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Workday Minnesota
The Great Neoliberal Burden Shift (Part II)- How Corporate America Offset Liability Onto Its Workers
This episode was produced by Citations Needed, in collaboration with Workday Magazine. “How Railroaders Are Killed; Train Crews Grow Careless,” read a 1906 syndicated article. “There is a kind of personality who is accident-prone,” reported the Kansas City Star in 1944. Amazon’s safety programs are “designed to keep its nearly one million warehouse workers worldwide fit and limber,” The Seattle Times claimed in 2021.
The Great Neoliberal Burden Shift (Part I) – How Corporate America Offset Liability Onto the Public
“Choose the product best suited for baby,” Nestlé urged in a 1970s baby formula ad. “What size is your carbon footprint?” wondered oil giant BP in 2003. “Texting, music listening put distracted pedestrians at risk,” USA Today announced in 2012. These headlines and ad...
How Academia’s Over Reliance on Contingent Faculty Hurts Workers and Students’ Quality of Education
Adjunct and contingent faculty make up the overwhelming majority of instructors at universities and colleges in the United States. Now making up the majority of instructional staff, the ratio between adjunct and tenured professors was essentially reversed in the mid-century. Many of these highly qualified workers are feeling the effects of the gig-ification of professorship—both in their working conditions and the ability to effectively serve the needs of students.
“Finally Somebody’s Fighting For Us”: Grocery Store Workers are Fed Up
The past year and a half, let alone the past four years, have been busy for grocery store workers in Minnesota, especially union members who have been in contract negotiations. Thousands of metro-area UFCW Local 663 members at UNFI Cub Foods, Lunds & Byerlys, Kowalski’s Markets, and Seward Community Co-op voted to authorize unfair labor practice (ULP) strikes, and reached tentative agreements (TA) that members voted to approve. Workers took actions, from voting to authorize strikes and marching on the boss to flyering outside stores. In many cases, in the eleventh hour before going on strike, employers gave into workers’ demands.
“There Has Never Been a Better Time to Organize”: How PELRA Reform has Opened the Door to New Organize for Over 23,000 Workers at UMN
“If you don’t have a union and you want one, the door’s open,” invites Tracey Blasenheim, a University of Minnesota (UMN) lecturer and instructor in political science, after a successful organizing drive to reform a decades-old state law that predefines bargaining units for public employees. The reform effectively enables over 23,000 workers to form unions across the University of Minnesota’s five campuses. The reforms will go into effect on July 1.
The 4th Annual “Dancing in the Streets” with Minneapolis Sex Workers
On a humid and rainy Sunday afternoon, a small but mighty parade made its way down the streets of downtown Minneapolis’ adult entertainment district, armed with colorful sex toys, water guns, glitter, and protest signs, marching down across the Hennepin Avenue Bridge and concluding in a pole-dancing contest in the park.
Minnesota Unions Push for Bill Extending Unemployment Insurance for Striking Workers
Catina Taylor has worked as a special educational assistant for the past 25 years in Minneapolis Public Schools. She’s a member of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers 59 (MFT 59) and President of the Education Support Professionals (ESPs). In 2022, Minneapolis teachers went on strike for three weeks. Taylor was on the picket line—she remembers not being able to feel her feet in the cold. Although she looks back fondly on the “historic” strike, she adds that it was a financially difficult time for many members.
Iron Range Daycare Worker on Organizing for Better Care for Children
The mines of the Mesabi Iron Range gleam red under the light covering of snow that remains after a historically warm winter in northern Minnesota. Hibbing, a mining town of around 16 thousand people, bustles with industry. And in any town with working people, you’ll find the working people who make all other industries possible: the childcare center workers.
Expand or Perish: Hamilton Nolan’s Simple Message to the Labor Movement
Hamilton Nolan’s debut book has a clear message to the modern-day labor movement: expand or dwindle into obscurity. The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor analyzes the post-pandemic landscape, where workers are pissed off, union favorability is high, and many union campaigns have reached national news coverage in ways the labor movement has not seen in decades.
Across Industries, Minnesota Workers Are Harnessing Their Collective Power
MINNEAPOLIS — Collective power is rising in Minnesota. Thousands of union members and a broad coalition of community groups banded together to demand better contracts, quality schools, housing and a livable planet. Unions in Minnesota have been aligning with community groups for more than a decade, participating in actions to build solidarity and worker power.
Minnesota’s Labor Spring Has Arrived. Here’s What’s Going Down.
This article is being jointly published by Workday Magazine and In These Times. MINNEAPOLIS—Minnesota’s Labor Spring has arrived. Thousands of essential workers and community members are taking part in a Week of Action in the Twin Cities to fight for a host of social demands they hope will build worker power and strengthen communities. They are calling for better union contracts and a labor standards advisory board, alongside social housing, environmental sustainability, and better schools.
An Interview with John See: Labor Historian and Video Innovator on Nearly 40 Years of Service to the Minnesota Labor Movement
In October 2023, John See worked his last day at the Labor Education Service (LES) after a 39 year tenure. His office was a treasure trove of Minnesota union history—adorned with vintage Teamsters trucker hats, retro pins from the 70s, and a constant stack of VHS tapes digitizing onto one of the half dozen monitors where he was often seen fervently editing videos and coordinating audio visual work for major conventions. While See’s office may be cleared from the nearly four decades of ephemera, his legacy and dedication to Minnesota’s labor movement continues.
The Most Important Labor Story Right Now Is in Minnesota—It Might Be the Model We All Need
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. Andrea Villanueva was in bargaining five days ago, negotiating a new contract for herself and 500 other retail janitors who clean some of the Twin Cities’ most recognizable stores. A group of building security workers, also members of Villanueva’s union SEIU Local 26, were also in negotiations in the same building. The workers bumped into one another in the hallways as the day went on — stopping to cheer each other on and express their solidarity.
The Auto Workers Who Stand with Gaza
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The Nation. When asked why workers in the United States care about people in Gaza, Marcie Pedraza immediately brought up the animating principle of labor organizing: solidarity. The 48-year-old autoworker told me, “Workers are always being attacked by companies or being exploited,” and the only antidote is banding together. This, she said, was reinforced during the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) strike, when she and her colleagues at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant joined thousands of workers who walked out in rolling, surprise strikes against the Big Three automakers. Why, she asked, wouldn’t this same concept apply to people being targeted in a lethal military campaign in another part of the world, who are suffering unimaginable levels of persecution and loss?
This Union Wants Meatpacking Companies to Foot the Bill for Child Labor Prevention
The union representing meatpacking workers employed by Tony Downs Foods in Madelia, Minn., has a new and historic proposal in response to the plant’s employment of teenagers aged 14 to 17 in illegal and hazardous positions. United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 663, which represents over 5,000 essential...
Metro Transit Workers Say Improving Transit Starts with Better Working Conditions
The approximately 2,500 members of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) 1005 want more from the Metropolitan Council, the municipal agency that manages the transit system in the Minneapolis and St. Paul metro area. The previous contract expired on July 31, 2023 and on September 10 and 11 of 2023, members...
Minnesota Is Headed for a Workers vs. Bosses Showdown That’s 10 Years in the Making
This spring, thousands of workers across Minnesota will have expired contracts all at the same time. Among them are healthcare workers, janitors, security officers, airport workers, construction workers, educators, education support professionals, and public workers. Organizers within Minnesota’s labor movement are making use of this unique moment to exert joint pressure on employers across sectors to meet workers’ demands.
The UAW Strike Saved Their Shuttered Plant, But the Fight Is Just Beginning
BELVIDERE, ILL.—It’s been almost five months since JC Bengtson, an autoworker for 24 years, lost his job. “I miss working,” says the 55-year-old father of three daughters, all adults. “Right now I am unemployed and waiting to hear back.”. We are sitting in the union...
These Teachers Want the Largest Union in the Country to Rescind its Biden Endorsement Over Gaza
This article was jointly produced by Workday Magazine and The Nation. When Israel escalated its military operations against Gaza in October, Rahaf Othman was so distraught, she said, she “couldn’t think straight.” The 45-year-old Palestinian American, who teaches social studies at Harold L. Richards High School in Oak Lawn, Ill., recalled that she “started getting nightmares from my own experiences when I was in Palestine. I was functional at work, but barely functional. My brain was mush. I was getting traumatized every time I turned on my phone.”
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Workday Minnesota holds the powerful to account while bringing the perspective of everyday workers and the organizations that defend their rights to focus. Workday emphasizes long-form investigative journalism to bring to light the concealed and buried.
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