MINNEAPOLIS –Three years ago, the Jimmy John’s fast food chain fired six Minneapolis sandwich workers for putting up over 3,000 posters publicizing a grisly truth: Company policy and low pay routinely forced them to come to work and make sandwiches while they’re sick.

With support from the clients they serve, Minnesota workers who care for people in their homes officially filed representation election cards in early July to form a union. Organizing under the slogan, “Invisible No More,” they said unionizing will improve pay, working conditions and the quality of care.

Rail safety and responsible contractor laws were the highlights of the final days of a productive Minnesota state legislative session for workers.

ST. PAUL, Minn.— Minnesota took the lead on comprehensive women’s equity issues, as Gov. Mark Dayton, DFL-Minn., signed the Women’s Economic Security Act, which includes measures to close the gender pay gap, provide more parental leave and more.  He signed the measures on Mother’s Day. The week before, the state legislature approved the package of measures, sponsored by Rep. Carly […]

MINNEAPOLIS and DULUTH, Minn.—The drive to enact a higher state minimum wage in Minnesota gained steam in mid-October with a roundtable on the issue hosted by two Democratic congressmen, and a mass march in Duluth. At the roundtable, workers told Reps. Keith Ellison and Richard Nolan, both D-Minn., what it’s like to live on $7.25 an hour and said the […]

SHAKOPEE, Minn. –Arturo Sanchez is accustomed to working outside in all kinds of weather, making concrete products at Cretex Companies in Shakopee, Minn. He didn’t mind the hard work, he said, because he was earning a decent living and putting money into a pension plan for the day he would retire. Now Cretex wants to take that money and convert […]