronic signatures be permitted across the board?
Worker misclassification could cost big bucks for small businesses
February 22, 2024 // Audited companies found to have misclassified employees face significant penalties. Just federally that means repaying all the employer portions of taxes that had been paid by employees and a portion of the employee contribution. There are also interest and penalty costs. “That’s just the tax piece,” Panning said. “If there’s a class action lawsuit by these independent contractors saying we’re employees, we deserve the benefits, then it’s even more because you get into the court system.”
Teamsters will rally at Iowa Capitol against alleged ‘union-busting,’ raise strike funds
February 20, 2024 // The union also is leaving the door open for the possibility of “rolling strikes,” with Teamsters Local 238 Secretary-Treasurer Jesse Case saying it is raising money to offset any fines that might occur from striking. Striking is prohibited for public employees in Iowa, among whose unions the Teamsters are prominent. “You can’t legislate a movement out of existence," Case said in a prepared statement. "Union busting legislators need to know that strikes are legal in the private sector, and we are raising money to offset their punitive fines while we contemplate rolling strikes in the public sector. The only way to avoid disrupting business in Iowa is to not disrupt workers’ rights.”