Workers and labor rights activists with Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (CTUL) march through downtown Minneapolis to draw attention to wage theft in construction and call on developers to agree to independent monitoring on Aug. 17, 2022. Photo by Max Nesterak/Minnesota Reformer.
Take a seat in the Break Room, our weekly round-up of labor news in Minnesota and beyond. This week: Nonprofit developers agree to independent labor monitoring; universal pre-K boosts earnings by 20%; AFL-CIO issues 2024 legislative report; Minneapolis labor standards board vote imminent; and migrants will rebuild areas hit by hurricanes, not deplete relief funds.
First developers sign on to labor monitoring
Two nonprofit affordable housing developers — Alliance Housing and Hope Community — announced they would be the first to join a new independent monitoring program aimed at cracking down on labor abuses in the construction industry.
The program, called Building Dignity and Respect, is the first-of-its-kind in the construction industry that asks developers to voluntarily agree to have a nonprofit organization monitor and enforce labor standards on its projects.
The program was developed in partnership with the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL) and based on the “worker-driven social responsibility” model made famous by tomato pickers in Immokalee, Florida, who successfully pressured major fast food chains to only buy from growers that adopted a code of conduct.
Labor advocates say the program is necessary to make up for the dearth of state and federal labor regulators, which allows wage theft, misclassification and other abuses to persist largely unchecked and puts reputable contractors at a competitive disadvantage.
Douglas Guerra, a construction worker and member at CTUL, said at a Wednesday news conference that contractors have often shorted him on wages and misclassified him as an independent contractor.
“The BDR program is the solution that we, as construction workers, are looking for,” Guerra said in Spanish through an interpreter.
Across the state, an estimated 30,000 construction workers — nearly 1 in 4 workers — are misclassified as independent contractors or paid off the books, according to an estimate by the Midwest Economic Policy Institute. This keeps workers from receiving basic protections, including overtime and workers compensation insurance.
Over the past two years, labor advocates have been unsuccessful in winning participation from the Twin Cities’ largest for-profit housing developers like United Properties, Solhem, Yellow Tree and Roers, whom they say are the worst actors.
The agreement by Alliance Housing and Hope Community to join the program may add momentum to their efforts but it will likely have little practical impact.
Alliance Housing and Hope Community are small developers that typically receive government funding to build affordable housing, which means they’re already required to pay higher, prevailing wages and submit to more government oversight than other developers. Most of their projects are built by unionized contractors, where workers already have a clear avenue to addressing complaints and abuses.
The leaders for Alliance Housing and Hope Community also said they don’t have any developments in the works to be monitored but are committed to participating in the program in the future.
Pre-K boosts earnings 20%
Universal pre-kindergarten is one of the most cost-effective ways ever studied for boosting workers’ earnings, according to a blockbuster study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The study’s authors evaluated a pre-K program in New Haven, Connecticut, and found parents’ incomes rose more than 20%, and not just while their children were in pre-K but for at least six years afterward. The authors found that every dollar spent by the government led to parents taking home an additional $5.50, a better return on investment than the federal income tax cuts of the 2000s and the earned income tax credit.
Parents in the free pre-K program had on average 11 hours more of child care per week than parents in other programs like private child care, allowing them to work more hours.
The study is sure to bolster support for universal pre-K, as politicians face mounting pressure to address the high cost of Minnesota child care for young families.
How often your legislator voted with organized labor
Minnesota AFL-CIO released its 2024 Legislative Report detailing how the state’s 201 legislators voted this year on key labor-related bills and amendments. Most of the items AFL-CIO tracks won’t garner significant public attention, but would impact people’s lives nonetheless. Like an unsuccessful push by Republicans to reduce the number of weeks in the paid leave program; some Democrats trying to add labor peace requirements to the cannabis industry; or lawmakers appropriating money to pay support staff when school closes unexpectedly.
Unsurprisingly, the report shows that Democrats vote nearly in lockstep in support of policy supported by unions, while Republicans largely vote in opposition. The report does show which lawmakers are more likely to break with their party. In the House, Rep. Gene Pelowski voted the least frequently with organized labor among Democrats at 80%. Rep. Dean Urdahl voted the most with labor out of Republicans at 28%. Both retired this year.
In the Senate, Sens. Judy Seeberger and Robert Kupec voted the least with labor among Democrats at 91%, and Sen. Jim Abeler voted the most with labor among Republicans at 39%.
Minneapolis labor standards board vote still imminent
More than two years ago, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and a majority of City Council members announced plans to create a city Labor Standards Board to bring workers, business leaders and policymakers together to negotiate pay and worker protections across industries.
But city leaders have yet to release a specific proposal detailing who would serve on the board and what power they would have. Three council members — Aurin Chowdhury, Vice President Aisha Chughtai and Katie Cashman — told Axios recently they are putting the “finishing touches” on the ordinance, and that it would be voted on by the end of the year.
The lack of details has not forestalled a fierce, monthslong opposition campaign by the hospitality industry, including advertising in local media. In June, celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern hosted a panel discussion featuring restaurant owners of color who say the board would be the death knell to their businesses as they recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and a surge in crime.
Chowdhury described the board as an “advisory board to recommend policy,” although its grassroots advocates envisioned a body with the power to draft ordinances that would go to the council for an up-or-down vote. The city currently has a Workplace Advisory Committee to recommend labor policy, but it has had little buy-in from employers. Most seats reserved for business leaders are currently vacant.
Labor standards boards are new and still rare in the United States, but gaining traction in recent years as a way of improving low-wage work in industries that are difficult to unionize. Minnesota lawmakers in 2023 created a nation-leading Nursing Home Standards Board, which earlier this year voted to set the average minimum pay to $23.49 per hour in 2027.
Migrant workers will rebuild states hit by hurricanes
Former President Donald Trump along with other Republican leaders falsely blamed undocumented immigrants for depleting federal disaster relief funds, while migrant workers will ultimately play an integral part in rebuilding areas hit by hurricanes Helene and Milton.
It’s true the Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent around $1.7 billion since 2019 — under both Trump and Biden — to help states and localities struggling to feed and shelter an influx of new migrants, according to Roll Call. But those funds came from an entirely different program than the one that pays for disaster relief, which has received $243.8 billion from Congress over that same period. FEMA also said it has enough money for immediate recovery needs.
Immigration is a leading issue for voters — most of whom support mass deportations — so scapegoating migrants for any failures in disaster response allows Trump and Republicans to connect the hurricanes to an issue they feel confident about in the final weeks of the campaign.
But migrants, far from depleting FEMA funds, will actually do the grueling work of clearing debris and rebuilding areas hurt by the storms. In 2021, New Yorker writer Sarah Stillman detailed the growing trend of migrant workers following natural disasters, much the way seasonal farmworkers follow the planting and harvest seasons.
Labor abuses like wage theft, labor trafficking, physical violence and sexual assault are common but rarely enforced, while workers also suffer high rates of injury and illness from doing the dangerous work of cleaning mold, clearing toxic debris and re-roofing homes, often without adequate protective equipment. Stillman counted more than 40 worker deaths over 10 years, including from heatstroke, flesh-eating bacteria, falls and electrocution, though that is likely a low estimate given a lack of centralized reporting.