(C) Minnesota Reformer
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Worker advocates push for nation-leading labor standards board in Minneapolis [1]
['Max Nesterak', 'More From Author', '- September']
Date: 2023-09-22
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Advocates push for Minneapolis labor standards board
Labor advocates continue to pressure the Minneapolis City Council to create a nation-leading Labor Standards Board that would have immense influence over wages and working conditions across industries.
The board — made up equally of workers, industry representatives and community members — would create industry-specific boards to draft ordinances for the City Council to vote up or down (but not tweak), said Veronica Mendez Moore, co-director of the worker center Centro De Trabajadores Unidos En La Lucha (CTUL).
For example, a Minneapolis labor standards board could create “sectoral” boards focused on Uber and Lyft, child care, construction, food service or any other industry.
“It puts a lot of power in the hands of community,” Mendez Moore said.
Worker groups including CTUL, the Service Employees International Union, the Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association, Kids Count on Us and Unite Here Local 17 held a news conference in City Hall on Thursday to call on the council to pass an ordinance creating a labor standards board this year.
A Minneapolis labor standards board was first proposed last summer with support from Mayor Jacob Frey and 10 of the city’s 13 council members. But city leaders have yet to consider an ordinance creating the board. Mendez Moore said they are continuing to work through the details.
Labor standards boards are new and still rare in the United States, but gaining traction in recent years as a way of improving low-wage work in industries that are difficult to unionize.
Minnesota lawmakers created a Nursing Home Standards Board earlier this year, which will have the power to set wages and working conditions at nursing homes across the state. New York and California have boards with more limited authority to set wages for farm laborers and fast food workers, respectively. A half-dozen other states and cities have created similar boards to make recommendations on specific sectors including agriculture and home care.
Mercy Hospital doctors notch win in union effort
A federal hearing officer sided with Allina doctors who voted to unionize at Mercy Hospital in Fridley and Coon Rapids in March in what could be the first private-sector doctors’ union in Minnesota.
Allina Health challenged the election, in which doctors voted 67 to 38 in favor of unionizing with Doctors Council SEIU. The health system argued that three physicians abused their supervisory powers to coerce their colleagues into supporting the union.
The federal hearing officer for the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees private sector unions, wrote in his report that the doctors are not “statutory supervisors” and even if they were, did not engage in unlawful pro-union conduct.
The health system has the chance to appeal the ruling recommendation, and is considering its options, according to a spokesperson. In a statement, the Allina Health spokesperson said the health system was “disappointed” in the results of the union vote and the hearing officer’s report.
Hundreds of advanced care practitioners — including doctors, physician assistants and nurse practitioners — at Allina’s primary care facilities are also trying to unionize. Ballots began going out on Thursday and will be tallied on Oct. 13. If successful, the more than 550 health care providers at 61 clinics in Minnesota and Wisconsin could form the nation’s largest private-sector union of clinicians.
Minnesota disappearing workforce
Minnesota’s economy faces a number of demographic headwinds: Baby Boomers are retiring, fertility rates are low and more people are moving out of the state than moving in.
These forces pose a significant challenge to employers already struggling to find workers and is most severe in low-wage sectors like home care and retail.
These workforce problems are detailed in a report released Monday by data analytics firms, Presbyterian Homes and Services and the Minnesota Business Partnership, a trade group representing Minnesota’s biggest companies. The Reformer’s Madison McVan summarized the report here.
The report points to several ways to bring people into the workforce like increasing flexibility (Reformer’s Christopher Ingraham also wrote this week about the persistent demand for telework).
One idea for attracting workers is notably absent, however: Raising wages.
17,000 Minnesota paychecks on the line
A partial federal shutdown could affect nearly 17,000 Minnesotans who are federal civilian employees.
U.S. House Republicans continue to struggle to produce a plan to fund the government past the end of the month, which means millions of workers could temporarily lose income. That threatens the broader economy as those workers hunker down and decrease their spending. Most federal workers would be furloughed — essentially a forced unpaid vacation — while essential workers in the military and transportation would have to continue working without pay.
Members of Congress will continue receiving paychecks, however.
Minnesota’s U.S. Rep. Angie Craig introduced a bill that would cut pay to members of Congress like other federal employees in the event of a shutdown. She named it the “My Constituents Cannot Afford Rebellious Tantrums, Handle Your (MCCARTHY) Shutdown Act.”
Kids on the night shift
The New York Times’ Hannah Dreier published another long-read dispatch from dangerous meat-packing plants, which depend on the labor of young teenagers from Mexico and Central America.
Early this year, Dreier published the first in her investigation into the crisis of child labor in America’s most dangerous industries, including meatpacking, food processing and construction. Dreier’s reporting revealed how the Biden administration and federal agencies ignored warnings that migrant children were working grueling jobs in their effort to quickly move kids out of immigration facilities.
The Biden administration responded by stepping up child-labor enforcement, but Dreier reports in her latest piece that that did little to dissuade companies like Perdue and Tyson. Nor did serious injuries of its workers, like 14-year-old Marcos Cux, who had his arm nearly torn off and is featured in Dreier’s latest story.
It wasn’t until Perdue found out that she was reporting on their slaughterhouse in Parksley, Virginia, that they started firing their child workers. Some of those kids have since gone back to work, however. Marcos, with a mangled arm, got a job again sifting through industrial chicken coops to pull out dead birds.
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