Labor activists to receive Wellstone Awards from DFL

Two experienced labor activists will receive the Paul Wellstone Award for Lifetime Commitment to Organized Labor at the Minnesota DFL Party’s annual dinner Saturday.

Bernie Hesse, director of Special Projects, Legislative and Political Action for the United Food and Commercial Workers, and Kris Fredson, political director for the Minnesota AFL-CIO, will be honored at the 4th Annual Humphrey-Mondale Dinner, at the Hilton Minneapolis.

The award is named for the late U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, who became known during his tenure as Minnesota’s “labor senator.”

Hesse was involved with unions at an early age, working as an electroplater in a union shop organized by the United Electrical and Radio Workers of America.

After earning a degree in sociology from the University of St. Thomas, Hesse “bounced around” before starting to work in grocery stores and landing on a path that would lead him to be one of the most respected union leaders in Minnesota.

“I had worked in union shops before and the more I got into the work the more I wanted to learn about unions, what we were doing, how we could advance our contracts, organizing and a number of other things,” Hesse said.

In the 1980s a lot of issues were popping up. For example, the compression of the meatpacking industry led to strikes and layoffs and trade policy was rearing its ugly head, Hesse said. For unions who had members in manufacturing and food processing, it ultimately led to their involvement with workers from other countries and immigration issues.

“It started around the time we saw rapid changes in the meatpacking industry,” Hesse said. “And as the industry compressed and people got out of it, mostly white workers because of the safety issues, we saw the introduction of a number of immigrant groups.

“Initially it was folks from Mexico. At one time we had a plant where we had people from 21 different countries. And they were brought here and that opened up my eyes to the fact that people want to work, they want to work hard. They want to be with their families, and be safe.”

The work in organizing immigrant workers led to addressing issues of pathways for people to stay in the country without looking over their shoulder every two minutes and fighting for health care.

“We have organized workers and I think that workers who have organized with us that are undocumented feel safer,” Hesse said. “I think we’ve been able to move incrementally some change in regard to federal policy, I think our work has made the state that much more welcoming to immigrant workers and it’s just strange alliances at this time because I think a number of the members of the business community have finally figured it out that they need bodies to keep their plants and other operations going.”

Union work today is much more exciting than when he started, Hesse said.

“I have a saying that with so many more challenges we have so many more opportunities,” Hesse said. “You are never bored in the labor movement. If you are you should perhaps move on. And given the current reality, we have to find a way to organize workers, we’ve got to make our own sets of rules, and decide what we collectively want to do. And with a large percentage of the population not organized, we’ve got nothing but opportunity.”

Hesse said he sees Wellstone’s “legacy living on in that there are many, many people who sit at the table, his reaching out to youth, vets, immigrant communities, making it truly a coalition, coalition politics. And always trying to find out a way to connect people and not cling to the past but to find new ways to build power.”

Fredson’s first staff job in politics was as Jerry Janezich’s “lawn sign guy” in Duluth during the 2000 primary for U.S. Senate. His first paid job in politics was working with Progressive Minnesota, which is now TakeAction Minnesota, as an organizer for Jay Benanav who was running for St. Paul mayor in 2001.

“We lost the race by just over 400 votes out of 60,000, so that was tough,” Fredson said.

The following year, he worked as the Congressional District 4 regional field director for Wellstone.

“Obviously for all of us who worked on Wellstone’s reelection campaign it was a once in a lifetime chance to work for someone you believed in, someone who was so passionate about working people and the issues we cared about,” Fredson said. “That Wellstone [campaign] family – even to this day – is doing our best to carry it forward.”

Fredson learned from Wellstone a deep commitment to make a difference in people’s lives and to stand up and fight for what you believe in. After the 2002 election, Fredson received a call about working as an organizer for Service Employees International Union. In his first campaign, he spent six months in Long Prairie working to organize a hospital and nursing home.

“To this day, it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life just because we worked so closely with so many real workers trying to build a union in the workplace and get a seat at the table as it related to negotiating with management on wages and benefits and working conditions and workplace safety,” Fredson said. “We ended up losing that election by about six votes of 400.

“The election was later overturned by the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) because the hospital had violated national labor laws, but at that point when they scheduled the reelection most of the workers who were most active in the campaign had either moved on or run out of gas. Someday, maybe they’ll organize.”

Fredson said working so closely with workers and hearing their stories shaped his work moving forward. He worked on Chris Coleman’s campaign for mayor of St. Paul before being hired as political director with the Minnesota AFL-CIO. In his position, Fredson focuses on electing labor-endorsed candidates who stand with unions on working families.

Fredson was also the campaign manager for the Raise the Wage Coalition. More than 70 labor, nonprofit and faith groups came together to increase the minimum wage for Minnesota’s lowest paid workers in 2014.

“I think it was one example of the labor movement’s commitment to all workers, not just union members,” he said. “I think it’s also a great example of what we can do together in coalition with our faith, foundation, nonprofit, and service-based organizations.”