ST. PAUL ? Minnesotans in all walks of life ? except perhaps the very wealthy? will start feeling the pain of state budget cuts as soon as this summer, union leaders and community activists predict.

Thousands of public workers who will lose their jobs will witness the effects of the budget immediately. For others, it will come later, with larger class sizes this fall, restricted or lost health care, and higher fees for buses, fishing licenses and other services.

?The pain is starting and real people are going to get hurt,? said Peter Benner, executive director of AFSCME Council 6, the largest union of state employees.

AFSCME Council 6 is one of many unions and other organizations?nonprofits and faith-based groups?who started the ?Minnesota?s Watching? coalition to pressure legislators to find a better, more humane solution to the budget crisis. This public pressure helped mitigate the effects of some of the budget cuts and stop several anti-worker proposals.

A one-sided approach
Legislators entered the 2003 session knowing the state faced a massive projected deficit of $4.2 billion for the next two years. But many lawmakers, along with Governor Tim Pawlenty, tied one behind their backs by signing a pledge not to increase taxes.

Pawlenty and the Republican majority in the Minnesota House stuck to that pledge, despite recent polls showing public support for a ?balanced? approach of raising some taxes and making some spending cuts. The final budget was achieved totally through spending cuts, higher fees for services (which Pawlenty insists are not tax increases) and accounting shifts.

Working together and demanding accountability
The one really bright spot during the legislative session, labor and community leaders agreed, was the thousands of citizens who participated in the ?Minnesota?s Watching? campaign?an unprecedented coalition of the AFL-CIO, the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, 22 other labor groups, and 36 community, religious and nonprofit organizations.

?Minnesota?s Watching? brought people to the Capitol to witness the Legislature?s actions and demand a balanced approach to the state budget.

?Working together, we were able to send a clearer, stronger message than we otherwise could have,? said Marcia Avner, director of public policy for the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. ?Even though in this session we weren?t able to change the governor?s and the [House] speaker?s minds, we were a real voice for people for whom these cuts are harmful.?

?We?re working with people we may not have worked with before,? said Brad Lehto, legislative director for the Minnesota AFL-CIO. ?Union members came in who had never been involved before. Some were so scared to talk to their legislator that they were shaking! Other [nonprofit members] were also hesitant to talk to legislators. They realized, ?we?re not that different from you.??

?Minnesota?s Watching? will continue, tracking the effect of the state budget on Minnesotans and holding lawmakers accountable.

?One of the things we can do is be really effective in educating our own members and the general public about the cuts and their impact as they occur,? said Avner. ??Minnesota?s Watching? will issue quarterly reports, timed strategically with in-depth information.

Minnesotans will be shocked when they find out what the state budget will really mean, said Jim Monroe, the executive director of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees. ?What this is going to become from this point on is ?We told you so.? That?s an awful position to be in.?

Real cuts, real people, real pain
The University of Minnesota and the Minnesota State Colleges and University System took a 15 percent hit in their funding and announced they would have to institute program cuts and double-digit tuition increases.

Aid to local governments was slashed substantially?some communities lost as much as 20 percent of their funding in one year. Cities, like Minneapolis, announced service cuts, including police and firefighters. Legislators who opposed it said the cuts in local government aid cut mean higher property taxes.

Educators said that the state spared K-12 more than other areas, but the state underfunded specific programs: special education students, English language learners and low-income students. The transportation bill provides some money for road projects but means in higher bus fares, fewer routes and less frequency.

Because of cuts to health and human services, thousands of working families will lose affordable health insurance and child care. Senior citizens will lose the health care that helps them stay in their homes.

Some positives
In trying to find a silver lining, union leaders said they succeeded in stopping anti-worker legislation, preserved some funding for nursing home services and dislocated workers, and successfully pushed for a bonding bill to provide an economic boost.

?Most of our victories were in keeping more bad stuff from happening,? admitted the AFL-CIO?s Lehto.

Unions and their allies derailed legislation to mandate a pay freeze and higher health care premiums for all public employees in Minnesota. They stopped attempts to take the right to strike away from public health-care workers, to eliminate prevailing wage requirements and ban project-labor agreements in school construction projects, and to make it easier to privatize prisons and other public services. They also blocked union-busting legislation that would have paved the way for school districts to replace bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other unionized employees.

Nursing homes, heavily dependent on state funding for patient care, received no cuts but no increases either, said Rick Varco, director of communications and research for Service Employees International Union Local 113. ?There was no [state funding] increase, which means we?ll face difficult bargaining because health care costs are still going up,? Varco said. ?Certainly, the governor is asking our members to do the same amount of work for less money.?

Lehto cited bills that restore solvency to the unemployment insurance fund and boost funding for dislocated worker training as more wins. He added that the bonding bill, which provides money for construction projects in higher education, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and other projects elsewhere, would provide much-needed employment for Building Trades workers.

Thousands in the unemployment line
But elsewhere, thousands of public employees and an untold number of private sector workers whose jobs are tied to public contracts will be laid off.

Some labor leaders estimate the job losses at 15,000 to 20,000, but AFSCME Council 6 Director Benner cautioned that the numbers aren?t clear yet. But, he added, ?this will be the largest public employee layoff in state history. It also will be the large public-caused health care layoff in state history? as hospitals, nursing homes and others cut staff because, in a double whammy, legislators refused to increase state funding and made a large number of people ineligible for the state-run MinnesotaCare health program.

MAPE, the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, has already put together an information kit for its members facing layoffs. ?This is going to be a rough, rough time,? said MAPE Executive Director Monroe.

These layoffs also have a ripple economic effect, Monroe pointed out. Fewer people working means fewer people spending money, which translates into lost revenue and job losses in the private sector in communities where public employees live.

AFSCME and MAPE began negotiations on the next state contract. Both Benner and Monroe said the talks are exceedingly difficult, given Minnesota?s fiscal problems.

Reporting this article were Barb Kucera, Michael Kuchta and Dania Rajendra. It was written by Barb Kucera.