Labor

AFSCME Council 5, the state’s largest union for public employees, has endorsed former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton for governor.
“Mark Dayton has won statewide elections — twice,” said Eliot Seide, director of AFSCME Council 5, in a press release announcing the endorsement. “Minnesotans know and like Mark. That’s because he listens more than any other candidate. [...]

The three incumbent St. Paul school board members up for re-election this year have been endorsed by the St. Paul Federation of Teachers in past campaigns. But concerns about budget shortfalls, school restructurings and contract negotiations have caused the teachers’ union to withhold its support this year.

Tarryl Clark continues to roll up the union endorsements. The latest is from the Service Employees International Union’s state council. About the only politically influential union that hasn’t yet backed Clark in her quest to unseat U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann is Education Minnesota.

Tarryl Clark has received endorsements from the Minnesota AFL-CIO and the Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council in her campaign to unseat U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann. The state senator has been garnering widespread support from organized labor. Among the other union endorsements: AFSCME Councils 5 and 65, Teamsters Joint Council 32 and the North Central [...]

A new study says the net economic impact of the 2008 Republican National Convention on Minnesota’s economy was $170 million, Minnesota Public Radio reports. (The research was done for the Minneapolis St. Paul 2008 Host Committee by the University of St. Thomas’ Center for Retail Excellence, so you know it’s good.) But when the St. [...]

Tarryl Clark continues to rack up labor endorsements in her bid to known off U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann. The latest union to lend support is the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters. The organization has 13,000 members across the state, with nearly 2,500 in the 6th Congressional District.

State Sen. Tarryl Clark has picked up another endorsement from organized labor for her congressional bid. Yesterday, Teamsters Joint Council 32 officially gave the St. Cloud Democrat the nod in her challenge to 6th district incumbent Rep. Michele Bachmann. Joint Council 32 has 62,000 members, many in Bachmann’s district.

Shar Knutson has been elected president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, becoming the first woman to lead the state’s largest labor federation. Knutson was widely expected to face off against two other challengers for the post: Bill McCarthy, president of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, and Mary Kathryn Ricker, head of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers. But only McCarthy and Knutson were ultimately nominated, with the latter prevailing on the first ballot.

That’s because those are the days with the shortest wait-times for help from state workforce centers, according to Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) Commissioner Dan McElroy. But in other testimony before a state House committee Monday, a man who was among 200 workers laid off at a Chanhassen printing plant suggested it’s useless even [...]

Throughout the 2008 campaign, the “card-check” provision of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was a political lightning rod. Business groups pilloried the proposal as an attack on workers’ rights, while organized labor lobbied ferociously for the measure, which would allow workers to unionize when more than half have signed cards indicating support for collective bargaining. When Democratic leaders quietly decided to drop the measure from EFCA last month — without so much as a vote — it came as something of a slap in the face for labor.