Workday Magazine (https://workdayminnesota.flywheelsites.com/author/tsuperadmin/page/303/)
Political expectations have slipped in recent decades; people accept things that were once considered unacceptable. Even after last year\’s tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis, there seemed to be only a temporary burst of public outrage over bridges that are so structurally deficient that they are too weak to repair – bridges that could not withstand the stress of bolting on reinforcement plates.
Labor\’s campaign to ensure company neutrality in Californian organizing drives died June 19 in the U.S. Supreme Court. Analysts say the decision further constricts worker rights.
Mike Hawthorne will be the new business manager for the Minneapolis Building and Construction Trades Council, effective July 1, following the resignation of David Ybarra II. Hawthorne is a 25-year member of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 1 Minnesota/North Dakota.
Union members protested outside a fundraiser for Republican presidential candidate John McCain June 19.
Visit the county fairs in Scott, Carver and Wright counties this summer and you will find a booth hosted by local unions.
Workers at the newest hotel in Minneapolis, Hotel Ivy, have signed union cards and organized as part of UNITE HERE Local 17.
More major labor organizations, including the National Education Association and the AFL-CIO, are poised to support Democratic Senator Barack Obama, D-Ill., in his campaign for the White House.
By a 278-146 vote, the Democratic-run House June 20 voted for between four and eight weeks of paid family leave for the nation\’s 2.7 million federal workers. The paid leave bill says the remaining four weeks of annual family leave for those workers would stay unpaid, as all 12 weeks of leave are now.
Almost seven years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that destroyed New York\’s World Trade Center and unleashed a cloud of toxic fumes and debris that sickened first responders, the federal government still has no coordinated plan for counting those workers, much less treating their illnesses, a new report says.
The National Conference for Media Reform came to Minneapolis June 6-8, attracting more than 3,500 participants from across the nation. The conference, hosted by the advocacy group Free Press, celebrated recent victories in the fight to oppose increasing corporate consolidation in media ownership while at the same time highlighting continuing threats to a free and independent media.
