Striking Minneapolis parks workers, unionized with LIUNA Local 363, march to the park headquarters on July 24, 2024. 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: Workers vote on the economy; Minnesotans may take off work to vote early; Trump’s McDonald’s visit spotlights minimum wage debate; Missouri elementary school named for custodian; and Boeing workers reject second tentative agreement.
Workers vote on the economy
Union leaders in Minnesota are leaning into the pro-worker policies passed by Democrats in control of state government over the past two years as they knock doors and call their members to get workers to the polls.
“The trifecta gave us a lot of things to be able to talk about,” said Hannah Alstead, political director of the Teamsters Joint Council 32, which represents more than 85,000 workers across Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and the Dakotas.
She rattled off a list of new state laws including unemployment insurance for hourly school workers; the Warehouse Worker Safety Act, which is aimed at protecting employees at Amazon and similar warehouses; the Refinery Safety Act; the ban on so-called captive audience meetings, when management forces workers to listen to anti-union pitches; earned sick and safe time; and paid family medical leave.
The Teamsters are focusing their efforts on competitive state House races — backing Democrats in Twin Cities suburbs like Zack Stephenson, Brian Rains, Jen Fox and Lucia Wrobleski.
But they’re also making sure their members know they endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket. The International Teamsters declined to endorse a candidate for president, and released polling showing a majority support for Trump among their members. But that announcement was followed by numerous Teamster locals and joint councils throwing their weight behind Harris.
Alstead said they’re reminding their members about Gov. Tim Walz’s record supporting unions and President Joe Biden signing the bill that prevented retirement benefit cuts for some 350,000 Teamsters.
SEIU Minnesota State Council Executive Director Brian Elliott said they’re on track to have 300 staff and members knocking doors or working the phones in Minnesota and Wisconsin. They’re talking about protecting the gains they’ve made with the Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board, which will raise wages for all nursing home workers, as well as paid sick leave.
“I get more questions about earned sick and safe time from our organizers than anything else,” Elliott said.
Polling suggests these economic messages resonate the most with voters — maybe even popular enough for a former union leader and independent populist to win a U.S. Senate seat in ruby red Nebraska.
The Center for Working-Class Politics and Jacobin released results of a recent poll of Pennsylvania voters and found the most popular hypothetical message from Vice President Kamala Harris talked about lowering prices, standing up to corporate interests and taxing billionaires.
The populist economic message outperformed messages on immigration and abortion, while the least popular message focused on Trump being a convicted felon and threat to democracy. That line of attack is featuring prominently in Harris’ campaign — and for obvious reasons with two four-star generals who served in Trump’s administration (John Kelly and Mark Milley) calling the former president a “fascist.”
Grain of salt: Ideological group’s poll concludes the ideological group’s message is best, but this poll’s findings — based on a survey of 1,000 eligible Pennsylvania voters — are in line with numerous other voter surveys showing the economy is the top concern for voters, although a Gallup poll did find democracy was the top issue for Democrats.
Dustin Guastella, a research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623, wrote in the Guardian that he worried the Harris campaign is squandering the final days of the election focused on Trump instead of a message that resonates more strongly with voters.
“Every ad or speech spent hectoring about the Trumpian threat is one less opportunity for Harris to focus on her popular economic policies,” Guastella wrote.
Minnesota workers can take off work to vote early
Minnesota workers are entitled to leave work to vote on Election Day this Nov. 5 or, because of a 2023 law change, to vote early. Workers may only take as much time as they need to vote, while employers are not allowed to deduct workers’ pay, personal leave or vacation for this time.
Employers may not refuse or interfere with a worker’s right, including when they choose to vote, according to the Secretary of State.
Minnesota has among the most pro-voter laws in the country — allowing for early voting, same-day registration, no-excuse absentee voting — helping drive the state’s voter turnout to the highest in the nation with nearly 80% of eligible voters casting ballots in 2020.
Trump’s McDonald’s visit spotlights low minimum wage
Former President Donald Trump spent about 15 minutes donning an apron and serving fries at a suburban Philadelphia McDonald’s over the weekend in an effort to burnish his image with working-class voters (and sell more merch).
Then a reporter asked Trump if he supported raising the minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 per hour federally and in Pennsylvania for 15 years. He demurred: “Well I think this. These people work hard. They’re great. And I just saw something… a process that’s beautiful.”
To critics, it was classic Trump: working class optics, plutocrat policies.
That led Vice President Kamala Harris to come out in support of raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.
On the campaign trail, Harris has often emphasized her middle class roots by talking about her own experience in college working at McDonald’s, where 1 in 8 Americans will work at some point according to the fast food giant.
Most Americans said they supported raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour in a Pew Research poll in 2021 — before inflation became a central issue in national politics — and minimum wage ballot measures have consistently passed, including in red states.
Elementary school named after custodian
CBS News reported a heart-warming story about an elementary school in Swedeborg, Missouri being named after the school’s dedicated custodian, Claudene Wilson.
Over the past 30 years, Wilson has mopped the floors of the elementary school but also driven the school bus, supervised lunch, mowed the grass and changed light bulbs. Doing all that often led to her working 12-hour days, which she said was worth it for the kids.
“Kids, the kids is at your heart,” she said.
The students says she’s a beloved presence and a role model.
“That’s what everybody should want to be, you know,” student Alex Lein said. “That’s what I would want to be.”
Boeing workers reject contract offer, extending strike
Unionized Boeing workers, on strike for nearly six weeks already, rejected a second tentative agreement on Wednesday that would raise wages more than 35% over four years but did not include restoring their defined-benefit pension plan that was frozen a decade ago.
“How do they expect to have anybody stay at the company if they don’t have some kind of a pension plan or better investments?” Boeing worker Darryl Shore told the New York Times.
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents some 33,000 Boeing employees on strike, said 64% of those who voted cast ballots rejecting the offer and sending the two sides back to the bargaining table.
Bloomberg reported the strike has forced Boeing to suspend work on its most popular jet, the 737, as well as the larger 767 and 777, further straining the airline still recovering from the fiasco of a door blowing off mid-air earlier this year. Hours before the union vote, the company reported $6 billion in losses and earlier this month said it would have to cut its workforce by about 10%.
The stalemate has drawn in the Biden administration. Labor Secretary Julie Su traveled to Seattle last week to meet with leaders from the union and Boeing.