Star Tribune
Some Minneapolis workers are getting big raises. Will they all?
Police union: 21.7% raise by July 2025.
Public works Laborers Union: 30% raise by January 2026
Who’s next — and is this sustainable?
The two eyebrow-raising raises are among the largest to come out of recent labor negotiations between the city of Minneapolis and unions that represent the bulk of the city’s roughly 4,000 employees.
More are coming. At least a dozen unions representing more than 1,100 city workers have recently entered or are about to enter bargaining talks with the city as their contracts expire.
Their anticipated raises — and there’s little doubt they will all get raises — are among the primary drivers of a projected $21.6 million budget deficit that threatens to increase residential property taxes more than the steady clip of tax hikes residents have already seen in recent years.
The specter of stiff tax hikes, which would likely hit lower-income and working-class neighborhoods the hardest, is on the minds of Mayor Jacob Frey and City Council members as the mayor prepares his 2025 budget proposal and council members prepare to put their imprint on it.
Frey’s administration says they support reasonable raises for city workers, many of whom have watched their wages stagnate compared to the private sector in the years since the coronavirus pandemic. But, they insist, they’re not about to enter a perpetual upward spiral of raises that will lead to overpaid workers and empty city coffers.
“As a city, Minneapolis has an obligation to allocate public funds responsibly and invest in our world-class workforce,” City Operations Officer Margaret Anderson Kelliher told the Star Tribune. “That’s why we undertook a comprehensive market analysis to help ensure decision making around job classifications and wages is rooted in comparable data and staying competitive in a tight labor market.”
Political dance
It’s a tricky dance politically in a liberal city that’s been a bastion of organized labor for as long as anyone can remember; all 13 council members and Frey portray themselves as friends to labor and champions of workers’ rights — and they often rely on unions and pro-labor groups for campaign resources. Yet they’re also the management for a major employer and custodians of the money of taxpayers struggling to keep up with rising costs — but clamoring for government services.
This came into focus during the recent deliberations over the police union contract, when leaders of the council’s more progressive majority suggested they might not approve the contract if certain conditions weren’t met, including unspecified “pay equity” for workers in another union, AFSCME Local 9, which represents nearly 750 workers across three bargaining units in various city roles.
Frey rebuffed the idea, and the council approved the police contract after public hearings featured numbers of residents calling for raises to fairly compensate cops and recruit new ones. But the signal to AFSCME workers was clear: A majority on the council has the union’s back if they don’t come out of bargaining with a strong enough pay package.
One of the AFSCME units representing about 670 clerical and technical workers recently began talks with the city.
Senior city officials have refused to reveal what figures they used to estimate the raises — the numbers that make up the projected $21.6 million deficit. Disclosing such estimates, they note, could tip their hand in negotiations.
But there’s little doubt that when one union scores a victory, others take notice. One example of that right now: the striking Minneapolis park workers.
Those 300 striking park maintenance workers are members of the Laborers Local 363 — the same union that won record-setting raises for more than 400 city public works employees in March. Last week, the union and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (a separate government entity from the city) squabbled over whether the park board’s latest offer would result in workers being paid more or less than their brethren in similar city positions.
The City Council on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a resolution declaring it “stands in solidarity” with the striking workers.
On Thursday, after the council approved the police union contract, members debated how to pay for it, ultimately approving a plan that appears to spread the costs of future raises across the next two years. It’s not clear that will be an option if other bargaining units succeed in negotiating large raises.
What workers are paid
Here are some examples of annual pay for unionized city employees, not including benefits or overtime, according to city data:
- Top-scale senior assistant city attorney: $176,000
- Building inspectors: from $105,000 to $113,000
- 911 dispatch workers: from $86,000 to $104,000
- Office support staff: from $55,000 to $75,000
- Top-scale custodian at Minneapolis Convention Center: $60,000
- Public works service workers, many of whom drive plows in the winter: $41,000 to $68,000
A good rule of thumb for judging whether those wages are higher or lower than the private sector is this: Jobs that require less training and education often pay more in the public sector, but as the level of education of the worker goes up, the government jobs quickly fall behind the private sector, according to numerous studies from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Like most unionized jobs, the pay goes up the longer you work in the position. Union contracts rarely preclude employers from paying workers more, but merit pay and annual bonuses are rare in government work.
Once workers reach the top scale, they’re unlikely to get a raise until a new contract is inked.
How high are the raises?
Both city officials and union leaders say hefty raises are overdue, as the city struggles to compete with rising wages in the private sector.
Most of the the city’s 22 bargaining units have three-year contracts, a factor that leads to a common phenomenon when comparing government workers, who are largely unionized, to non-government workers, who are generally not: Government workers’ raises tend to lag behind the rest of the workforce.
Statewide, Minnesota wages for both public and private sector workers rose 4.2% from spring 2023 to spring 2024, according to state data. During roughly that same period, nearly every group of city workers, both unionized and non-unionized, saw raises of 2.5% or 3.25%, according to a Star Tribune and city examination of all the labor agreements. Many of those contracts sought to catch up this year, when typical raises ranged from 3.25% to 4.5%, with several bargaining units winning raises between 6.5% and 7.25%.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis has struggled to hang on to workers and attract new ones coming out of the pandemic, mirroring state and national trends. As of January 2023, statewide public sector employment, already the lowest share of the workforce for any state in the nation, remained 3.3% below pre-pandemic levels, according to an analysis by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
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Star Tribune
East Phillips environmental activists get last minute funding deadline extension to buy Roof Depot
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Just one week before the final deadline for East Phillips environmental activists to come up with $11.4 million to buy a city-owned warehouse for their vision of an indoor urban farm, the Minneapolis City Council on Thursday granted the activists a one-year extension to get the funding.
It’s the latest twist in the long fight of East Phillips Neighborhood Institute (EPNI) to gain control of the former Roof Depot warehouse at E. 28th Street and Longfellow Avenue.
For a decade, neighborhood activists have opposed the city’s plans to build a Public Works yard for water maintenance staff, equipment and diesel vehicles — something that city staff said would benefit Minneapolis as a whole despite concentrating more air pollution in the heavily industrialized, working class East Phillips neighborhood.
Council Member Jason Chavez, who represents East Phillips, and his council predecessor Alondra Cano have long opposed building a municipal water yard in the Ninth Ward, while other council members have waffled on the thorny issue.
On Thursday, Chavez won the unanimous support of his colleagues at the City Council meeting for a resolution to extend the funding deadline to September 2025 for EPNI, which was unlikely to come up with the money by the previous deadline of next week.
“This item today that I am bringing forward is a collaborative effort with the mayor’s administration, City Council, staff and the community I represent to find a viable pathway forward, and it shows what we can do when we all work together,” Chavez said.
“I’m proud of the tenacity of East Phillips neighbors, their persistence on human rights and advocacy for clean air. It’s one of the reasons why Ward Nine continues to be hopeful for the future.”
After years of protests and lawsuits, Minneapolis officials gave up on plans to build a water yard at Roof Depot and agreed to sell EPNI the property, provided the group produced a $3.7 million personal guaranty and the Legislature provided $2 million in 2023 followed by $5.7 million in 2024. The Legislature also has committed $4.5 million to Minneapolis to find a new site for its water yard.
Star Tribune
Mesabi Metallics wins small victory with judge allowing its antitrust claims against Cleveland-Cliffs to go to trial
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But in a Wednesday filing, Goldblatt denied Cliffs’ motion for summary judgement, saying there are enough factual disputes to merit a trial in federal district court.
“A (reasonable) jury could find that Mesabi suffered the type of injury that antirust law is intended to prevent,” he wrote.
From 2015 to 2019, Cleveland-Cliffs was by far the largest independent iron ore merchant for the Great Lakes steel business with 73% to 78% of the “non-captive” market for taconite pellets, Mesabi claims. The term “captive” refers to iron mines owned directly by steel companies. In 2020, Cliffs bought two major U.S. steelmakers and now primarily produces iron ore for its own “captive” steel mills.
The Nashwauk plant would have competed with Cliffs in the non-captive market. Essar Minnesota made a critical deal in 2014 to supply taconite pellets to ArcelorMittal’s U.S. subsidiary, then one of the nation’s two largest steelmakers. But ArcelorMittal terminated the contract in 2016 since Essar Minnesota had yet to finish its Nashwauk plant.
Cliffs then signed a 10-year agreement with ArcelorMittal. Mesabi Metallics claims Cliffs structured the contract to give Cliffs exclusive access to Arcelor and shut Mesabi out of the market.
Mesabi Metallics also claims Cliffs’ anticompetitive conduct included blackballing construction contractors who worked on Mesabi’s project. The Jamar Co. and Barr Engineering, two Minnesota prominent contractors, had worked for both Mesabi and Cliffs. Cliffs refused to let Jamar continue to work on ongoing projects – or bid on new ones, Goldblatt’s ruling said. Once Jamar stopped supporting Mesabi, it got its Cliffs business back. A similar tale unfolded with Barr.