Lawmakers returned to St. Paul on June 14, 2021 for a special legislative session. Refinery workers were at the Capitol advocating in favor of legislation intended to make their workplace safer. Photo by Ricardo Lopez/Minnesota Reformer
Take a seat in the Break Room, our weekly round-up of labor news in Minnesota and beyond. This week: Minnesota gets low marks from anti-union think tank; MULDA faces lawsuit from its own board members; Kamala Harris opposes Nippon-U.S. Steel deal; nurse staffing appears to be on the mend; and jobs numbers.
Minnesota gets ‘D’ for being too friendly to unions
Minnesota’s favorable laws for public-sector unions continue to earn the state poor marks from the Commonwealth Foundation, a libertarian think tank. Minnesota received a “D” rating for the fourth time since the Commonwealth Foundation began issuing biannual reports on public sector labor laws in 2017.
Minnesota’s policies behind that grade include permitting virtually all public employees to unionize; requiring employers to negotiate with unions; allowing employers to automatically deduct union dues from workers’ paychecks if they want; and allowing some public sector workers like teachers to strike.
Favorable laws — along with a robust tradition of unionism — has sustained Minnesota’s relatively high rates of union representation, particularly in the public sector. Seventy-one percent of state employees in Minnesota are represented by a union, according to the Commonwealth Foundation.
By contrast, in 17 states, no state employees have collective bargaining. The researchers note a close connection between laws and unionization rates, pointing out that the five states with the lowest union density rates have a “C” grade or higher.
Unionization rates among government workers vary widely from state to state because states have broad authority over public sector labor laws, whereas rules for unionizing in the private sector are largely governed by the National Labor Relations Act and consistent across the country. A notable exception are “right-to-work” laws, active in 27 states, which allow workers to opt-out of paying fees to unions that negotiate pay raises and benefits on their behalf.
Minnesota is not a right to work state, so private sector unions may require workers covered by union contracts to pay fees to fund the cost of collective bargaining. However, a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 essentially made every state a “right-to-work” state for public sector workers like teachers, firefighters and park keepers. The conservative majority ruled 5-4 that forcing workers to pay union fees violated their First Amendment rights.
The Commonwealth Foundation estimates the four largest unions representing public-sector workers — AFT, AFSCME, NEA and SEIU — have lost more than 320,421 members since that decision. These losses are significant, though by no means the death knell many predicted.
In Minnesota, for example, 71% of government workers who are covered by a union contract voluntarily pay member dues.
While Minnesota’s grade remained constant, other states saw their grades “improve” and “decline” significantly over the past two years, though obviously these words are very much in the eye of the beholder.
Florida’s grade from the libertarian group went from a C to an A after it enacted a series of policies hostile to public sector unions. Notably, the state now requires public-sector workers — with the notable exceptions of GOP-friendlier firefighters and police officers — to hold an election to continue being unionized if the share of dues-paying members dips below 60% of workers in a union. Florida also requires workers to pay dues directly to their unions and doesn’t allow them to be automatically deducted from their paychecks.
Researchers at the Commonwealth Foundation called this the “gold standard,” which has resulted in tens of thousands of workers losing union representation, according to reporting by WLRN.
Michigan saw its grade decline from a B to a D in the past two years after a Democratic trifecta eliminated its right-to-work law as well as its prohibition on governments deducting dues from workers paychecks. Michigan also now requires public sector employers to provide unions with workers’ contact information, and extended collective bargaining rights to graduate students and public school administrators.
MULDA leader accused of fraud
The organization that led the two-year-long campaign to win minimum wages and labor protections for Uber and Lyft drivers now faces a lawsuit brought by drivers, alleging fraud and deceptive trade practices.
Six drivers filed the lawsuit last week alleging Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association President Eid Ali set up other organizations with similar names to funnel money to himself. They also accuse Ali of fraud for soliciting membership payments through MULDA’s website long after Ali changed the bylaws to say the group doesn’t have members.
The drivers say they filed the lawsuit after trying for months to get Ali to share documents with them, including the organization’s financial records, bylaws and meeting minutes.
While the group achieved its goal of winning statewide minimum pay rates and other protections for drivers— taking effect in December — the future of the organization still matters. At stake now are valuable contracts from Uber and Lyft to provide driver services, which is a requirement of the state law.
Ali and his attorney Stephen Cooper did not respond to Reformer calls, but Cooper told Sahan Journal that the lawsuit was just an attempt to “undermine” the organization’s credibility by “some disgruntled guys.”
Harris says U.S. Steel should remain in American hands
At a campaign event in Pittsburgh on Labor Day, Vice President Kamala Harris told a union hall crowd she opposes U.S. Steel’s pending sale to Japanese Nippon Steel and that the American titan should remain in American hands.
The potential deal, reached in December, is being closely watched by communities connected to iron mining and steel processing across the Rust Belt and Minnesota’s Iron Range. The United Steelworkers, which represents about 3,500 workers in Minnesota, opposes the deal because Nippon hasn’t given them sufficient assurances to keep union mills open and uphold its labor contract agreements. The union instead favors a purchase by Cleveland-Cliffs, whose purchase offer was previously rejected by U.S. Steel.
Opposition to the deal has united the two major parties as they jockey for critical working class support in Midwestern swing states. Both President Biden and former President Donald Trump have said the deal shouldn’t go through.
Reuters reported that the Biden administration told Nippon Steel in a letter on Saturday that its purchase of U.S. Steel would pose a national security risk. A purchase by Cleveland-Cliffs could raise its own market concerns because it would give the company near complete control of the domestic iron-ore supply, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Hospitals say nurse staffing is on the mend
Nursing job vacancies declined in 2023 for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic at most Minnesota hospitals and clinics, according to a monthslong survey by the Minnesota Hospital Association.
The industry group celebrated the apparent turnaround from crisis-level staffing shortages that led hospitals to bring in costly travel nurses (which was partially funded by $40 million in federal COVID-19 aid.)
“Hospitals provide good, well-paying careers, and data shows that Minnesotans are responding by filling the ranks of care providers and support staff,” said MHA CEO Rahul Koranne in a statement.
The survey also found the number of working nurses grew for the fifth straight year, although it found only 2 in 5 registered nurses are choosing to work full time (more than 32 hours a week).
The Minnesota Nurses Association, the union representing roughly 22,000 nurses, has argued throughout the pandemic that poor management and chronic understaffing — not COVID-19 burnout — has driven nurses out of the profession.
The union pushed for a bill called Keeping Nurses At The Bedside, which would have given nurses a greater say over hospital staffing levels. The bill was fiercely opposed by hospital leaders, including at Mayo Clinic, and ultimately gutted.
U.S. adds 142,000 jobs in August
The monthly jobs report was bleak in July, with job growth falling far short of expectations and unemployment rising fast enough to trigger the so-called Sahm Rule signaling a recession. (Although former Fed economist Claudia Sahm, for whom the rule is named, said the country isn’t necessarily in a recession.)
The Labor Department then announced it had greatly overestimated the number of jobs added in recent months, further souring the mood. But even with that downward revision of more than 800,000 jobs (part of a standard annual readjustment), job growth still had proved relatively strong compared with pre-pandemic years. Minnesota has added jobs in eight of the past 12 months.
The latest jobs numbers for August are less bleak, although the 142,000 new jobs still fell short of the 161,000 predicted. The unemployment rate moved in the right direction, ticking down to 4.2%. Still, pressure remains on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates at its meeting later this month to keep the “soft landing” soft and avoid tipping the economy into a recession.