Columbus
Workday Minnesota
The Filthy Emissions of Railroad Locomotives—and the Rail Unions Sounding the Alarm
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The American Prospect. After working as a rail crew transportation driver for nearly 13 years, Larry Hopkins says he is starting to worry about his health. “Every day that I work, I’m being exposed to the diesel fumes that are bad for our communities,” says the 56-year-old who was born in Blytheville, Arkansas, and now lives on the southwest side of Chicago.
High Injury Rates Push Minnesota’s Amazon Workers to Organize for Safety
Workers are concerned about soaring rates of injury, high productivity quotas, incoherent policies, and a sudden warehouse closure. In January 2021, Khali Jama says she began working her second job at Amazon’s MSP1 fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minn., an outer suburb south of Minneapolis. As a single mother of two, she says she’s always had two jobs. While working as a mental health professional and as a nurse, it was important for Jama to find something that could accommodate her schedule, she explains. A friend told her about the Amazon warehouse’s supposedly flexible hours. However, she says, her friend did not disclose the grueling pace of work, opaque systems of management, or the toll the work takes on the physical health of employees. After one month on the job, Jama shares that she lost a troubling amount of weight.
She Refused To Take a Drug Test Before Getting a Workplace Injury Treated—And Was Fired
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. Alicia had been an employee of the Rich Products Corporation food processing plant in Crest Hill, Ill. for three years, she says, when her arm was caught in a machine, an injury the company would invoke the next day to justify her abrupt firing. She had worked her way up to the position of lead operator of a machine that makes trays for the frozen pizzas produced at the plant. Rich Products, headquartered in Buffalo, N.Y., is a major manufacturer of frozen foods, with annual sales of more than $3.3 billion, making it the 117th largest private company in the United States.
How Biden Can End Secretive Corporate Tribunals
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The American Prospect. In May 2020, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden told the United Steelworkers that his administration would end the inclusion in future trade deals of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions. This little-known, but tremendously impactful, mechanism establishes secretive corporate tribunals that can award foreign investors damages from sovereign governments. ISDS has been used by some of the biggest corporations on Earth to wring millions—and even billions—of dollars from mostly Global South countries for the “crimes” of passing environmental regulations, implementing labor protections, banning toxic substances, denying mining permits, or other democratically agreed upon measures. “I don’t believe that corporations should get special tribunals that are not available to other organizations,” wrote Biden in response to a questionnaire from the union.
Starbucks Is Trying to Wear Workers Down Through Its Relentless “Soft” Union Busting
Amid a historic unionizing campaign across the country, workers are continuing to organize despite Starbucks ‘soft’ union-busting tactics. “A lot of the union busting that we’re seeing is very quiet. It’s very mellow,” says Ethan Tinklenberg, a Starbucks worker, or “partner” as the company likes to refer employees. “It’s not them making us take off our union pins or our union hats. It’s cutting our hours slowly but surely, while not promoting union leaders, and spreading misinformation about the union in conversation—but not directly, but just sort of slipping it in there with everything they say.”
What Nurses and Teachers Won By Withholding Their “Feminized Labor”
At the intensive care unit at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, nurse Kelley Anaas has cared for a lot of people who have gotten sick with Covid-19 during the pandemic. “I took care of plenty of people who got sick at their work,” said Anaas, who has been a nurse...
The Lie at the Heart of Politicians’ “Job Creation” Rhetoric
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and Jacobin, a print and web magazine publishing leading voices of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture. Joshua Mei contributed research to this article. During this time of relatively tight labor market conditions and soaring prices...
Military Budget Hike for 2023 is 3,200 Times the NLRB Increase
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. Draft text of the congressional omnibus spending bill released this week reveals a proposed $25 million increase in funding to the National Labor Relations Board, which would bring the agency’s 2023 federal fiscal year budget to $299 million. Its funding has otherwise been frozen at $274 million for the past nine years; when inflation is taken into account, this effectively amounts to a budget decrease of 25% since 2014, according to calculations cited in an NLRB news release.
Disabled Minnesotans Are Facing a Home Care Crisis. Workers Are Calling on Democrats to Change That.
Home care workers are negotiating their contract in hopes that the state will allocate some of the $17.6 billion surplus to improve pay and benefits—a test of the state’s Democratic trifecta’s political will to solve a worsening crisis for disabled people and their caregivers. Gail Larson lives...
As Afghans Suffer, U.S. Stalls on Plan to Return Central Bank Funds
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 and, in response, Europe, the United Arab Emirates and the United States froze the Afghan central bank’s roughly $9 billion in foreign assets — $7 billion of which was under control of the United States.
“Their Wealth, Your Misery”: Art and Propaganda in Pandemic Times
While walking in the offices of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus a few weeks ago, I came across a framed poster hanging on a colleague’s cubicle. “We Are Working All the Time!” it read in an ironic cursive font, in what I initially interpreted as a demonstration from overworked students, or a message from the university’s service workers’ union that narrowly avoided a strike last month. But when I looked closer, I realized it was from an art exhibition that, I would soon learn, deliberately blurs the lines between art and political propaganda.
The “Labor Shortage” Is Being Used as a Pretext to Harm Workers
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. A so-called “labor shortage” in the United States has quickly become a catch-all justification for policies that prevent workers from gaining too much power on the job, or collectively organizing by forming unions. Not...
‘Red Cup Rebellion’: Striking Chicago Starbucks Workers Brave Cold to Send Message to CEO Howard Schultz
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The American Prospect. Teddy Hoffman, a 31-year-old shift supervisor at the Starbucks on the corner of Clark Street and Ridge Avenue in Chicago, says his wife is expecting to give birth in February. Yet, even though his store overwhelmingly voted to unionize in May, he still doesn’t know whether he’ll be able to improve his parental leave before the baby arrives—a big priority for him, since he only receives six weeks paid, significantly less than what corporate, non-retail “partners” get. That’s because the store where Hoffman brews espresso and sweeps the floors is one of at least 257 across the country that have voted to form a union since late last year, yet still do not have a contract.
Why Hundreds of Planned Parenthood Workers in the Midwest Unionized
The Supreme Court may have struck down Roe v. Wade with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, but reproductive healthcare and nonprofit workers in the Midwest are rising up—and unionizing—to demand better working conditions. “We’re constantly in the crosshairs, and every moment, we’re operating...
They Waged the Largest Private-Sector Nurses’ Strike in U.S. History. They’re Still Waiting for Justice.
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. In the seven and half years Ali Marcanti has been working as a nurse, she has been yelled at, pushed against a wall, and put in “all sorts of shitty situations,” she says. But she never actually cried on the job until the winter of 2021, she recalls, when a Covid patient in his 70s who had been sitting alone in a room for hours turned to her, in tears, and said, “You were supposed to take care of me.”
U.S. Pressuring New Left-Wing Honduras Government
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The American Prospect. Honduran President Xiomara Castro, who took office in January, promised on the campaign trail to abolish special economic zones known as ZEDEs (“Economic Development and Employment Zones” in English), where private investors have outsized power to shape labor laws, judicial systems, and local governance. These zones have garnered fierce opposition in Honduras for undermining the basic tenets of democracy.
Joe Manchin Says He’s Pro-Job Creation, But He’s Lobbying the Fed to Increase Unemployment
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), claims on his website that creating jobs is his “top priority,” and has used this status as a “job creator” to justify his outsized role in blocking climate action, even as the human-made environmental crisis brings devastating storms and heat waves. According to Manchin, the coal industry must be protected, pipelines built, and regulations eased to secure the jobs of hard-working Americans.
Workday Minnesota
476+
Posts
932K+
Views
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.
Welcome to NewsBreak, an open platform where diverse perspectives converge. Most of our content comes from established publications and journalists, as well as from our extensive network of tens of thousands of creators who contribute to our platform. We empower individuals to share insightful viewpoints through short posts and comments. It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency: our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. We strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation. Join us in shaping the news narrative together.