95% of teacher contracts settled after slowest negotiation cycle — and other labor news

Micha Langenberg (left) and David Christiansen, members of the union bargaining committee, embrace after a news conference on March 5, 2024 announcing a tentative agreement between St. Paul Public Schools and the St. Paul Federation of Educators. Photo by Max Nesterak/Minnesota Reformer.

Take a seat in the Break Room, our weekly round-up of labor news in Minnesota and beyond. This week: Most teacher contracts settled; lawmakers announce “deal” on Uber and Lyft rates; Mayo Clinic nurses go on the march; U.S. Rep. Angie Craig pitches pay hike for delivery drivers; unaccompanied migrant minors flock to meatpacking towns; Guthrie front-facing staff move to unionize; and union pay raises outpace non-union. 

Most teacher contracts settled

It’s been the slowest negotiating cycle for public school teacher contracts in the 20 years that the state teachers union, Education Minnesota, has been keeping track. But they’re nearly all settled now.

Ninety-five percent of teacher unions have reached deals on new contracts with school districts, according to Education Minnesota. The major districts left to settle are Burnsville, Shakopee and Waconia.

The average pay increases in the contracts are 4.3% in the first year and 3.5% in the second, noticeably higher than the 2.2% average salary increase over the past several years, according to Education Minnesota.

Despite the lengthy negotiations, no teachers went on strike in Minnesota this year. Some union chapters did authorize strikes shortly before reaching deals, including those in St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Lakeville public school teachers announced a tentative agreement on Monday after calling for a strike that could have started as soon as today. The union would not immediately release details of the agreement, but union leaders heralded the proposed contract.

“After the hardest fight for a fair contract our union has ever experienced, we’re so proud of the agreement we’ve reached with the district,” said Johannah Surma, the lead negotiator and an English as a Second Language teacher, in a statement.

Lawmakers announce deal without Uber and Lyft

Legislative leaders announced a deal with members of the Minneapolis City Council for minimum pay rates for Uber and Lyft drivers. The companies quickly dismissed the deal, saying they would leave Minnesota if the rates take effect. Gov. Tim Walz, who vetoed minimum rates for drivers last year after a similar threat from Uber, said the deal was a “positive step,” but he remains committed to finding a goal that keeps the companies in the state.

The rates — $1.27 per mile and 49 cents per minute — are above the high range of those proposed in a state analysis of driver earnings, which estimates Twin Cities drivers need to earn 89 cents per mile and 49 cents per minute to cover their vehicle costs and taxes and still earn the Minneapolis minimum wage of $15.57 per hour. The researchers also estimated a higher rate of $1.20 per mile and 49 cents per minute, which would compensate drivers for benefits including health insurance, retirement savings, paid family and medical leave, sick leave and worker’s compensation.

House Democrats passed the bill out of the labor committee on a party-line vote and it was taken up in the Ways and Means Committee on Friday morning.

Lawmakers are sprinting to reach a deal before the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn on May 20.

Mayo Clinic nurses march for union

A nascent unionization effort at Mayo Clinic’s flagship campus is growing more visible. About 50 nurses and supporters marched through downtown Rochester on Monday morning for the first day of National Nurses Week.

“It’s kind of the dawn of a new age where we’re trying to empower nurses in a whole new capacity,” Mayo Clinic labor and delivery nurse Tiffany Lawler told the Rochester Post Bulletin.

Lawler is the founder of the Med City Nursing Alliance, a proposed union that could represent more than 6,000 nurses if successful. Mayo Clinic is notoriously hard to unionize: No group of nurses has successfully unionized at a Mayo facility. There are unionized nurses at Mayo system hospitals, but they were unionized prior to Mayo purchasing the facilities, and some have dissolved their unions in recent years, with Mayo’s tacit support.

Lawler says nurses at Mayo Clinic, even with its sterling reputation for patient care, need a union to advocate for better pay and higher staffing levels.

Mayo Clinic effectively killed a bill last year that would have given nurses across the state a greater say in staffing levels by threatening to move billions in future investments out of state.

Also this week, unionized staff at Mayo’s St. Mary’s hospital — including patient escorts, janitors and surgical technologists — delivered a petition to hospital leaders demanding better wages, limits on mandatory overtime and higher staffing levels, the Post Bulletin reported.

U.S. Rep. Craig pitches raises for delivery drivers

Democratic U.S. Rep. Angie Craig introduced a bill in the House on Wednesday that would require businesses that accept food stamps online to pay prevailing wages to their delivery drivers, including those working on platforms like Instacart and Uber Eats.

“This is a common sense bill to ensure food retailers who receive SNAP funding pay their delivery workers a fair wage and provide safe, reliable online delivery service to families across my district who rely on SNAP,” Craig said in a statement.

Paying a prevailing wage is often required on publicly funded construction projects and is set according to what a majority of workers earn in a given job — typically it’s the union wage. The rationale is that the government shouldn’t force down wages in funding public works. It’s unclear what a prevailing wage would be for delivery drivers, most of whom are treated as independent contractors and not even guaranteed a minimum wage.

(The minimum pay rates Minnesota lawmakers are debating for Uber and Lyft drivers won’t apply to food delivery drivers.)

Craig’s bill, called the Food and Nutrition Delivery Safety Act, is unlikely to move very far in the Republican-controlled U.S. House. Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, both Democrats, introduced a companion bill in the Senate earlier this year.

Unaccompanied minors flock to meatpacking towns

Worthington, Austin, Willmar, Marshall and St. James all have meat processing plants. They also have unusually high numbers of migrant children living with unrelated adults, according to an analysis by Chris Ingraham of government data released by the New York Times.

More than 4,700 unaccompanied minor migrants, mostly from Central and South America, have been released to Minnesota since 2015. Many of these kids have ended up working dangerous jobs in food processing facilities across the country, which New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier has exposed in a series of stories over the past year, earning a Pulitzer Prize for her work this week.

State and federal regulators have gone after multiple Minnesota meatpacking plants and their subcontractors for illegally employing children, including Tony Downs Food Company in Madelia, JBS in Worthington, Turkey Valley Farms in Marshall, and Buckhead Meat in St. Cloud.

Guthrie front-facing workers announce union drive

Front-facing staff at the Guthrie Theater — including workers in the box office, guest services and public safety — announced a union drive with IATSE Local 13 on Facebook on Tuesday. They are asking the theater, whose production staff are already unionized, to voluntarily recognize their union, which would cover roughly 135 workers. The theater is considering the request, according to the Star Tribune.

Union workers see bigger raises

American workers in a union have won record raises over the past year, while nonunion workers’ pay has barely surpassed inflation, according to the latest federal data reported by Bloomberg.

Private-sector union workers saw their pay rise 6.3% in the last 12-month period ending in March, the largest increase since 2001. By contrast, pay for nonunion private-sector workers rose 4.1%, which is still above inflation.

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