Mark Dayton

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. He wears his heart on his sleeve and it’s obvious that he cares about people.”

Dayton was elected to the Senate in 2000, but did not seek a second term. He also won a single term as state auditor in 1990. In addition, Dayton ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1982 and was defeated in a gubernatorial primary in 1998. He has stated that he will run in a primary election even if he does not receive the DFL endorsement.

According to the AFSCME Council 5, it spent nearly $1 million on the 2006 gubernatorial contest. In addition, the union mobilized more than 1,000 volunteers and 70 percent of its 43,000 members voted for the AFSCME-backed candidate. Nearly half of the union’s members are state employees.

The endorsement is another sign that organized labor will be divided about who to back in the crowded DFL field. The North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters kicked off the endorsement sweepstakes in May by backing state Sen. Tom Bakk. Teamsters Local 120 then announced in September that it’s backing Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak — even though he’s not officially a candidate for the post. Earlier this month state Rep. Paul Thissen earned the support of the Minnesota Nurses Association.

“Tarryl Clark has been a proven leader for Minnesota’s working families,” said Kyle Makarios, political director for the council, in a statement announcing the decision. “It is important to have someone in Washington who is advocating for workers, especially in this time of economic hardship.”

Clark previously won endorsements from AFSCME Council 5 and Council 65 and the Teamsters Joint Council 32. She is battling Maureen Reed for the DFL endorsement.

Al Franken speaks with union members after signing an EFCA petition, July 2008. Photo: AFL-CIO

Throughout the 2008 campaign, the “card-check” provision of the Employee Free Choice act was a political lightning rod. Business groups hammered candidates across the country, including Al Franken in Minnesota, with ads pillorying the proposal as an attack on workers’ rights. Organized labor lobbied ferociously for the provision, which would allow workers to unionize when more than half have signed cards indicating support for collective bargaining. They argued that it was essential to rejuvenating the labor movement after decades of decline, and spent millions working to get Democrats elected in the belief that they would pass the card-check provision.

So when The New York Times reported last month that Democratic leaders had quietly decided to drop the controversial measure from the Employee Free Choice Act without so much as a vote, it came as something of a slap in the face to organized labor. While union officials insist that card check is not yet dead, it seems unlikely that the labor law revision will ultimately be enacted.

“It’d be really really nice if the Democrats would grow a little bit of a backbone,” said Martin Goff, organizing director for UNITE HERE Local 17. “We have the House, the Senate and the presidency. Yet these guys start going to their second, third and fourth positions before the Republicans even ask for it. I’m disgusted actually.”

Bernie Hesse, an organizer with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789, is similarly put off by the backpedaling from Democrats.

“Why did we do all this work?” Hesse asked. “That’s kind of a weird way to bargain, to start taking stuff away before they even start marking up the bill.”

Hesse has traveled to Washington, D.C., in order to lobby for the Employee Free Choice Act. He described organized labor’s dalliance with Democrats as an abusive relationship. “We keep going back to them even though they beat us,” he said.

The need for an overhaul of the country’s labor laws is obvious from organized labor’s perspective. The number of workers belonging to unions has been in free-fall in recent decades. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly 12 percent of workers were union members in 2008, down from just over 20 percent in 1983, the first year for which federal statistics were kept.

Union organizers blame this decline in part on increasingly aggressive campaigns by employers to fight organizing efforts and weak labor laws that only offer a slap on the wrist to companies that break the law. Indeed, according to a study released in May by Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, companies have become more brazen in their anti-union tactics. The study found that more than half of the companies examined threatened employees with wage cuts or shuttered work sites, and roughly one third fired workers for pro-union activities. Even when workers did vote to organize, the study found that more than half were without an initial labor contract after a year.

“What’s happened under the existing labor laws is that employers and their attorneys have figured out where the holes are,” said Peter Rachleff, a labor historian at Macalester College. “They’re able to intimidate workers, they’re able to create a climate of fear, they’re able to discourage workers from availing themselves of their right to organize.”

The Employee Free Choice Act is designed to make such anti-union tactics more difficult for companies to utilize. In addition to the card-check provision, it would also force binding arbitration on companies if they fail to reach agreement on a labor contract after a year — a provision that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business interests are equally alarmed by. The legislation would also provide tougher punishments — including fines — for companies that flout the laws.

But Rachleff also argues that unions must share the blame for their decline. He believes that even if organized labor ultimately gets everything it wants in the Employee Free Choice Act it won’t be sufficient to rejuvenate their ranks.

“I have low expectations of what the Employee Free Choice Act would mean if it were passed,” he said. “I don’t think that the existing labor movement is prepared to get out and organize even if the ground rules were to change.”

Rachleff is not at all surprised that Democrats appear to be backing away from the most controversial element of the legislation and believes that labor leaders are complicit in the decision to drop card check.

“Various union leaders signaled to the Democrats that it was OK,” he said. “It’s just a sorry-ass situation. The leaders of the existing labor organizations, they have to find things to make it look like they’re doing something. Pushing the Employee Free Choice Act became something very convenient for them to look like they were spending their members’ dues on good things.”

But local labor leaders insist that the card-check provision is not dead. Shar Knutson, president of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, was on a conference call with national union leaders on Tuesday to get an update on the situation.

“It’s still in play,” she said. “No one’s conceding anything.”

Eric Lehto, director of organizing for AFSCME Council 5, said the union will be mobilizing its 43,000 members to lobby Minnesota’s legislators during the legislative break for Labor Day. U.S. Sen. Al Franken immediately signed-on as a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act upon finally being seated in Washington. But Lehto and other labor leaders believe Minnesota’s senior senator, Amy Klobuchar, could more forcefully promote passage of the legislation, including the card-check provision.

“We would like to see Amy take more of a pro-active effort in pushing the legislation and publicly advocating for it,” he says.

Lehto believes it’s not too late to save the card-check provision that labor unions spent so much time and money advocating for during the last election cycle.

“I wouldn’t say it’s dead,” he said. “There’s still work to be done during recess. What the final bill’s going to look like I don’t know.”

Pawlenty has given mixed signals as to whether he’ll sign such a document if Coleman continues his legal fight in federal courts. The Republican leadership in Washington will undoubtedly pressure the governor to withhold his signature.

“What will Pawlenty choose?” reads the billboard, at the intersection of I-94 and Snelling Avenue. “People of Minnesota? Or his national ambitions?”

The coalition, which includes Alliance for a Better Minnesota and AFSCME Council 5, has also created a web site, SeatOurSenator.com, to build pressure to seat Franken.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s plan to cut state spending by $750 million over the next two years — with major hits to health and human services, higher education and aid to cities — is not attracting many fans. Since its unveiling yesterday afternoon, the proposal has been roundly criticized by local elected officials, university leaders and advocates for the poor and disabled. Here’s a roundup of opinions about the proposed budget:

Pat Mellenthin, executive director of The Arc of Minnesota, on proposed cuts to health and human services:

The Governor may try to paint this as simply reducing the growth in HHS spending, but let’s be honest. The projected growth in HHS spending is not intended to fund excesses. Those projected increases in spending are based on anticipated real costs and real needs of real people. The Governor can’t pretend that people’s lives won’t be seriously impacted by his proposed cuts.

Robert Bruininks, president of the University of Minnesota:

Gov. Pawlenty’s budget recommendations today are just the first step in a long budget process. His proposal for the university’s budget carries with it enormous consequences. It will impact the quality and affordability of the education we provide. It will impair our ability to serve as a job creation engine for the state through research and development. And, it will have an inevitable impact on our workforce, tuition and our ability to attract research grants – just as it did five years ago when the state cut $195 million from the university.

Dane Smith, president of progressive think tank Growth & Justice:

Minnesota’s shared prosperity and quality of life rest on a foundation of wise public investment in human capital and physical infrastructure. This budget plan threatens that already weakened foundation with a dubious and unrealistic cuts-and-shifts strategy.

R.T. Rybak, Mayor of Minneapolis:

We recognize that the current financial situation needs a shared sense of sacrifice. However, it’s unfortunate for the taxpayers of Minneapolis that the Governor is looking to make the state’s lack of financial management another burden for our residents.

Eliot Seide, executive director of AFSCME Council 5, on a proposed wage freeze for state employees:

Our members earn on average $38,000 a year, and like most Minnesotans they’re struggling paycheck to paycheck and shouldn’t have to sacrifice alone while corporations see their taxes cut in half.

Dave Van Hattum, policy program manager at Transit for Livable Communities, on a looming $91 million shortfall for regional transit providers:

Without addressing the transit operating deficit, the Governor will prevent people from reaching their jobs. This doesn’t make sense in this economic climate. At a minimum, maintaining public transit service must be part of a Minnesota budget aimed at advancing prosperity.

Jan Malcolm, CEO of Courage Center, a Minneapolis-based physical rehabilitation facility:

While our services would be cut by almost $1.7 million under the proposed budget, the broader effects on the community would be far more severe. The Governor proposes to completely eliminate physical, occupational, speech and audiology therapies from all public health insurance programs for adults in need of rehabilitation.

John Van Hecke, director of operations and planning for progressive think tank Minnesota 2020:

The Governor’s budget recommendations continue the tired conservative policies that failed middle-class Americans these last eight years. Slashing investment in healthcare, communities and colleges while handing out tax giveaways to large multi-nationals will not create good-paying jobs for working Minnesotans. This plan will only make Minnesota’s recession worse.

Swanson has been dogged by allegations that she pressured staff to pursue civil lawsuits without proper justification, lobbied lawyers to include unsubstantiated information in affidavits and pressured employees to post favorable comments on blogs.

The report is the second in a week to clear Swanson. A probe conducted by University of St. Thomas Law School Dean Thomas Mengler, at the behest of the A.G.’s office, found “no evidence of any unprofessional conduct” by Swanson or her staff. That investigation, however, focused solely on whether there was any unethical conduct in the filing of two lawsuits. Attorney Amy Lawler, one of the chief internal critics of the A.G.’s office, was immediately fired after the Mengler report was released.

While the legislative auditor’s report didn’t unearth any grounds for investigation, that conclusion was largely based on the fact that there were no allegations of financial wrongdoing. The report notes that the criticisms levied against Swanson’s office “are not the kinds of issues the Legislative Auditor addresses through an investigation.”

But the report does note evidence of rancor among staff members, in particular singling out former Attorney General Mike Hatch as a lightning rod for discontent. “A principal criticism they made of Attorney General Swanson was that she appointed Mr. Hatch to a position in the office after Attorney General Swanson was sworn into office in 2007,” the report notes. “This — and Mr. Hatch’s continued influence on the office — was said to be the ‘tipping point’ that caused some current and former employees to voice criticisms and accusations against Attorney General Swanson.” Hatch resigned from the office a year ago. (MinnPost recently ran a two-part series by Eric Black looking at the fallout from what it labeled Hatch’s “traumatic reign.”)

AFSCME Council 5, which has been locked in an organizing dispute with the A.G.’s office, argues that the report is not a victory for Swanson. “The Auditor’s report doesn’t vindicate Attorney General Swanson,” said Council 5 director Eliot Seide in a statement. “It vindicates staff attorneys who raised legitimate concerns about her management style.”