The Hennepin County Board of Commissioners meets September 8^th to set the upper end of the county levy. The levy provides critical funding for many public services and institutions in Hennepin County. Follow the jump to read more about what you can do to ensure we fund crucial needs in Hennepin County!

If the Board of Commissioners does not consider the impact of cuts to GAMC on Hennepin County Medical Center there may not be sufficient resources to continue valuable public services in the future.

Together, we must connect with Hennepin County Commissioners to ask them to set a levy that protects both county services and the Hennepin County Medical Center.

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District 1 – Mike Opat – (612) 348-7881

Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, north Crystal, northwest Minneapolis, north New Hope, Osseo and Robbinsdale

District 2 – Mark Stenglein – (612) 348-7882

Crystal, Golden Valley, Medicine Lake, north and northeast Minneapolis, south New Hope, southeast Plymouth and St. Anthony

District 3 – Gail Dorfman – (612) 348-7883

St. Louis Park and South West Minneapolis

District 4 – Peter McLaughlin – (612) 348-7884

East, South and Downtown Minneapolis and Fort Snelling

District 5 – Randy Johnson – (612) 348-7885

Bloomington, Eden Prairie, and Richfield

District 6 – Jan Callison – (612) 348-7886

Deephaven, northern Eden Prairie, Edina, Excelsior, Greenwood, Hopkins, Long Lake, Minnetonka, Minnetonka Beach, most of Orono, Shorewood, Tonka Bay, Wayzata and Woodland.

District 7 – Jeff Johnson – (612) 348-7887

Champlin, Corcoran, Dayton, Greenfield, the Township of Hassan, Independence, Loretto, Maple Grove, Maple Plain, Medina, Minnetrista, Mound, Rogers, St. Bonifacius, Spring Park, and portions of Hanover, west Orono, northwest Plymouth and Rockford.

A2400 Government Center, 300 S. Sixth St., Minneapolis, MN 55487-0240

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By making a call or writing a letter today, you can help make sure the commissioners act to protect the services our communities depend on.

Temporary workers from two temporary agencies working at Lettieri’s, a Shakopee factory owned by Hot Stuff Foods Inc., organized and won an important victory on Wednesday April 8th.

Workers at Hot Stuff Foods approached Workers Interfaith Network (WIN) in early March of this year reporting that for years they had experienced discrimination, humilliation and a lack of respect from supervisors. Workers complained of little to no wage increases, that most workers had no vacation or paid holidays, and that workers would often arrive to the plant on time and be forced to wait for up to two hours for broken machines to be fixed without being paid for their time.  

“Our supervisor would yell at us, tell us to work faster and harder, humilliate us. But we are the ones that are making this company rich. Their own website says they have a sales revenue of $130,000,000, thanks to our work,” said Oscar Sanchez.

Workers met with WIN organizers and determined their demands. Among them were a fair wage increase, an end to discrimination, vacation and paid holidays and to be paid for all hours worked. Workers developed a petition which was supported and signed by the majority of temporary workers at the plant.

After delivering the petition to Lettieri’s management and sending it to Hot Stuff Foods corporate headquarters, almost immediately, workers began to be paid for all hours worked and the most eggregious discrimination stopped. For two months, workers and WIN continued to organize workers at the plant and support in the community. On Wednesday April 8^th, Hot Stuff representatives announced that all temporary workers would receive from 8% to 11% wage increases, and that all workers would now be contracted through only one of the temporary agencies through which they would all be eligible for vacation and paid holidays after six months. Workers also received back wages for hours they spent at the plant waiting for machinery to be repaired.

On May 1^st, Gerania, who has worked for the plant for two years, spoke at a rally for immigrants’ rights to tell others about their victory, and empower other workers to stand up for their rights saying, “people always tell us that because we are temporary workers we don’t have rights. We showed the company and other workers that we can fight and we can win!”

First Annual May Day Picnic

Friday May 1

11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.

Christ Lutheran Church on Capitol Hill

105 University Ave. W. Saint Paul, MN

Eat! Celebrate! Act! Join us as we celebrate our work and take action that calls on the Governor and legislative leaders to pass a budget that sustains the important work of public employees and hospital workers in our communities!

The organizing began in January, when 20 congregational leaders gathered to organize an action designed to get more people of faith involved in WIN’s work. In February, 80 people gathered at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, learned more about these two campaigns, and committed themselves to hosting house parties and gatherings to spread the word.

The first campaign involves public employees who provide critical services to our communities. The second campaign involves ensuring quality care in Twin Cities hospitals and affordable health care coverage for hospital workers. Both campaigns provide us with an opportunity to speak out for tax fairness and investments in crucial public goods that we need to ensure that we can build healthy communities.

Governor Pawlenty is using the state’s budget deficit as an opportunity to move an agenda that reduces the size of government and stereotypes public employees. He has proposed cutting over 3000 state and local workers’ jobs  and freezing the wages of thousands more.  He also wants state workers who keep their jobs to take nearly 5 weeks of unpaid leave.

The Governor is also proposing massive cuts in health care. Thousands would lose health care coverage and hospitals would lose revenues and see increased costs. Twin Cities hospitals that include Fairview Riverside, Fairview Southdale, Childrens’ Hospitals, North Memorial, Methodist Hospital and St. Joe’s have told workers they can’t negotiate until the state budget is settled. Some of these hospitals are already asking for wage freezes in anticipation of the crisis the Governor’s budget would create for hospitals.

To ensure that state employees keep their jobs, to ensure that the vital services those employees provide remain intact, and to ensure that hospitals provide quality care and decent jobs for those who provide the care, people of faith and conscience must call on the Governor and legislative leaders to create a fair system of taxation in Minnesota based on ability to pay.

Middle income Minnesotans pay approximately 12% of their income in taxes every year according to a report released by the State Department of Commerce. The wealthiest Minnesotans pay less than 9%. Changing tax rates so that Minnesotans of Means pay their fair share would go a long way toward protecting workers and protecting our communities!

Our next step? A May 1 Action involving everyone who attended the house parties and YOU! See our post on the May Day Picnic for more details!

The changes promised in the Employee Free Choice Act are long overdue. For the last thirty years, workers in our country have shouldered the burden of falling wages and increased hours on the job. They’ve taken more responsibility for their health care and retirement security. And they’ve taken on more and more debt to make ends meet.

When workers come together to change these circumstances, they routinely face interference, intimidation, and, in some cases, firings.

All of this goes against our values and our history. America’s religious traditions almost unanimously support organizing in the workplace. And religious leaders have made a significant difference in taking actions that put these teachings into practice and lead to real changes for workers.

WIN leaders know that something different is possible. That’s why Worker leaders from the Interfaith Center have been holding workshops on the Act and getting postcards signed. That’s why Congregational leaders are asking people of faith to sign on to postcards as well.

Now WIN will launch a new initiative: a clergy sign on letter to call on Congress to take swift and effective action to make it easier for workers to organize and harder for employers to interfere without significant consequence.

The timing of all of this organizing couldn’t be better. Congress has already introduced the Employee Free Choice Act and will soon begin debating and voting on the proposal.

Want to get people in your congregation to sign cards? Want to ask your clergy leader to sign the letter? Call Lee at 612-332-2055!

The journey to justice for these Indian workers began almost from the moment they arrived in the United States. Signal National LLC, a major defense contractor, recruited about 500 workers from India to work in the shipyards of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Workers were told that if they paid a fee of $20,000, they would get good work, green cards, and the chance to bring their families to the United States. Many sold ancestral land and mortgaged farms to come. They also agreed to pay off some of the fee through their work in New Orleans.

When workers arrived, they faced a different reality. Instead of giving them green cards, Signal brought workers to the United States on H2B visas, part of a guestworker program that only grants workers legal status in the United States if they are employed by a company that recruited and hired them. They were also told that they could only stay in the country for 10 months. Unable to earn enough to pay off their $20,000 fee to the company, workers essentially worked in involuntary servitude and lived in labor camps in Texas and Mississippi.

Workers ultimately filed human trafficking charges against Signal. They also lost their jobs, rendering them ineligible to work in the United States. In the Spring, workers marched from New Orleans to Washington in the spirit of Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement to demand that the Department of Justice investigate Signal. Over several months, the Department has interviewed 8 workers and taken non conclusive action.

Workers, in the meantime, needed to be able to earn money for themselves and their families. They dispersed across the country. 23 arrived in Fargo and began working on an ethanol plant. When the work was completed, ICE raided the facility and put workers in jail. They face three felony counts.

The fight these workers are waging is also WIN’s fight. We join this struggle with them because:

• We are tired of living with broken laws that hurt workers and benefit employers.
• We are tired of living with broken governmental agencies, more interested in practicing politics than protecting workers.
• We have a vision of an economy that protects workers and meets their needs first, a vision threatened by employers who would engage in unscrupulous acts to make a larger profit.

Here’s what you can do!

• Fast on December 18 in solidarity with workers.
• Join religious leaders, labor leaders, and Congressman Keith Ellison for a press conference on December 18 at 2:30 at the federal building in downtown Minneapolis.
• Call Congressman John Conyers at 202-225-3951 and Senator Patrick Leahy at 202-224-7703. Congressman Conyers and Senator Patrick Leahy chair the judicial committees in the House and Senate. Thank them for supporting these workers, and ask them to intervene. Ask them to call on the Department of Justice to grant Indian workers trafficked into the US by Signal National LLC “continued status” and ask them to ensure that the Department of Justice prosecutes the traffickers.
• Pray for workers! You can also reach them by email at courageincaptivity@gmail.com

At 7 p.m. on the 21st, Kim will read from her new book, Wage Theft In America: Why Millions of Workers Are Not Getting Paid and What We Can Do About It.

Rev. Nolan Johnson, Director of the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, North Carolina and a prominent religious leader involved in the movement for worker justice, had this to say about Kim’s book:

“In what has been described as “the crime wave no one talks about,” billions of dollars worth of wages are stolen from millions of workers in the United States every year. The scope of these abuses is as staggering as it is wrong—paying employees far less than the legal minimum wage, purposefully misclassifying employees as independent contractors, illegally denying workers overtime pay—and only now are people beginning to take notice.

Nationally recognized labor activist Kim Bobo’s Wage Theft in America is an incisive handbook for organizers, workers, and concerned citizens on how to prevent the flagrant exploitation of America’s working people. Offering a sweeping analysis of the crisis and providing concrete solutions, with special attention to what the new presidential administration should do, Wage Theft in America addresses one of the most egregious and unfair practices affecting workers today.”

Kim’s a dynamic speaker with an important message. We’ll have more information about where the reading’s taking place right after the first of the year. Please join us!

This local private equity group recently purchased a paper pulp mill in Oregon that employs 100 workers.  After they bought the mill, Wayzata Investment Partners fired workers and informed them that they could reapply for their old jobs if they were willing to take pay cuts of 12%-28%. But it gets worse…

The private equity group also eliminated pensions and health insurance for retirees and are working to implement a health care plan that would require workers to pay a $3000 deductible and up to $10,000 in out of pocket expenses.

Workers are willing to work for the same wages and benefits they had under previous ownership. We hope that Patrick Halloran of Wayzata Investment Partners will partner with workers and negotiate in good faith, but there are reasons to be concerned. Private equity firms often deeply cut wages and benefits as a means of “reducing costs” and then sell the companies for large profits.

If you want to carpool, join us at 312 Central Ave. SE in Minneapolis at 11.

At their best, unions are a concrete tool for developing democracy and power among workers. They have allowed many workers to move from poverty to the middle class. They protect many workers from unsafe and inhumane work environments. And they give workers a chance to share their expertise and wisdom in creating a better workplace.

Unfortunately, too many employers make it too difficult for workers to form a union. An employer can voluntarily begin negotiating with workers when they come forward to say they want a union. Few if any employers take that path, though. Instead, they call for an “election” supervised by the National Labor Relations Board.

Unfortunately, these “elections” are unlike anything we would tolerate in our democracy. Over 90% of employers hire outside consulting firms to advise them when workers decide to come together to make things better at work. These firms often encourage employers to use unethical and sometimes illegal tactics to keep workers from organizing. Workers who support organizing are sometimes fired, even though it’s illegal. Some workers have their work hours changed. Employers call captive audience meetings and require workers to listen to anti-union speakers. Some workers are called into private meetings with multiple managers who use fear and misinformation to persuade workers to vote against forming a union.

In the meantime, employers frequently ban anyone working for a union from speaking to workers about the advantages available to workers who come together to organize. Imagine a political campaign where one party could run commercials all day and all night for no cost while the opposing party was banned from even mailing out a postcard!

EFCA would allow workers to decide how they would make the decision to form a union. Workers who want to use the existing NLRB election process could still do so. Other workers could choose to use a “card check” process that prevents employers from using strongarm tactics and involves asking workers to sign cards indicating that they want to form a union. When a simple majority of workers fill out cards, employers would have to begin negotiation with workers over wages, benefits, and working conditions.

WIN will be developing materials for you to use in your congregation to help make the Employee Free Choice Act a reality. If you want to use these resources to make life easier for workers in our community, email matt@workersinterfaith.org or caitlin@workersinterfaith.org