Coming into this week after observing Labor Day, we’ve been reflecting on our collective power as workers. Unions are more popular than ever, workers are winning, and there is a lot to celebrate:
🏫 Educators and service workers with Minneapolis Public Schools won big contracts this past spring for #SafeAndStableSchools.
💪 Restaurant Opportunities Center, SEIU, CTUL and Awood Center won $100,000 to combat wage theft in Minneapolis.
✊ Multiple Minnesota Starbucks unionized and a South Minneapolis Starbucks recently went on strike to push for a first contract.
There’s more work to do.
Across the state, workers are joining together to fight for safer workplaces and living wages, and they need our support:
⚕️ Minnesota Nurses will strike next week, September 12-14, for safer working conditions that put #PatientsBeforeProfits. We are ALL patients – we all have a stake in making sure the nurses win this fight for the resources they need in order to take care of us when we’re most in need. Donate to their strike fund, and stand in solidarity at a picket line.
🌐 AT&T workers are organizing to protect their health and wellbeing after the communications corporation decided to force workers to go back to the office this month with little notice. Returning to the office would mean over 3 hours per day of travel time, a pay cut of over $550 per month, and an unnecessary risk of COVID exposure. Let AT&T know it’s time to prove it cares about the health and wellbeing of workers. Sign this petition urging AT&T to make work-from-home a permanent option for AT&T employees, and rally with workers this Saturday.
💪 SEIU Healthcare workers continue to push for fair wages and more support for mental health care providers. After many months of negotiations, mental health workers at Allina Health’s ANW, Unity hospitals and Fairview Riverside voted overwhelmingly to give negotiators strike leverage. While they won’t be on strike with the nurses, they have given a 10-day solidarity picket notice and will be walking the line alongside the nurses.
These fights are connected.
From the corner coffee shop to the community clinic to the call center, we are all in the same fight: we are standing up for people over profits. We are demanding fair wages, a safe environment, and the ability to live a stable, joyful life for every worker.
The wins we see across Minnesota are proof positive that organizing works. When we fight together, we are more powerful than big money.
In a system built to benefit greedy corporations, working class solidarity is key to our liberation. As TakeAction Minnesota’s Strategic Partnerships Director and a former member of CWA 7250, I (Yolanda) never miss an opportunity to join a picket line, support comrades organizing for just workplaces and communities, and sing songs of connection and liberation.
I’ll be in touch soon with more ways to support workers. In the meantime, see you on the picket line!
Yolanda Roth (she/her), Strategic Partnerships Director
