Twin Cities Labor Report 4/7
Grocery workers picket and protest, U workers rally, Walker, AFGE, and more grocery pickets to come
Hello everyone and welcome to another issue of the Twin Cities Labor Report! Thank you again for reading and sharing, and welcome to any new subscribers. It’s been a joy to do this over the last five months, and I’m excited for more. If you have found this at all helpful, I would ask that you do me and my coworkers a favor and come to one of our pickets this week at grocery stores around the Metro, you’ll see the full list below. This is a scary time with a tariff-induced recession looming (here’s a good summary of the issues), but as always people are fighting back. I was really encouraged by the size of the Hands Off rallies this weekend (25,000+ in St Paul!), and I heard from friends that there were a decent amount of union people there, though it skewed whiter and older like a lot of these liberal protests do… Anyway, I think that there is space for the labor movement to provide an alternative to the current political leadership of the country, though I doubt that our own leaders have the imagination or desire to do so. What do you all think?
Upcoming Labor Events
AFGE Local 3419- US Government- On Tuesday, April 9, from 4-5:30, AFGE Local 3419 is hosting an informational picket at the Wellstone Federal Building in downtown Minneapolis to protest Trump’s horrible executive order stripping most federal workers of their collective bargaining rights. Let’s make this a big picket, and the start of something even bigger. We can’t afford a PATCO 2.0.
AFSCME Local 4493- Walker Arts Center- Walker workers are holding a rally on Thursday, April 10, at 5pm to protest hour cuts and layoffs. It’ll be at Hennepin & Vineland, right next to the museum. Negotiations over a second contract start this summer, and Walker management has been on a rampage. The union claims that over 50% of the unit has left in the last year, and their president and secretary just got laid off. The president of the local told me that the layoff was due to her job being “eliminated” and then reassigned to a worker outside of the bargaining unit. Unbelievable! After over a year of protesting, management is still fighting the gallery attendants on being able to sit down while on shift, as well. Local 4493 did just win a disciplinary arbitration, which in my experience makes HR extremely angry, so maybe this is some payback too.
UFCW Local 663- Twin Cities grocery stores- My union is back in bargaining this week with seven different grocery employers covering Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs, representing around 9,000 workers total. The employers are trying to make us go to a percentage split on health care and make families pay a lot more, their lawyer called this a “zero-sum game” at the last session. They’re also refusing to budge on raising the minimum hours that part-time workers are guaranteed- right now many of them are stuck working only 15 hours a week. We’re having three pickets this week: at L&B Maple Grove on Tuesday, Kowalski’s Uptown on Thursday, and at the Festival Foods in Brooklyn Park on Sunday. Please come out to support, it would mean a ton to me! You could even make Thursday a double picket and go straight from Kowalski’s to the Walker- that’s my plan.
Recent Labor Events
AFSCME Local 3800 + UE Local 1105- University of MN- AFSCME Local 3800 and GLU-UE Local 1105 held a joint rally at the U of MN last Monday to protest the ICE arrest of a graduate student, demand President Cunningham come up with a plan of defense against Trump’s attacks on high education, and stop threatened layoffs and budget cuts. I'd say the crowd was probably upwards of 500, with lots of U workers and students. There were lots of great, militant speeches by workers across the two unions as well as a couple of undergrads. While the student, Dogukan Gunaydin, was targeted due to a previous DUI and not for any activity related to Palestine, it was brought up repeatedly that attacks are meant to repress the movement on campuses. This was a super energetic and empowering rally, and the sort of response that many unions are going to need to do if we want to turn this ship around. The two unions have made a joint list of demands, and 3800 is starting bargaining soon. Local 1105 is currently bargaining over the addition of fellows to the unit, it sounds like the first session didn’t go well.
Education MN- School Boards- Bargaining is starting for teachers across Minnesota, and a group of Metro school boards are warning of looming steep cuts to fill budget holes. The fierce fight that Special Education Assistants have waged against potential layoffs at MPS has forced the Star Tribune to take note. When was the last time that the Strib quoted a paraprofessional when writing about school budgets?
Starbucks Workers United- Starbucks- Workers at the 47th and Cedar Starbucks in Minneapolis held a march on the boss on Thursday to protest chronic understaffing and being denied bathroom breaks(???), among other things.
IBEW Locals 160 + 949- Xcel Energy - Five workers at the Prairie Island Nuclear Plant and Xcel’s downtown Minneapolis building voted to unionize with the IBEW, which already represents most workers at Xcel.
UNITE HERE Local 17- Marriott, Hilton- Local 17 is pushing for their hotel contracts across the city to reach the same standard. At the Courtyard Marriott across from the U of MN, workers staged their first-ever picket this past week! Workers at the St Paul DoubleTree and the Marquette in Minneapolis have also done actions in recent weeks.
UFCW Local 663- Jerry’s Foods- My union held a huge picket in Edina (a UNION TOWN) at the Jerry’s Foods as part of our contract fight. I believe that this was the first picket our union has ever held against Jerry’s! Jerry’s corporate offices are there, and management freaked out and threatened to tow any car parked in their lot. They ended up towing a car belonging to an employee who was on shift and not picketing, whoops! It was a super fun picket and, again, you’re missing out if you don’t go to one of these this week.
Photo by UFCW 663
UFCW Local 1189- Twin Cities Co-op Partners- In another great moment of grocery worker unionism, workers at Wedge Lyndale held a huge job action last Thursday! Management at both Wedge locations announced a change in the dress code policy that forbade workers from wearing anything related to Palestine at work, as it was judged to be a “political statement.” Interestingly enough, this change came right as bargaining for a new contract kicked off. When workers protested the change, management began sending people home from work for wearing things like a Palestinian flag pin. In response, around 60 workers packed a “listening session” that the CEO hosted, and demanded that he rescind the policy. This was the biggest job action at that store in almost five years!
Photo provided by worker