Which Minnesota companies have the largest pay inequality — and other labor news

Employees restock groceries at a Target store in Minnesota. 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: pay inequality at Minnesota’s public companies; labor leaders celebrate Walz pick; Minnesota had relatively low unemployment insurance fraud; and transgender school librarian sues Catholic school alleging discrimination.

Minnesota’s most unequal corporations

Among Minnesota’s publicly traded companies, Target, C.H. Robinson, Best Buy, UnitedHealth Group and General Mills had the largest pay disparities between CEOs and typical workers in 2023, according to the AFL-CIO’s annual report on executive pay.

Target, which topped the list, paid its CEO Brian Cornell 719 times as much as its median-earning employee.

That means the typical Target employee would have had to start working in 1305 — around the time Osman I was establishing the small kingdom that would become the Ottoman Empire — in order to earn the $19.2 million Cornell took home in 2023 alone.

Target’s wide pay disparity is partly because of the nature of its business: The retail chain depends on an army of hourly, mostly part-time cashiers and store clerks to keep its retail stores humming across the country. The median worker pay at Target was just $26,696, far lower than the median salary at companies with more highly educated workers.

But even publicly traded companies in Minnesota with a more highly educated workforce still have yawning pay disparities.

At C.H. Robinson, the CEO David Bozeman took home $27.9 million, 572 times the $60,720 paid to the typical worker.

At UnitedHealth Group, CEO Andrew Witty took home $23.5 million, 352 times the $66,821 paid to the typical worker.

And at 3M, CEO Michael Roman took home $16.4 million, 266 times the $61,664 paid to the typical worker.

The AFL-CIO has a searchable database of CEO-to-worker pay ratios for all public companies, which are required to disclose the data under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

The AFL-CIO, a federation of labor unions representing some 12.5 million workers, calculated that the average CEO pay at companies listed on the S&P 500 was $17.7 million, 268 times the typical worker in 2023. That’s down from the average pay ratio of 272-to-1 in 2022 and 324-to-1 in 2021.

Low-wage workers have recently seen their incomes increase for the first time in decades, which has chipped away at inequality. Between 2019 and 2023, real wages of low-wage workers rose 13.2%, according to the Economic Policy Institute .

Still, the AFL-CIO blasted public companies for juicing corporate profits and CEO pay by increasing consumer prices 3% even as commodity prices fell 3% in 2023.

And the organization blamed the 2017 tax cuts passed under President Donald Trump for exacerbating inequality. If the tax cuts are extended after next year, as Trump has promised to do, they are projected to raise the national debt by $4 trillion over the next 10 years while mostly benefiting corporations and the highest earners, according to an analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

The AFL-CIO wants Congress to pass a law increasing taxes on corporations that pay their CEOs more than 50 times as much as their average employees.

Labor applauds Walz pick for V.P.

Union leaders issued gushing statements about Harris picking Walz as her running mate on Tuesday. Walz had won key union support during Harris’ veepstakes, including from United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain.

One of the first campaign stops Walz and Harris made together was in Detroit, where Fain called Walz “one of us” and Trump a “lapdog for the billionaire class.” Harris and Walz also held a rally at a UAW union hall on Thursday .

Walz, a former union teacher, has long been a close ally of unions and passed one of the most significant pro-worker agendas in recent memory in 2023.

LIUNA, which represents construction workers across North America, touted his record passing paid family and medical leave, increasing protections against wage theft and approving the biggest infrastructure package in state history that funds union jobs repairing roads, bridges and other critical infrastructure.

SEIU Minnesota, which represents service and health care workers, noted investments in nursing homes and public schools. While Walz was governor, Minnesota lawmakers expanded unemployment benefits to hourly school workers, allowed teachers unions to negotiate over class sizes and created a nation-leading workforce standards board for the nursing home industry.

And the United Steelworkers, which represents miners across Minnesota’s Iron Range, said Walz understands the importance of mining and manufacturing.

Minnesota has among lowest unemployment fraud rates

Minnesota had among the lowest rates of fraud and overpayments in unemployment benefits in the three years following the start of the pandemic, the Star Tribune reported .

Of the roughly $15 billion paid out to unemployed Minnesotans from July 2020 through June 2023, the state overpaid an estimated $430 million based on an audit by the federal Department of Labor of a sample of 1,400 claims. The state has clawed back about $77 million of its pandemic-era overpayments, according to a report from the federal Government Accountability Office released last fall.

Andrew Stettner, director of unemployment insurance modernization at the Labor Department, told the Star Tribune that the fraud and overpayments have to be considered in the context of the massive upheaval in the labor market when the pandemic forced businesses to shutter and layoff workers.

“We paid out $980 billion during the pandemic nationally, so even a small percentage [of overpayments] is going to seem gargantuan when it comes out,” he said.

Fraud has come to define pandemic-era assistance programs as elected leaders favored expediency over scrupulousness to support continued economic activity. For example, nearly 10% of the $800 billion handed out to businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program may have gone to fraudsters, according to one estimate . And audits by the Office of the Legislative Auditor identified significant oversight lapses in state agencies’ oversight of food assistance programs and frontline worker pay bonuses .

School librarian sues over alleged gender discrimination

A school librarian filed a discrimination lawsuit against the Academy of Holy Angels and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, alleging her employment contract wasn’t renewed because she came out as transgender.

Reyzl Grace MoChridhe, who is Jewish, worked at the Catholic school in Richfield during the 2021-2022 school year. MoChridhe intended to renew her contract for another year and said school principal Heidi Foley said she wanted her to return, according to the complaint filed by MoChridhe’s attorneys with Gender Justice and Wanta Thome PLC.

But then MoChride said she planned to transition to living as a woman. According to the complaint, Foley said she couldn’t continue working at the school if she transitioned.

MoChride and her attorneys allege the school violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act by denying her employment based on her gender identity and that she is entitled to monetary damages.

The Minnesota Human Rights Act does exempt religious organizations and schools from claims of gender identity based discrimination, but MoChridhe and her lawyers argue the exemptions don’t apply to secular employees. MoChridhe’s position didn’t require any ministerial duties or religious training.

“You have heard it said that allowing religious institutions to discriminate against LGBT people is to the protection of religious freedom,” MoChridhe said at a news conference on Tuesday. “But I say unto you, that allowing an institution to discriminate against employees for the shape of their bodies or the shape of their love is not only a violation of state law, but also a curtailment of religious freedom.”

A spokesman for the Archdiocese said they are reviewing the complaint but not commenting on it. Holy Angels said it took the allegations seriously and was reviewing the lawsuit.