Workday Magazine (https://workdaymagazine.org/2018/10/)
With the finish line in sight, national union leaders and labor-endorsed candidates fired up union volunteers Saturday in South St. Paul, urging them to keep working to turn out labor voters for the midterm election Nov. 6.
The Hub is a worker cooperative, meaning the employees of the shop are also its owners. There are no outside shareholders or investors who dictate how the company is run, and there are no managers or bosses. The decisions are voted on democratically by either the workers or worker-owners.
Now, it’s time to harness that energy for one of the most important marches since election night 2016: the march to the polls November 6. And we need everyone, and I mean everyone, to enthusiastically join us in that march.
Voting advocates, including Brad Lehto, secretary-treasurer of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, have launched canvassing efforts as a friendly reminder to encourage Minnesotans to perform their civic duty.
With the Trump administration’s trade war with China showing no signs of letting up, new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute(link is external) says Minnesota workers have lost 88,000 jobs since China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001.
The levy campaign has broad support from the community. The St. Paul Regional Labor Federation has endorsed it, and so has St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, who called SPPS the “lifeblood” of his community.
The underlying issues at Seward are related to the fumbled expansion and opening of the Friendship Store and the Co-op Creamery.
The global #MeToo movement has put a spotlight on sexual harassment and assault, and a new report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research calculates the economic impacts in the workplace.
“People will tell you, ‘I’m not into politics,’” Walz said. “You tell them too damn bad because politics is into you.”
FRONTLINE has done an exhaustive investigation into the role that state governments and Wall Street have to privatize public pensions resulting in a “multi-trillion-dollar hole.”