Hennepin County Government Center. 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: Hennepin County prosecutors on the strike path; dairy farm to pay $250,000 in back wages; Minnesota Supreme Court takes up challenge to Minneapolis teacher layoff policy; former Minnesota nurses union president Mary Turner goes national; and dockworkers suspend strike.
Hennepin County attorneys say they’re strike-ready
Negotiations have barely begun, but the union representing more than 350 Hennepin County attorneys and legal staff say they’re prepared to strike for raises to match what other Twin Cities metro governments pay.
Adam Tomczik, president of AFSCME Local 2938 and an assistant county attorney in the youth prosecution division, didn’t go for understatement: “This is a once in a generation, either opportunity or disaster, and we are in the fight for our lives right now … If we need to go on strike, we’ll go on strike.”
The two sides have only traded their initial proposals for wage increases and their current contract doesn’t expire until the end of the year, so public talk about a work-stoppage might seem premature. But Tomczik said the county’s opening bid outraged him and his colleagues so much, they’re making clear they’re ready to go to trial from the start (his metaphor).
The courts have faced a wave of labor unrest, from public defenders to non-union court interpreters, in recent years over years of stagnant pay.
The earliest a strike could happen is next year, and would not include prosecutors, who like police officers and firefighters, are considered essential government workers and barred from striking under state law. Operations in the county attorney’s office and the county government more broadly could still be greatly impacted by a strike by paralegals, investigators and attorneys who provide services in non-criminal matters like child protection cases and evictions.
The county offered market adjustments ranging from .16% to 2.9%, depending on the job type, plus cost of living adjustments totalling a little over 3% over the next three years. Workers who haven’t yet reached the top of the pay scale would also get 3% raises each year of the three year contract.
Tomczik says the offer is insulting after the Hennepin County Board voted to give themselves a 49% pay hike this summer to raise their salaries above $180,000. Facing public outcry, the board later opted for a more modest 5% pay hike in each of the next two years. That’s less than what some legal staff would get under the county proposal, but still more than what veteran attorneys and many other legal staff would get.
The board also awarded sizable raises to other leaders to bring their salaries in line with their peers: 20% for the county administrator, 20% for the county sheriff and 15% for the county attorney.
Salaries for Hennepin County’s attorneys and legal staff now trail behind many of their peers at smaller local governments, according to data compiled by the union, and they want the same market adjustment.
“It’s our turn, to put it bluntly,” Tomczik said.
The union has proposed significant salary increases, but more importantly, a quicker path to reaching the top of the pay scale. It currently takes attorneys for Hennepin County 24 years to reach top seniority compared to 10 years for state public defenders.
The current pay range for a Hennepin County paralegal is $48,488- $76,483, which the union wants raised to $70,000-$115,000, a 50% increase for the most senior workers. Tomczik noted that would bring them in line with public defense paralegals, who make $68,821 to $112,053, after winning massive pay increases last year.
Under the union proposal, salaries for the most senior prosecutors in the unit would rise 21% from $152,387 to $185,000. The top salary for public defenders, who threatened to strike after years of stagnant wages, is now $158,500.
Evergreen Acres to pay $250,000 in back wages
At one farm, workers lived in a converted barn that was infested with cockroaches. The “kitchen sink” was a utility sink next to a water heater. Photos from civil complaint.
A large dairy operation in central Minnesota will pay $250,000 in back wages and make repairs to its worker housing to settle a lawsuit brought by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who alleged the dairy’s owners underpaid hundreds of workers while charging them for squalid, cockroach-infested housing.
The settlement represents a rare victory in the fight against wage theft, one of Ellison’s signature priorities. Yet the agreement also reflects the paltry price employers can expect to pay for cheating workers, if they’re penalized at all. The $250,000 settlement amount is less than one-tenth of the $3 million Ellison’s office said workers were owed in the lawsuit filed in January.
Brian Evans, a spokesman for the attorney general, said they believed the settlement was the best deal they could get for workers “given the financial struggles that many in the dairy industry are facing.” Evans said the office is still working to identify which workers are eligible for compensation so could not say how many workers will receive back pay.
Evergreen Acres owners Keith Schaefer and his daughter Megan Hill did not have to admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, and it’s unclear if they will face any criminal charges, even though stealing wages in excess of $1,000 is a felony under a 2019 Minnesota law.
A spokesperson for the Stearns County Attorney’s Office said no criminal case involving Schaefer or Hill had been referred to them.
The lawsuit was one of the largest wage theft cases brought by the Attorney General’s Office, and alleged horrific abuses of the dairy’s immigrant workforce that went far beyond stolen wages, including physical abuse, threats and intimidation.
An attorney for Schaefer and Hill did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Supreme Court hears challenge to Minneapolis schools’ layoff policy
The Minnesota Supreme Court appeared skeptical that a Minneapolis taxpayer has standing to challenge a provision in the Minneapolis teachers union contract that gives preference to teachers of color during layoffs, Sahan Journal’s Becky Dernbach reported.
The contract provision exempts teachers from “underrepresented populations” from seniority-based layoffs with the goal of protecting the diversity of Minneapolis’ teacher corps, since teachers of color tend to be younger and more vulnerable during layoffs. But the rule, which was adopted in 2022 after a 14-day strike, has not come into play because there haven’t been layoffs. (There haven’t been teacher layoffs in Minneapolis in 17 years).
Even so, Minneapolis resident Deborah Clapp filed a lawsuit challenging the rule with the assistance of the conservative legal foundation Judicial Watch. She argues that as a taxpayer, she has an interest in ensuring her tax dollars aren’t used to support what she believes is an illegal policy of racial preference.
A district court judge dismissed her case for lack of standing, since she hasn’t been personally affected by the policy, but the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the ruling.
What the state Supreme Court decides could have far-reaching consequences for public-sector unions. Sahan Journal reported that in one amicus brief, the Teamsters Local 320 and the St. Paul Police Federation wrote that allowing Clapp to sue over the policy could “lead to a flood of taxpayer challenges to collective bargaining agreements.”
The Supreme Court isn’t ruling on the legality of the contract provision, just whether Clapp may sue over it, although Justice Natalie Hudson seemed open to Clapp’s underlying challenge to the rule.
“I think it’s a valid concern, but it does seem to me that that’s a policy issue,” said Hudson, the state’s first Black chief justice. “That doesn’t get you there for taxpayer standing.”
Mary Turner becomes national nurses union president
Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner leads a rally of union nurses outside U.S. Bank’s corporate offices in downtown Minneapolis on Nov. 2, 2022. Photo by Max Nesterak/Minnesota Reformer.
Former Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner, who led 15,000 nurses to the picket line in a historic 2022 strike, was seated as one of four national presidents of the national nurses union, National Nurses United, in September.
“For a lot of our issues, having a national answer is the way to go, everything from workplace violence to staffing ratios,” Turner said in an interview. “I’m really excited to start working on stuff at a national level.”
Turner said she will continue serving on the Board of Regents governing the University of Minnesota and working overnight shifts in the intensive care unit at North Memorial Medical Center like she did through her eight years as president of the Minnesota nurses union.
National Nurses United represents some 225,000 registered nurses and could be an influential voice on health policy in a Harris-Walz administration. Turner has a close political relationship with Gov. Tim Walz, who walked the picket line during the 2022 strike by 15,000 nurses.
But the nurses union also saw the limits of their influence when their signature policy proposal on hospital staffing levels was gutted in 2023 after the Mayo Clinic threatened to move billions in future investments out of state if it became law. Harris has also distanced herself from Medicare for All, a key policy goal of the nurses union, in this election cycle after championing it in 2020.
Dockworkers suspend strike
Dockworkers suspended their strike and returned to loading and unloading cargo that had piled up over the past three days at ports across the East and Gulf coasts on Friday after their union reached a tentative agreement with ports and shipping companies.
A protracted strike by some 45,000 workers threatened to lead to product shortages and drive up prices just weeks out from the presidential election, which would have likely worked in President Donald Trump’s favor.
The tentative deal between the International Longshoremen’s Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance includes 62% pay raises over six years but does not resolve their differences over the use of automation, Reuters reported. The employers had previously offered 50% while the union was pushing for 77%.
The deal extends their contract until Jan. 15, notably after the election, as they continue to negotiate outstanding issues like the future of automation, which the union fears would lead to job losses. How the union and the employers resolve their differences over the use of automation could have long-lasting implications for the shipping industry and how organized labor confronts technological innovation.
President Joe Biden, who urged the employers to boost their offer and said he wouldn’t use his authority to stop the strike, praised the deal.
“Collective bargaining works,” he said.