Workday Magazine (https://workdayminnesota.flywheelsites.com/author/tsuperadmin/page/143/)
As legislation to raise the minimum wage to $9.95 makes its way through the Minnesota Legislature, Rep. Jason Metsa, DFL-Virginia, is taking up Working America’s challenge to live on Minnesota’s current minimum wage for five days.
AFSCME Council 5 Monday announced its support for marriage equality and urged state legislators to extend the freedom to marry to same-sex couples throughout Minnesota.
May 1 is the deadline to apply for the Nellie Stone Johnson Scholarships for the 2013-2014 academic year.
Fed up with wages so low that they often face eviction, and lack of power to fight for a decent living standard, thousands of New York City fast food workers staged a second 1-day walkout from their jobs, on April 4. The workers, led by the Fast Food Forward, a community-based organizing group, demanded living wages of $15 an hour – barely enough to survive on in New York – and the right to organize without employer interference. It was their second walkout. The first was last November.
Labor activist, agitator and journalist Harry Kelber, longtime writer and editor of The Labor Educator and crusader/critic of AFL-CIO leaders, practices and perpetuation in office, died March 31 in New York City. He was 98. Starting as a union printer in 1939, Kelber carved out a career for himself in New York liberal and sometimes radical unionism, challenging established authority and agitating for open and democratic procedures within the labor movement.
For seven years, Carolle Fleurio has been a cook at a family restaurant in Stockbridge, Ga. It’s a nice place, she says, where people come in to enjoy the atmosphere and the meals she cooks. But one thing wrong with her job, Fleurio adds, is the pay. She makes $8 an hour. That’s only slightly more than the U.S. minimum wage and only slightly more than the $6.85 she earned hourly when she began – and it’s not enough to raise a family on.
If you worked in 2012, you may be eligible for federal and state tax credits that will put money back in your pocket. You could be eligible to get money back from the IRS — as much as $5,891.
“Come on, let’s make some noise!” The crowd filling the State Capitol rotunda and two levels of balconies roared out in loud reply to Harry Melander, president of the Minnesota State Building and Construction Trades Council, as he led-off a March 14 rally.
“Thank you for coming,” Melander told hundreds of Building Trades union members. “It’s a much different place here this year — and it’s due to you.”
In the richest nation on earth, it’s wrong for anyone who works full time to live in poverty. Yet millions of Americans who work a 40-hour week are unable to lift their families out of poverty. Imagine supporting your family on just $14,500 a year. That’s what a full-time, minimum-wage job pays. Wages come to less than $279 a week – and that’s before taxes.
Tickets are available now for the annual Building Trades night at Target Field, planned for Tuesday, June 11. The Minnesota Twins will play the Philadelphia Phillies at 7:10PM. A pre-game picnic will begin at 4:30 p.m. at the Minneapolis Farmers Market, and a free shuttle bus will run between the Farmers Market and Target Field.
