Workday Magazine (https://workdaymagazine.org/category/policy/page/20/)
The Laborers’ International Union of North America led a rally in downtown Minneapolis to call for desperately needed investments in the country’s roads, bridges and water resources – investments that would create millions of middle-class jobs for the state and America.
The fight resumed in the hottest front of the national war on workers late in the afternoon of June 14, as the Wisconsin State Supreme Court reinstated GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s law destroying collective bargaining rights for 200,000 state and local workers.
Union pension funds are a major component of the financing package for the $132 million renovation and refinancing of the 1,303-unit Riverside Plaza high-rise apartment complex in Minneapolis. The AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, which is investing $50 million, is one of 20 public and private entities providing financing — including Google.
Building Trades workers, teachers, government workers, hotel workers — all were represented at a “Bloomington Economic Issues Roundtable” hosted May 17 by the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation at the Bloomington Armory. About 35-40 people attended.
The budget impasse at the state Capitol couldn’t come at a worse time for Minnesota construction workers, who face the leanest job prospects in the nation.
Working people will challenge the “meanness” and “destructiveness” of some elected officials with a renewed sense of unity and a commitment to the dignity of work, national AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said.
While many proposals at the state Capitol would undermine wages, attack pensions and put more people on the unemployment line, the “Worker Dignity” bill would raise incomes for many people.
Gretchen Gubbins is about to run out of unemployment benefits and doesn’t know how she will live.
Members of Minnesota’s Building Trades unions packed committee hearings at the Capitol, registering their opposition to bills moving through both the House and Senate that would weaken the state’s prevailing wage laws.
On average, full-time working women in Minnesota are paid $10,467 less than their male counterparts, and the gap costs Minnesota’s families a total of more than $8 billion annually, according to a new study.