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Workday Minnesota
Billionaire Pohlad Family Accused of Using Anti-Worker Construction Contractors
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The American Prospect. The Minneapolis-based billionaire Pohlad family has a national profile, as the owner of the Minnesota Twins and the 75th-richest family in the United States. And the Pohlad Family Foundation has cultivated a progressive image for its stated commitment to “housing stability” and “racial justice,” with a special focus on reducing racial disparities.
“We Do the Behind-the-Scenes Work”: What it Takes to Lead a Union of Clerical Workers
“Cherrene has been my mentor and advocate for more than a decade,” says Max Vast in an email. Vast became president of AFSCME Local 3800 after longtime president Cherrene Horazuk resigned in October. “Her commitment to a member-led union has been particularly inspiring to me,” says Vast. “Even when it’s hard to get folks fired up, she is skilled at finding the issues that move people to action. She and I also share a deep passion for global solidarity. She spent many years doing solidarity work with El Salvador and I started my organizing in Palestine solidarity work. We both believe that solidarity with workers across the world is one of our most powerful tools.”
“The World Depends On Us”: Our Favorite Labor Stories of 2023
“The world depends on us, on our labor. And we have the right to decide what kind of world it’s going to be.” As we enter 2024, I reflect on this quote from the late Leo Robinson, Black longshoreman and leader in the ILWU, who played a key role in organizing Local 10’s 1984 boycott of goods shipped from apartheid South Africa.
They Clean After Holiday Shoppers. But They Don’t Get to Celebrate with their Families.
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. For Elbida Gomez, the winter holiday season is not marked by cheer or family time, but by an exponential increase in her workload — cleaning bathrooms and store offices, taking out the trash, mopping entrances and wiping up food from the floor of the employee cafeteria.
Minnesota Women Labor Journalists Uplifted Working People for Decades
This article is a joint publication with Minnesota Women’s Press for the December issue on Changemakers. I have always struggled with the notion of objectivity in journalism. I believe many news outlets, whether they skew left or right on the political spectrum, often have another bias that has a major impact on how readers understand their reality: the bias of favoring business over labor.
“Subsidizing Abuse” Investigates Minnesota’s Affordable Housing Industry’s Record of Worker Exploitation—While Receiving Millions in Public Dollars
At least $84 Million in Minnesota state and municipal funds earmarked for affordable housing projects have gone towards contractors with records or accusations of worker exploitation, from wage theft to misclassification to labor trafficking to sexual abuse, according to a new report. Subsidizing Abuse: How Public Financing Fuels Exploitation in...
“We Won’t Let Them Destroy Us”: Nurses at Illinois Hospital Strike Over Thanksgiving Week
On October 6, a group of union nurses confronted the leadership of Ascension St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, Ill., also known as St. Joe’s. Beth Corsetti, who has worked as a nurse for 10 years and has been at St. Joe’s for three of those years in the cardiac unit, raised concerns about unsafe staffing to president Christopher Shride, she says. “I asked, ‘how do you not see the fact that the amount of falls we’ve had and the amount of injuries that have been found is because we don’t have staff to get to these patients?’ And he flat out looked at me and said, ‘We have no staffing crisis,’ ’,” Corsetti says. “I still can’t get over it.”
Why These Teachers Unions Are Demanding a Cease-fire
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The Nation. When asked why her union voted to call for a cease-fire in Gaza, Marcia Howard, a teacher of 24 years, turned to an education metaphor. “It’s an object lesson for the nation and for other laborers,” she said over the phone, ahead of classes at a Minneapolis area high school, where she teaches language and literature to 11th graders. “The challenge has been for the entire working class to move the nation to do the right thing.”
First Avenue Workers’ Victory: Another Win for Union and Worker Center Collaborations
In the late summer of 2021, a group of workers from First Avenue, the iconic Minneapolis music venue, were fed up with low pay, last-minute scheduling, lack of parking, and safety concerns, and wanted to implement some of their own ideas in their workplace. Unsure of how to get it done, the workers decided to first contact Restaurant Opportunities Center of Minnesota (ROC-MN) to learn more about their workplace rights.
“What Could We Win Together?” Labor in Minnesota Gears up for a Major Escalation
Minnesota unions have been planning for this moment for a decade. Over the years they’ve meticulously coordinated their contracts to expire at the same time in order to maximize unity and bargaining power. Now, as these expiration dates are within sight, union organizers and rank-and-file members are beginning to prepare.
The U.S. Labor Voices Opposing Military Aid to Israel
This article was jointly produced by Workday Magazine and In These Times. As the Israeli military relentlessly bombards 2.4 million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip and a ground invasion appears imminent, one storied, national union — the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) — is opposing U.S. military aid for the state of Israel whose assault on the besieged strip has already taken the lives of at least 1,800 Palestinians (a number that is quickly rising) and displaced more than 420,000 others. The Israeli government’s overwhelming violence comes on the heels of a surprise attack by Hamas militants on October 7 when 150 were taken hostage and more than 1,300 people, almost entirely Israelis, were killed.
Republicans Are Using Anti-China Rhetoric to Undercut Striking UAW Workers’ Demands
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. Three and a half weeks into the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) stand-up strike against the Big Three — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis — the GOP is coalescing around a talking point: that the autoworkers’ real enemy is China.
“Your Body Suffers”: The Unremarkable Pain of an Auto-Assembly-Line Worker
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The Nation. Daniel Carpenter was one month past his 40th birthday when he suffered neck pain so severe that he thought he was having a stroke. “I was up north with my girlfriend at the time at a wedding,” said the autoworker, who has been employed for nearly 19 years at General Motors, almost all of it at the company’s Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center in Michigan, which produces the Hummer and Silverado. “We were staying at a cabin. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t move.”
They Sacrificed to Survive Bankruptcy. They Worked Through A Pandemic. Now, Autoworkers Have Had Enough.
PLYMOUTH, MINN. — Bonita Burns, 50, sits in a camping chair on the lawn in front of Mopar Parts Distribution Center. One of the crutches she uses to get around after her foot surgery leans against the chair. A picket sign leans against the other side. She is scratching off lottery tickets, hoping for some luck.
Wisconsin Autoworkers Are Bundling Firewood for a Winter Picket Line
HUDSON, WIS.—On the morning of Friday, September 22, workers at General Motors Parts Distribution Center calmly put away their equipment, gathered their personal belongings and stepped off the job. They’d been selected to strike as a part of the United Auto Workers’ second wave of stand-up strikes against the “Big Three” automakers (Ford, GM and Stellantis).
5 Things Unions Can Do To Defend Transgender Workers
This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. The right is escalating its war on transgender, nonbinary, and gender expansive people’s basic right to exist in the open. On March 4, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said from center stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” After receiving negative press, Knowles claimed that he wasn’t calling for the eradication of transgender people themselves, but the actions of the conservative movement he was addressing suggest otherwise.
Workday Minnesota
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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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