Work & Money
Among the homeless, you’ll find people more like you than you realize
We carelessly attach words to homeless people: panhandler, drunk, lazy bum. At Elim Church and Strong Tower Parish shelters, which have 80 beds in Minneapolis, I tried to come up with more accurate descriptions. Take a moment, if you would, and see if you can find yourself in these people. It’s taken a pandemic, but […]
Exclusive: AFSCME Council 5 experiencing financial woes, membership decline, documents reveal
The abrupt departure of two top leaders this past summer were just the beginning of troubles for one of the state’s largest and most powerful public sector unions, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 5. Documents obtained by the Minnesota Reformer show that Julie Blehyl, the recently named executive director of the […]
Book excerpt details rise of labor leader who is now Walz education commissioner
Editor’s note: This book excerpt from “Beaten Down, Worked Up” by longtime New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse describes the difficult union negotiations in 2013-2014 between St. Paul Public Schools and teachers, who successfully pushed for smaller class sizes and more support staff in addition to higher wages. Last Friday, St. Paul teachers voted […]
Rep. Tom Emmer on the rise in Washington and winning friends on Wall Street
WASHINGTON — Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer peered over the shoulders of his fellow GOP lawmakers to get a glimpse of President Donald Trump. It was May 2018, and the president was signing legislation that scaled back some of the banking regulations enacted after the 2008 financial crisis. Emmer and other lawmakers who helped push the […]
8,000 Twin Cities janitors and security guards schedule strike vote
Some 8,000 janitors, security guards, window washers and other workers at office buildings in downtown St. Paul, Minneapolis and at the MSP airport will vote Saturday on authorizing a strike. If approved, Service Employees International Union Local 26 could call a strike at any time as they negotiate seven contracts with 17 employers. The sticking […]
Danger zone: Work is safer than it used to be, but some jobs are still hazardous
Work-related illness and injuries in Minnesota reached all-time lows in 2018, but experts are concerned about persistently high injury rates in risky industries like construction and agriculture. Workplace injury rates have dropped nationwide in the past several decades because of regulatory and cultural changes. Farmers and construction workers are still at higher risk of being […]
271,000 Minnesota households pay more than 30% of their income in rent
Just one in four households that are eligible for rental assistance actually get it. When the state’s three largest housing agencies opened up their waiting lists for Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers last summer, they received more than 45,000 applications for just 7,500 spots. That was for a spot on the waiting list, not for […]
Rep. Betty McCollum’s effort to stop Twin Metals mine near Boundary Waters divides fellow Democrats
WASHINGTON — As the Trump administration pushes to allow mining near Minnesota’s iconic Boundary Waters, Rep. Betty McCollum is waging an attempt to thwart the plans. But the Minnesota Democrat lacks broad support from the rest of the state’s congressional delegation. Only two other Minnesota lawmakers have publicly backed the legislation she introduced earlier this […]
3,000 HealthPartners workers prepared to strike over their own health care
More than 1,800 nurses and other medical care workers at HealthPartners could vote to strike next week if they don’t reach a new contract agreement by Friday at midnight. The workers say they are standing firm against a company effort to cut employee health benefits. HealthPartners, which has 26,000 employees and more than $7 billion […]
What happens in Minnesota if Obamacare gets struck down by the courts?
At least 300,000 Minnesotans may lose health coverage if the Affordable Care Act is overturned, which is the entirely possible outcome of a lawsuit winding its way through the courts. The 2018 election hinged on the largely successful Democratic message that they would keep in place protections afforded by the Affordable Care Act, sometimes known […]
Here’s how the pay of CEOs of Minnesota’s biggest companies compares to their average workers
CEO pay at Minnesota’s Fortune 500 companies was 278 times more on average than the pay of median workers at their companies in 2018, an analysis of data from company proxy statements shows. The Dodd Frank Act’s requirement that public companies report ratios of CEO-to-median worker pay, effective in 2018, was met with protest by […]
Measuring progress among black Americans since Dr. King’s death
On Apr. 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while assisting striking sanitation workers. Back then, over a half century ago, the wholesale racial integration required by the 1964 Civil Rights Act was just beginning to chip away at discrimination in education, jobs and public facilities. Black voters had only […]