Minnesota
Minnesota Strikes Show Growing Militancy Among Food Workers
It wasn’t such a merry Christmas for grocery store management in central Minnesota. Five hundred grocery workers in the Brainerd Lakes area walked out on an unfair labor practice strike, deserting five stores between December 22 and 25.
Management tried to keep the stores running, but workers said they turned into disaster zones. Why did two Cub Foods stores, two Super Ones, and a SuperValu find themselves on Santa’s naughty list last year? United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 663 charges management with interrogation, surveillance, intimidation, and bargaining in bad faith.
Those misdeeds included infiltrating a WhatsApp group chat for workers and stationing “loss prevention” employees — who normally focus on catching shoplifters — near the store exits to intimidate workers out of participating in walkouts leading up to the strike.
The union’s top bargaining demand is a raise. Wages have been stagnant a long time and lag behind what grocery workers are making a few hours south in the Twin Cities. Part-time wages are especially uncompetitive; turnover is high.
The strike made waves in Brainerd Lakes, a metro area of thirty thousand. It “really united workers at our store,” said Doug Olson, who has worked at Baxter Cub Foods for seventeen years. “Men and women, part-time, full-time, people of all different political beliefs. It’s really heartening to see the unity we’ve had.”
Olson works on the clean team, sometimes called the courtesy or maintenance team. They wipe up spills, clean the bathrooms, take out the garbage, bag groceries, and shovel snow — and get paid on a lower scale than other grocery workers. The union is fighting to eliminate the separate pay scale and bring clean-team workers up to par.
Management hasn’t budged since the Christmas strike, refusing to put more money on the table even after its attorney admitted it can afford the union’s proposal. But the workers may be equally stubborn. On January 18, they voted to reject management’s latest proposal by 84 percent, laying the groundwork for another potential strike.
“I believe this contract could make or break this store,” said Olson, who would like to retire from Cub one day. “Things are just going to get worse and worse otherwise. We really need to win this one.”
It’s the first time in recent memory that there are buttons, walkouts, and raised expectations in Brainerd. Vigorous contract fights are the exception, rather than the rule, in the UFCW. That’s one of the chief complaints of the burgeoning UFCW reform movement anchored by Washington State’s Local 3000, the union’s largest local with fifty thousand members.
Four hundred Local 3000 members at Macy’s went on a three-day strike over Thanksgiving, and they were out on strike again as this story went to press. In 2022 the local spearheaded an ambitious coordinated bargaining effort with seven other UFCW locals representing one hundred thousand Kroger workers in Western states.
Local 663, which represents seventeen thousand members across Minnesota, did not support the proposals put forward by the reform group Essential Workers for Democracy at the UFCW international convention last April, which were backed by Local 3000 and a handful of other reform-minded locals.
But the union underwent a major shift at the beginning of 2023 when its former organizing director Rena Wong became president. She was voted in by the executive board to complete the term of the previous president, who had stepped down.
Before Wong, the union had conservative leaders for decades. “The union leadership failed us,” said Olson. “They were more interested in labor peace and getting along with the owners than in helping us secure better wages and benefits. They would settle for whatever management offered them. They just rolled over, over and over again.” That labor peace has now been decisively broken. Last spring, thirty thousand Cub Foods workers in the Twin Cities launched a contract campaign, voting to strike thirty-three stores.
When they threatened to strike all the stores over Easter — one of the biggest grocery-shopping holidays — management caved. The workers won raises of $2.50–$3.50 an hour and got rid of the lower pay scale for the clean team.
This success built an appetite among stewards and members to bring the same kind of organizing and militancy to the local’s other contract fights, according to Paul Kirk-Davidoff, a steward at Seward Community Coop in Minneapolis. “A base for continued change in the union came from the contract campaign at Cub,” he said. “It convinced a lot of people.”
Workers at Lunds & Byerlys stores, and then at Kowalski’s, mounted strike threats over the summer, winning raises of up to $4 over two years. In October, workers at Seward Community Coop won even higher raises of at least $6.50 over three years, as well as the right for cashiers to sit in chairs.
The new leadership has encouraged a new spirit of activism, taking a more open approach and bringing more rank-and-file workers onto the negotiating team — whereas the role of workers in the union used to be more like “window dressing,” Olson said. The energy has spread to Local 663’s fights for first contracts — workers struck last summer at four Half Price Books stores, jointly organized with Local 1189 — and to its members in meatpacking, the UFCW’s other traditional core sector.
Workers at the Hormel Foods plant in Austin‚ Minnesota — the site of the bitterly fought 1985 strike that pitted then Local P-9 against the international union itself — won a contract in October with record raises of $3–$6, as part of national negotiations across five plants. Workers at the Austin plant had voted to reject a “final offer” from the company, and hundreds marched through town in a Labor Day show of force.
The resistance at Hormel has been a bright spot for the UFCW in meatpacking, a sector where union density has fallen precipitously, once-reigning master contracts have been all but dismantled, and the workforce, largely immigrants and workers of color, is notoriously exploited.
Case in point: coming up next is Local 663’s contract fight with the chicken processor Tony Downs Foods, in Madelia, southwest Minnesota. The employer was fined $300,000 last year for employing children as young as thirteen to operate meat grinders, forklifts, and ovens.
A rest area along Interstate 94 in Minnesota has been closed to trucks until about Independence Day to accommodate an almost $3 million improvement project.
The eastbound I-94 Enfield rest area between St. Cloud, Minnesota and the Twin Cities between Wright County Road 8 and Highway 25 is now closed to cars and commercial vehicles as crews resurface the entrance and exit ramps, and update nearby sidewalks.
According to KNSI, the full closure is just the first phase of the project. The rest area will reopen to passenger vehicles only the week of May 11th. During that time, the truck parking area will remain closed as crews repave the lot.
The truck parking lot will reopen the week of June 30th, right around Independence Day. During that time, the passenger vehicle area will be shut down to allow for the resurfacing of the lot. The Minnesota DOT expects the rest area to be fully open by late July. The entire project is expected to cost $2.9 million.
Drivers heading east on I-94 are encouraged to use the Big Spunk Lake rest area near Avon, or to drive a little farther out to the Elm Creek rest area.
Could a UCLA baseball team that’s perfect in Big Ten play get better?
Bruins coach John Savage thinks so, which is a frightening prospect for the rest of a seemingly overmatched conference.
While Savage’s top-ranked Bruins completed a three-game sweep of Minnesota on Sunday with a 5-2 victory at Jackie Robinson Stadium — stretching their Big Ten winning streak to 21 games — he said there’s more upside to be realized.
“Offensively, we just really couldn’t get a lot going,” Savage said after his team went 1-for-5 with runners in scoring position and stranded six baserunners. “We just weren’t able to put a lot together, but when that pitching and defense shows up every day, it gives yourself a chance to win, and that’s kind of what we did all three games, really.”
Those elements were so good Sunday that they overshadowed Roman Martin’s solo homer in the third inning and Will Gasparino’s two-run shot in the sixth.
Bruins left fielder Dean West made three superb catches — two leaping and one diving — and four relievers combined to give up only one run in 4 ⅔ innings. Closer Easton Hawk needed only six pitches to record a 1-2-3 ninth inning while notching his third save in as many days.
Savage credited Minnesota’s pitching after the Golden Gophers (22-17 overall, 5-13 Big Ten) held the Bruins (36-3) to an average of five runs during the series and said many of his team’s offensive struggles were situational.
“We have very, very good offensive players — some of them are in … little ruts right now, but that’s OK,” Savage said. “These guys play a lot and get a lot of at-bats; there’s a lot of ups and downs.”
When it comes to UCLA’s conference record, it’s all been up.
What it means
UCLA’s sweep is further evidence that the Bruins aren’t getting complacent because of their record.
“This culture is really solid, and these guys truly believe in one another and they’re playing for the team,” Savage said. “We’re very fortunate to have this group, and so they love playing together, so there’s no complacency and there’s no reason to because we haven’t done anything; I mean, you’re 36-3, that’s great, but at the end of the day it’s about getting better and playing your best baseball the next 75 days.”
Turning point
Spotting a dominant team an early lead is never a good idea.
That’s what happened when the Bruins struck for two runs in the bottom of the first inning.
West led off with a single to center field, took third on Roch Cholowsky’s double to left and scored on a balk. With one out, Martin hit an RBI infield single off the pitcher’s glove. UCLA was up 2-0, and the Golden Gophers could never catch up.
Did you see that?
Minnesota did not like it when Gasparino admired his home run by lingering in the batter’s box before commencing his trot around the bases.
There was consensus in both dugouts because Savage also didn’t care for it.
“I thought he probably stayed in the box a little too long for me,” Savage said. “That’s kind of not who we are, and they didn’t like that; I wouldn’t like that either, really.”
MVP
West saved multiple extra-base hits with his catches.
Which was his favorite?
“Probably the diving one,” West said. “I think that was the coolest one. I got to leave my feet and make a play on it.”
Up next
The Bruins will open a five-game stretch of nonconference games when they host Hawaii on Tuesday evening at Jackie Robinson Stadium.
Of the many terrible roster decisions Minnesota sports teams have made over the past 30 years, the worst of the bunch may have been trading Randy Moss to the Raiders for the No. 7 pick in the draft and linebacker Napoleon Harris.
Why are we bringing up a trade that happened 21 years ago? Because the New York Giants traded defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence to the Cincinnati Bengals for the No. 10 pick in this week’s NFL Draft. It was the first time a non-quarterback has been traded for a top-10 pick since the infamous Moss trade in 2005.
Minnesota traded Moss for the Raiders’ first-round pick, Harris, and a seventh-round pick on March 2, 2005. The Vikings used the No. 7 pick on wide receiver Troy Williamson, who never panned out in the NFL. He had 24 catches for 372 yards and two touchdowns as a rookie, 37 receptions for 457 yards and zero touchdowns in 2006, and just 18 catches for 240 yards and one touchdown in 2007.
Williams led the league with 11 dropped passes in 2006. Minnesota traded him to the Jacksonville Jaguars for a sixth-round pick after the 2007 season, where he played in 10 games over two seasons and totaled just eight catches for 64 yards. He was cut before the start of the 2010 season, and that was a wrap on the former South Carolina speedster’s NFL career.
Moss didn’t put up jaw-dropping numbers with the Raiders for two seasons, but he set an NFL record with 23 touchdown catches in 2007 with the New England Patriots. He caught 47 touchdowns in 48 regular-season games with the Patriots from 2007 to 2009.
Whether it was trading Moss to the Raiders, the Timberwolves sending Kevin Garnett to the Boston Celtics — or drafting Ricky Rubio AND Johnny Flynn over Steph Curry — or the Twins cutting David Ortiz and watching him become one of the greatest players in MLB history with the Boston Red Sox, Minnesota sports teams have a long history of making terrible decisions.
The Bengals, meanwhile, gave up the 10th overall pick for one of the best defensive tackles in the league. They’ll likely get great production from Lawrence, while the Giants are now under pressure to get the 10th pick right. New York also holds the No. 5 pick in Thursday’s first round of the draft.
By the way, the Vikings had two picks in the first round of the 2005 draft. After taking Williamson, they used the No. 18 pick on defensive end Erasmus James. He was just as much of a bust as Williams, playing in 23 games in three years with the Vikings. He had four sacks as a rookie, but injuries wiped out most of his 2006 and 2007 seasons before he was traded to Washington for a conditional seventh-round pick.
James was cut by Washington in December 2009, marking the end of his NFL career.
Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow
-
New York1 hour agoGotti Grandson Is Sentenced to 15 Months for Covid Relief Fraud
-
Detroit, MI2 hours agoWhy a Detroit family’s $300 brick repair job turned into a fraud investigation
-
San Francisco, CA2 hours agoSea lion pup found in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset malnourished but ‘feisty’
-
Dallas, TX2 hours agoDallas Cowboys 2026 NFL Draft debate heats up
-
Miami, FL2 hours agoMan arrested in Miami for alleged sexual battery on 10-year-old girl – WSVN 7News | Miami News, Weather, Sports | Fort Lauderdale
-
Boston, MA2 hours agoFormer BYU star Clayton Young crushes lifetime best in Boston — on short notice
-
Denver, CO2 hours agoColorado boasts two of the best coffee shops in the Americas, according to new ranking
-
Seattle, WA3 hours agoDelta flight from Seoul to Atlanta diverted to Seattle after report of suspicious package