Posts tagged Twin Cities
Minneapolis Is About To Kill Ride-Sharing
April 18, 2024 // Just last month, Seattle's disastrous attempt to enact a minimum wage for app-based food delivery drivers was in the news. The result was $26 coffees, city residents deleting their delivery apps, and drivers themselves seeing their earnings drop by half. Now, the Minneapolis City Council has decided to join the fray in the multifront progressive war against the gig economy—and this time, the outcome could be even worse.
Unionized Science Museum workers await contract as cultural nonprofits face changing labor market
April 1, 2024 // Inspired in part by pandemic-era lay-offs, as well as record inflation, Twin Cities labor movements have seen an uptick in mobilization. Janitors, school teachers, university graduate students, plow truck operators, firefighters, nurses, rideshare drivers and coffeeshop baristas have all recently taken their arguments for better pay and working conditions to the public picket line, or threatened to. Museums have had a lower-profile in those labor efforts, but workers at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul, Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis and Science Museum all have unionized in the past four years with the goal of collective bargaining for employee-friendly contracts. Most of the Science Museum’s workers were laid off and sent home when the pandemic forced closures in March 2020, only to be gradually called back months later into a climate marked by social distancing and general uncertainty. Hazard pay for frontline staff in visitor services disappeared after a few months. Workers rallied and got it back.
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,
US unions target the housing affordability crisis as their ‘biggest issue’
February 20, 2024 // Organized labor across the country is now setting its sights on housing costs as rents and mortgages continue to soar
Lunds & Byerlys workers may go on strike if deal can’t be reached
June 26, 2023 //
Cub union workers to strike this weekend
April 6, 2023 // Representatives say approximately 3,000 employees will strike from 5:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. both Friday and Saturday at 33 Twin Cities locations
Minnesota: Unionized Cub employees voting on potential strike
April 4, 2023 // Local 663 members represent more than 3,000 grocery store workers at Cub stores that Providence, R.I.-based United Natural Foods, Inc., owns. The union and Cub have been working without a union contract since March 4, and the next bargaining session between both sides is set for April 11, the union said. Local 663 includes workers in grocery stores, food cooperatives, meatpacking, poultry processing, food-processing plants and other sectors. United Natural Foods, a wholesale specialist that bought Cub's parent, Supervalu, in 2018, wanted to sell Supervalu's retail division but later decided to retain Cub. The leading Twin Cities grocer received a boost during the pandemic when buying groceries and cooking at home became even more of a necessity.
What Happens When Progressive Companies Meet Unionizing Workers?
January 5, 2023 // But today’s economy is unrecognizable from that of the 1950s, when U.S. labor last flexed considerable muscle before a decades-long downfall spurred by political kneecapping, internal mismanagement, and widescale deindustrialization. Today, as unionization rates hover near all-time lows, glimmers of hope for labor are appearing in traditionally non-unionized sectors—food/beverage, digital media, retail, museums, nonprofits, and tech. Bucking historical norms, those industries are public-facing, with customers who are often barraged by messaging about what companies believe. But when that rhetorical rubber meets the labor-agitated road, corporations often default to the same anti-union tactics that they’ve employed for more than a century.
Teamsters, University of Minnesota reach tentative deal, avoiding strikes in Twin Cities and Duluth
October 24, 2022 // Union members are set to vote on the new agreement in the next few weeks. It includes a $20 minimum wage for union members and at least 13% pay hikes over the next three years.
Special Notice for Nurses in the Twin Cities and Twin Ports
September 9, 2022 // The Minnesota Nurses Association has scheduled a three-day strike to begin on September 12 at 16 hospitals located in the Twin Cities, Duluth, Moose Lake, and Superior, Wisconsin. Reportedly, the strike will affect up to 15,000 nurses. The list of reportedly affected hospitals is below. While the threatened strike has not yet occurred, the situation raises serious concerns for workers who believe there is much to lose from a union-ordered strike. If a strike occurs, employees have the right under federal labor law to rebuff union officials’ strike demands, but it is important for you to get informed before you do so.