Labor

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.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken signed on to sponsor the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which was introduced in the Senate on Wednesday. ENDA would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment. In 29 states, it is still legal to fire someone due to sexual orientation and in 38 states for [...]

In February Kadar Yusuf Haji Ali, a worker at the Jennie-O Turkey Store in Faribault, sat down for a cup of coffee with an organizer from United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789. A week later the Somali immigrant was fired from the slaughterhouse.

The slow-motion UNITE HERE labor meltdown continues both locally and nationally. The merger of the two storied unions, completed five years ago, has been acrimoniously unraveling over the last nine months. But one local entanglement appears to have resolved itself: This week negotiations will begin on a new contract for roughly 75 workers at the Radisson Hotel in Duluth.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789 has withdrawn charges of labor law violations by Wal-Mart against employees at its store in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood. The union, which is currently engaged in an organizing campaign at Wal-Mart outlets throughout the Twin Cities, accused the world’s largest retailer last month of illegally threatening to terminate workers who supported unionizing.

Wal-Mart is threatening to fire pro-union workers at its store in the Midway neighborhood of St. Paul, according to a complaint filed today with the National Labor Relations Board. The charges, filed by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789, allege that starting on June 11 corporate representatives began telling employees that they could easily acquire a list of union backers and that those people would lose their jobs.

U.S. Rep. John Kline will take over the ranking Republican seat on the House Education and Labor Committee, the GOP Steering Committee decided today.

Wal-Mart is the most notoriously anti-union corporation in the world. After a five-year hiatus, the United Food and Commercial Workers union is once again seeking to organize the company’s 1.4 million U.S. workers. Yesterday they held a rally at the Wal-Mart store in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood.