One year ago at the State Capitol, union members beat back an effort to put a “Right to Work” constitutional amendment on the ballot.
“Without your constant vigil last year at the Capitol, without your phone calls, without your letters, Minnesota would look a lot different,” Melander said.
Union members stayed engaged through the 2012 legislative elections, which flipped the majorities in both houses of the legislature and gave both chambers new pro-labor majorities. Now, Melander said, Building Trades members were back at the Capitol “to make sure we’re in the game and that your voices are heard… That’s what builds roads, that’s what builds bridges, that’s what we want.”
“We are going to partner with you… to put people back to work,” said DFL Speaker of the House Paul Thissen, addressing the crowd.
“This gets done by having friends on both sides of the aisle,” Melander said, next introducing the Republican House leader, Kurt Daudt.
“Your jobs are not and should not be a partisan issue,” Representative Daudt told the group. “I’m proud to stand in front of you as a Republican and say ‘we support you.’”
Daudt announced his support of state funding for Mayo Clinic plans for Rochester and for Mall of America expansion.
DFL Governor Mark Dayton, who followed Daudt to the podium, cited Daudt’s remarks and said, “this is a sea change.”
“For the last two years,” Dayton said, “We couldn’t get Republicans to say, ‘yes, government has a role to play in bringing jobs to Minnesota.’”
“There are people who say no tax increase, no revenue increase, it will all work out,” Dayton noted. But, he emphasized, “we need those revenues and they can come from people who can afford it. They’re not paying their fair share now.”
Dayton’s revised budget, released the same day as the Building Trades rally, calls for increasing income taxes on the wealthiest two percent of Minnesotans.
Dayton would direct the increased revenues to investments in education, job creation, and a stronger middle class.
Although the state’s construction industry has begun the road to recovery, it wasn’t hard to pick out people at random from the crowd at the Building Trades rally and find someone who was unemployed or had a spouse working out of state.
Laborers Local 132 member Rochelle Hubert, Montgomery, wore a sticker that read “Transportation Means Jobs.”
“I was working for RailWorks last summer, putting in the [Central Corridor] light rail track and getting it prepared for concrete,” said Hubert. “The job’s almost completed…” She added: “I’d like to see more light rail built.”
Creating more jobs in Minnesota could mean a big difference to Hubert’s family. Her husband, Troy Hubert, is a member of Operating Engineers Local 49 and, she noted, “because there are no jobs he has been out of state working for at least the last five years, on and off.”
That’s challenging for the couple and their five children. “It’s hard on the relationship and it’s hard on the kids because they don’t have their dad around,” Rochelle Hubert said. “Some people say, how do you do that? We say, it’s money or no money.”
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One year ago at the State Capitol, union members beat back an effort to put a “Right to Work” constitutional amendment on the ballot.
“Without your constant vigil last year at the Capitol, without your phone calls, without your letters, Minnesota would look a lot different,” Melander said.
Union members stayed engaged through the 2012 legislative elections, which flipped the majorities in both houses of the legislature and gave both chambers new pro-labor majorities. Now, Melander said, Building Trades members were back at the Capitol “to make sure we’re in the game and that your voices are heard… That’s what builds roads, that’s what builds bridges, that’s what we want.”
“We are going to partner with you… to put people back to work,” said DFL Speaker of the House Paul Thissen, addressing the crowd.
“This gets done by having friends on both sides of the aisle,” Melander said, next introducing the Republican House leader, Kurt Daudt.
“Your jobs are not and should not be a partisan issue,” Representative Daudt told the group. “I’m proud to stand in front of you as a Republican and say ‘we support you.’”
Daudt announced his support of state funding for Mayo Clinic plans for Rochester and for Mall of America expansion.
DFL Governor Mark Dayton, who followed Daudt to the podium, cited Daudt’s remarks and said, “this is a sea change.”
“For the last two years,” Dayton said, “We couldn’t get Republicans to say, ‘yes, government has a role to play in bringing jobs to Minnesota.’”
“There are people who say no tax increase, no revenue increase, it will all work out,” Dayton noted. But, he emphasized, “we need those revenues and they can come from people who can afford it. They’re not paying their fair share now.”
Dayton’s revised budget, released the same day as the Building Trades rally, calls for increasing income taxes on the wealthiest two percent of Minnesotans.
Dayton would direct the increased revenues to investments in education, job creation, and a stronger middle class.
Although the state’s construction industry has begun the road to recovery, it wasn’t hard to pick out people at random from the crowd at the Building Trades rally and find someone who was unemployed or had a spouse working out of state.
Laborers Local 132 member Rochelle Hubert, Montgomery, wore a sticker that read “Transportation Means Jobs.”
“I was working for RailWorks last summer, putting in the [Central Corridor] light rail track and getting it prepared for concrete,” said Hubert. “The job’s almost completed…” She added: “I’d like to see more light rail built.”
Creating more jobs in Minnesota could mean a big difference to Hubert’s family. Her husband, Troy Hubert, is a member of Operating Engineers Local 49 and, she noted, “because there are no jobs he has been out of state working for at least the last five years, on and off.”
That’s challenging for the couple and their five children. “It’s hard on the relationship and it’s hard on the kids because they don’t have their dad around,” Rochelle Hubert said. “Some people say, how do you do that? We say, it’s money or no money.”