In July 2024, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) experienced its first worker strike in its 140-year history. The strike was about the terms of a new contract covering 18% of MPRB employees, who were represented by LiUNA Local 363, one of ten unions representing most MPRB employees. (We reviewed the timeline of the strike in May 2025). Several other unions had contracts expiring at the same time, but except for Local 363, all disagreements were settled through negotiation. Only with Local 363 was there a protracted public dispute that culminated with a strike. Earlier in 2024, the same union was negotiating a new contract with the City of Minneapolis, which also turned into a protracted public dispute. While the City’s workers represented by Local 363 voted to strike, the City settled before the strike occurred. Several months later, the MPRB offered Local 363 terms nearly identical to what it had accepted with the City a few months earlier, but the Local 363 Business Manager, AJ Lange, rejected them.
When Local 363 and MPRB finally signed a contract, in early August 2025, Lange declared electoral war upon every Park Board Commissioner who had defied his will. We are in the midst of his war right now. The Far-Left DSA is promoting a slate of Park Board candidates, approved by Lange and his compatriots. Few of these candidates know anything about the parks. Their campaign slogans are borrowed from Omar Fateh: “Parks that work for everyone!” And … “I stand with workers! Workers make the parks what they are!”
Workers represented by Local 363 do help make the parks what they are, but so do the 82% of MPRB workers not represented by Local 363. Others who help make the parks what they are include the Commissioners, the innumerable community volunteers, the Superintendent who manages an operation and budget and staff the size of Woodbury, the philanthropists who have donated generously for new park developments. Then there are the visionaries six generations before us, who set aside land, protected it, created the independent unit to govern the parks and bequeathed the system to us. We have a responsibility to future generations to bequeath a healthy system to them. Will we fulfill that responsibility if we elect as Commissioners candidates who know nothing about the parks, and utter empty slogans about them?
This review is written as an open letter to LiUNA leadership. LiUNA represents 14,000 skilled construction workers and general laborers across Minnesota and North Dakota, of whom 2% are Local 363 MPRB employees. If the candidates being used to prosecute AJ Lange’s war get elected, and then ruin the parks, public wrath likely will be directed at LiUNA and the other unions that are aggressively promoting these candidates. But LiUNA leadership may not be aware of these risks because Local 363 MPRB employees are such a small percentage of all workers that LiUNA represents. Perhaps if leadership sees what is happening in their union’s name, they can take corrective action before it is too late.
Readers who want to see at a glance which park board candidates are “Far-Left DSA” vs “Traditional Liberal” can consult our most recent list of the two political parties competing for Minneapolis offices. Park Board candidates from each party are included, along with candidates for Mayor, City Council and Board of Estimate and Taxation. We also recommend this Star Tribune guide to Park Board candidates (gift link), and the League of Women Voter forums held on the evening of October 29. Here are the videos of candidates in Districts 4 and 6, candidates in Districts 1, 3 and 5, and candidates running at-large.
Now, for our open letter to LiUNA leadership.
Dear LiUNA leadership:
On October 27, 2025, I received your mailer about the Minneapolis Park Board race. I also received a mailer in early July about the same. Both mailers are filled with inflammatory exaggerations and lies, most of them about the 2024 contract dispute between your Local 363 and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB). Although that dispute was formally resolved in early August 2024, it still is churning today, because upon its formal conclusion, your Local 363 Business Manager, AJ Lange, declared electoral war upon the Commissioners who had defied his will. I interpret these mailers, sent out under your name, as Lange’s prosecution of his war.
You lead a union that represents nearly 14,000 skilled construction workers and general laborers across Minnesota and North Dakota. That’s a large geographic area, with a large worker pool. At the MPRB, Local 363 represents 200 regular and 100 seasonal employees, about 2% of all workers you represent. Not huge.
Perhaps because you are responsible for such a large area, and so many workers, you never looked deeply into the statements about a conflict that impacted no more than 2% of your workers. Perhaps you believed everything your Local 363 Business Manager said, without being concerned that his statements would be disseminated under your name.
Here I walk you through some of these statements, so you can see how they are eroding public trust in you, the other unions that are repeating them, and the candidates you promote.
Lies in The Mailers
“Forced park workers to strike”
Your October 2025 mailer says that the Park Board “Forced park workers into a historic 22-day strike over respect and dignity”.
This is a lie.
Nobody forced your Local 363 workers into a strike, which wasn’t about “respect and dignity”. It was a contract dispute. After months of negotiations over the terms of a new contract to replace the expiring one, AJ Lange, your Local 363 Business Manager, encouraged workers to vote to strike. They did. When the strike finally happened about two weeks after the vote, only 40-50% of your Local 363 workers, 8-9% of all MPRB employees, participated.
The old contract expired on December 31, 2023. Negotiations to replace it began a few weeks earlier. By February 2024, after multiple negotiating sessions without reaching agreement, Lange requested mediation from the Minnesota Board of Mediation Services (MBS). The MBS complied, and they mediated subsequent negotiation sessions confidentially, starting on March 14.
The main areas of disagreement concerned the magnitude of stepped wage increases, whether stepped wage increases would be automatic or depend on a satisfactory performance review, the length of a probationary period for new hires, and the number of union stewards who would receive MPRB compensation to perform union work on MPRB time.
For all these points of disagreement, MPRB wanted to align the Local 363 contract with contracts it held with the nine other unions representing other MPRB employees. The MPRB also wanted to align its Local 363 contract with the contract Local 363 had signed with the City of Minneapolis just a few months earlier. In general, the MPRB wanted consistency in how it treated all its employees, and consistency in how MPRB employees would fare in comparable organizations, like the City of Minneapolis.
A few hours after receiving your mailer, I happened to speak with a Local 363 park worker who did not participate in the strike. We live in the same neighborhood; he takes care of our neighborhood park. He loves his job. He said the Park Board has always treated him and his family well. His dad worked for the parks, and his uncle too, and all of them felt honored and respected on the job. “We got that house I grew up in because of the parks”. He said he’s known Superintendent Bangoura for 25 years, and likes him a lot, he’s always good to the staff.
Some of your park board candidates assert that there long have been bitter conflicts between MPRB management and staff. As I never have detected bitterness when I’ve interacted with Park Board staff, I asked if he knew of conflicts, or had experienced any himself. No, he said, they treat us well. But then he hesitated, “Oh I guess there are a couple of people, you always get some people complaining like that”. I asked him about AJ Lange. He knew who he was, referred to him as “AJ”, but said “I don’t know him that well”.
He’s known the Superintendent for 25 years and likes him a lot. He’s happy at the job. He’s grateful for the life it has given him and his family. He has no conflicts to report. He can’t say anything about the person who publicly represents him, AJ Lange, because he doesn’t know him that well. And also, he didn’t know what the strike was about. When I tried to ask him about it, he laughed: “I stay away from all that stuff. You know more about it than I do!”
The Mayor and the Lt. Governor
Both the July and October mailers say that Park Board Commissioners rejected Mayor Frey’s offer to mediate.
This is a lie.
Mayor Frey never offered to mediate. AJ Lange asked him to intervene in the ongoing negotiations, which at his request already were being mediated by the MBS.
Mayor Frey responded to Lange’s request by saying: “My ask is simple: through good-faith bargaining at the negotiating table, let’s get an agreement done for the sake of our amazing parks, the incredible workers who take care of them, and the people who use and love them. I know MPRB and employees are united around a goal of keeping our park system world-class, and I will support them in achieving a resolution that keeps that goal front and center.”
This is not an offer to mediate. This is encouraging both sides to participate in the established bargaining process, which already was being mediated at Lange’s request.
Your October flyer says that commissioners criticized Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan for urging them to negotiate a fair contract.
This is a lie.
Several Commissioners told inquiring news agencies that Flanagan and other elected DFL officials disrespected MPRB autonomy and tried to pressure them into settling the strike on Lange’s terms. Commissioner Abene, running for re-election in District 6 said: “I can confirm that I was contacted by two people (Flanagan being one) in elected roles in state government and was pressured to use my authority to ‘lean’ on MPRB management to end the strike by concession. I was told that some legislators were ‘watching’ what the Park Board commissioners did. This is not OK. I was elected to represent constituents and responsibly govern the MPRB. I respect the mediated labor-management process that is currently underway, and I take seriously my role in balancing the interests of the striking workers, other workers in the organization, and Minneapolis residents.”
Trash cans and trees
The July 2025 mailer tried to remind readers that a year earlier, because of the strike, parks were unmaintained, trash cans overflowed, storm-felled trees were left to disrupt traffic, and park concerts were cancelled. As I did not recall any of this, I looked up contemporaneous news reports.
Four days into the strike, on July 8, 2024, MPR reported: “As for park upkeep, both union members and passing park-users say it’s hard to see a difference. In some popular parks around Lake Harriet, there were no overflowing trash cans or littered grounds.”
Nineteen days into the strike, on July 23, 2024, MN Reformer reported: “Despite the strike, the park system has continued operations across its 185 properties largely without disruption although four bands cancelled concerts in solidarity with striking workers.”
The Reformer continued: “Picketing workers also blocked delivery trucks at two park restaurants, leading park leaders to file an unfair labor practices charge against the union.”
Your Park Board Commissioner candidates
Because both mailers contain easily disproved lies about the reason for the strike, about trash cans and trees, about what Mayor Frey actually said, they undermine credibility in the candidates they promote. So I examined the candidates, but before I did, I examined expectations of Commissioners, which presumably these candidates hope to become.
MPRB Commissioners develop ordinances that govern park use. They draft long-range strategic plans, to bequeath to future generations a healthy park system that previous generations bequeathed to us. They approve budgets for routine operations and capital budgets for major construction and renovation projects. They answer constituent questions (and respond to complaints) about the parks, and assimilate community input they receive about new programming needs, and changes to the natural environment.
They do not negotiate contracts. Like City Council members, their role with respect to contracts is limited to approving (or disapproving) a contract once negotiators representing both sides have agreed on terms.
Unlike City Council members, who are paid nearly $110k per year, and who each have several dedicated staff helping them, Park Board Commissioners serve in an almost volunteer capacity, being compensated $17k per year for their time. They must balance environmental stewardship against access and recreation. They must contend with declining tax revenues as the values of Minneapolis commercial properties decline. The MPRB Mission Statement includes a commitment to redress historic inequities, and over the past several years, to fulfill this commitment, Commissioners have approved and helped raised capital funds for major new facilities (Graco Park, Upper Harbor Terminal, North Commons Park) in historically underserved communities in north Minneapolis. In addition to expanding programming, each facility will create greater river access for North Minneapolis residents. But once these new facilities are fully operating, they too will need to be maintained from the operating budget, while maintaining all the other properties, as property tax revenues decline. It is quite challenging.
Having understood, at least on the surface, what Commissioners are expected to do, I then reviewed all park board candidates, using their campaign websites, reports from neighborhood newspapers, and this Star Tribune guide. I learned that most candidates you oppose have extensive knowledge of parks, combined with mature life experience, that gives them the skills to guide the parks through these challenging circumstances. I learned that by contrast, most candidates you promote have no experience with the parks, and some make flatly untrue statements about them. None inspired my confidence.
Here are some examples.
Community input
Your District 5 candidate is Kay Moran, a 24-year-old Augsburg student, who in all her campaign materials cites no experience with the parks. Her LinkedIn profile mentions a series of short-term jobs, not unusual for someone her age: Canvasser, tour guide, youth coordinator, bilingual youth program specialist. In September 2024, she began working at Hennepin County as a Case Manager Assistant, helping to connect tenants to services.
Moran complains that park board decisions are made without community input, which she’ll fix. She apparently is unaware that the MPRB, for years, has had a formal mechanism for eliciting and acting upon community input, through its Community Advisory Committees. Some candidates on your slate boast of their service on them. Moran apparently does not know that these Committees exist.
District 5 contains the environmentally challenged Lake Hiawatha, and its adjacent golf course and park, built years ago on a wetland, which nobody would do today. But we’ve inherited it, and human dependencies have grown up around it. It’s still a wetland, and regularly floods. The lake is fed in part by Minnehaha Creek, into which upstream municipalities dump waste. The 18-hole golf course is historically significant to the city’s African American community and those supporting them.
The District 5 Commissioner you seek to replace, Steffanie Musich, has stewarded passionate community opinions about this situation, in which equally valuable goals conflict. Environmentalists want to save the lake and restore it to its natural wetland habitat, which means demolishing the golf course. Those more concerned with racial equity want to preserve the 18-hole golf course. Ideas for a new plan include a 9-hole golf course, on higher land, with partial wetland restoration surrounding it, which neither the environmentalists nor equity-promoters support. The MPRB continues to welcome input from everyone. As the District 5 Commissioner, Musich has managed more feedback about this situation than anyone else.
Your District 5 challenger, Kay Moran, promises to “center community voices”. She doesn’t offer Lake Hiawatha as an example of how she’d behave differently from the incumbent, although it’s a perfect example, given its many environmental and human challenges, that elicit many “community voices” expressing sharply conflicting desires. There’s no indication that your candidate Moran even knows that Lake Hiawatha and its troubles exist.
Equity and Ranks
One of your at-large candidates, Amber Frederick, complains that the city’s North Side doesn’t have the same amenities as the south side, like Minnehaha Falls and the Chain of Lakes. Frederick seems to be unaware of the major northside projects mentioned above that right now are coming alive. On July 29 of this year, there was a groundbreaking ceremony for North Commons Park, which at $45m, is the largest neighborhood park investment in city history. Although Frederick says that her time in United Methodist Church taught her the power of community organizing, she apparently was not involved with the community organizing that brought federal, state, local and philanthropic dollars to create North Commons Park, and she may not even be aware that North Commons Park exists, as her campaign website doesn’t mention it.
Frederick says that for years, Minneapolis was ranked as the number 1 park system in America, but that today the park board is slipping. One reason? “… park workers had to strike for the first time …” This incenses her; she’s not content with being in a lower place. To fix that, she’ll be nicer to workers than the current commissioners are.
Frederick apparently does not know that the Trust for Public Land (TPL) ranks cities’ park systems using an index of 15 metrics across five categories, and that Minneapolis consistently has ranked in the top five because it has excelled in access and investment. TPL defines “access” as the percentage of residents who live within a 10-minute walk of a park. “Investment” is based on the inflation-adjusted amount of money the city spends on its parks.
From 2024 to 2025, Minneapolis’ rank dropped from second to third. A Trust spokeswoman explained that other cities were catching up to the access and investments Minneapolis always has had. It is unsurprising that the complete TPL report on Minneapolis did not mention your Local 363 strike, as the index does not consider worker-management relations.
In Minneapolis, 99% of residents live within 10 minutes of a park. There is little room to improve on this metric, and because it’s based on the built environment, it’s unlikely to slip.
But we could slip if the city slides into a fiscal mess and thus loses its capacity to invest in the parks. The Park Board does not manage the city’s fiscal health; the Mayor and City Council do. In December 2024, Mayor Frey blasted the City Council for passing what he called an irresponsible budget filled with “pet projects”, obligating taxpayers to fund for years, setting the city on a fiscally unsustainable path.
You endorsed Mayor Frey for re-election this year, but you also endorsed for City Council the same incumbent Councilors who passed the budget that the Mayor says is fiscally irresponsible.
The Councilors you endorsed were silent when your Local 363 was having its public fight with the City of Minneapolis, but when your Local 363 turned its ire on the parks, those Councilors suddenly found a voice. They passed a resolution expressing solidarity with the striking workers. Eight sent a letter to Superintendent Bangoura and Commissioners expressing disappointment that MPRB negotiators had “left the table”. This was another lie, refuted by the MPRB in a July 2024 statement to KSTP: “During mediated negotiations since July 1, the Bureau of Mediation Services (BMS) releases both sides. Park officials have only left after being released by BMS”.
These Councilors, who only could have known about the confidentially mediated negotiations from AJ Lange (and who was at the table when), repeated his talking points in their letter to the Superintendent and Commissioners, urging them to “consider these provisions for a fair contract: Fair pay, maintaining guaranteed step increases, maintaining the level of union stewards.”
Superintendent Bangoura responded with a letter that first reminded these Councilors that they had no authority over the independent Park Board, and then showed them how the MPRB offer compared to the contract these same Councilors had approved a few months earlier.
The City contract with your Local 363, which these Councilors approved, does not “guarantee step increases”. Few contracts do. In real life, nobody gets a guaranteed raise every year, it always is predicated on performance. But these Councilors wouldn’t know because most have never held a real job.
The City contract with your Local 363, which these Councilors approved, has the same number of stewards per workers as did the offer from MPRB.
As for “fair wages”, it was difficult to make direct comparisons, because the job titles differ, as do minimum hiring requirements (education, experience, licensure). The MPRB has lower entry requirements than the City. In an attempt to compare, the Superintendent said, “As we have stated in prior communications with you, the MPRB’s offer meets or exceeds the total value of the contract approved by the City of Minneapolis. This is because our wages were already higher than the City’s.”
Not one Councilor responded to Superintendent Bangoura’s letter, but some joined your Local 363 workers on park picket lines.
You endorsed the Councilors who performatively joined the picket lines, but did you consider their fiscal stewardship? Steady fiscal stewardship means steady park revenues, thus steady park employment, not to mention maintaining high ranks with the Trust for Public Land.
Amber Frederick, whom you promote for an at-large seat, is incensed that our rank dropped from 2nd place to 3rd and blames the decline on a 22-day strike involving 8-9% of MPRB employees. She probably got that idea from the same source that inflamed the fiscally irresponsible City Council members you endorsed: Your Local 363 Business Manager, AJ Lange.
Schools
You promote Michael Wilson as another at-large candidate. Wilson sought and received endorsement from the Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America (TCDSA). From its park board endorsement questionnaire, it appears that the TCDSA knows nothing about Minneapolis parks, and cares even less: Of the 48 questions, the word ‘park’ appears in only two, and neither are about the parks. (TCDSA questions are about fealty to the TCDSA, willingness to use and then denigrate the DFL, and issues over which the MPRB has no control, such as tearing up I94 and replacing it with an at-grade car-free boulevard). One question containing the word ‘park’ is a veiled dig at Israel, and the other is about how the MPRB can save the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS).
While it’s true that the MPRB and MPS collaborate on things like after-school activities, and providing fields for MPS-sponsored sports, and could collaborate more extensively on wrap-around services for kids, MPS is wracked with budgetary woes which the MPRB cannot fix. The MPS budget crisis exists because many children who live in Minneapolis do not attend MPS schools, and state funding follows them wherever they go. When Wilson answered the DSA question about saving the MPS, did he explain how, as a Park Board Commissioner, he would persuade families to make other decisions about the best place to educate their kids?
Another candidate you promote, Ira Jourdain in District 6, served on the Minneapolis School Board for eight years. What did he do to save the schools? His website says that he always spoke up for the “holistic needs of students”. Great. His website says that he always spoke up for teachers, which got him the teacher union endorsement every time. Great.
But did he ever suggest that MPS ask Minneapolis families why they enrolled their kids in schools other than MPS? What did they want that MPS didn’t provide? There is nothing on any of Jourdain’s park board campaign materials that say that while serving on the school board, he asked any questions like this. Yet you endorsed both him and Wilson. Why?
Bikes and cars
Some of your candidates (Olsen (at-large), Garcia (D4), Wilson (at-large), Engelhart (D1)) campaign as if they are determined to rid Minneapolis of privately owned motorized vehicles, by making it more difficult for their owners to drive and to park.
Engelhart’s opponent in D1 is Dan Miller, a lifelong cyclist, who for years has coached kids in bike safety. The kids affectionately call him “Papa Wheelie”. Miller has led efforts to complete the “missing link” in the Grand Rounds Trail system. Currently, a bicyclist can ride for miles and miles on protected trails, around the lakes, along the creek, along the river, but there is one segment, in District 1, that still is incomplete. That’s the missing link. It disrupts the flow. They are grand but not “rounds” until that missing link is complete.
Miller works to complete the missing link so that bicycles on trails, and privately owned motorized vehicles on roads, can safely coexist. But many of your endorsed candidates apparently reject coexistence, seeking conquest instead. Bicycles rule! As an MPRB Commissioner, they would have more power to rid Minneapolis of privately owned motorized vehicles.
In the relationship between bikes and cars, what do your skilled construction workers across Minnesota and North Dakota prefer? Do your members know that in their names, you promote bike-conquistadors as park board candidates in Minneapolis?
Summary
On October 27, I received your mailer promoting your candidates for MPRB Commissioner. In early July I received something similar. Both mailers brim with inflammatory accusations against current MPRB Commissioners, using easily disproved lives.
Most accusations stem from the 2024 contract dispute between your Local 363 and the MPRB, which culminated in a strike, the first in MPRB history. The mailers do not say that in 2024, your same local union had an ugly contract dispute with the City of Minneapolis. Although both the MPRB and the City had contracts with other unions expiring at the same time, there were no nasty disputes over new contracts with them. There were protracted, highly publicized contract disputes only with one union, your Local 363.
As I examined the Local 363 strike more closely, I eventually concluded that it was not about worker respect and dignity, not even about fair wages and good working conditions. It was not about safety on the job, not about employer-sponsored health insurance, not about any of these items over which unions have worked so hard to secure for the workers they represent. It was about something else.
Whatever the real reasons for the highly politicized dispute last year, the mailers I received in October and July this year continue to disseminate exaggerations and lies, while promoting a slate of Park Board candidates who have little to offer the parks. The average Minneapolis voter wants competent and knowledgeable Park Board Commissioners but may not have the capacity to investigate all candidates. They would most easily be guided by voting against every candidate you support.
As an ordinary Minneapolis taxpaying resident, who has voted Democrat all my life, I’m temperamentally inclined to sympathize with legitimate worker complaints. But the complaints in these mailers are not legitimate. They are exaggerated untruths. Seeing the LiUNA name on them shakes my trust in you. And because the Minneapolis AFL-CIO and MAPE have jumped on board, repeating inflammatory statements I know to be untrue, it shakes my trust in them.
If you want to restore what now is eroding public trust not just in you but in unions overall, I suggest you reconsider how you approve statements and mailers that go out under your name and embrace some healthy skepticism about the veracity of hyperbolic claims coming from only one source.
And take a much closer look at the candidates for down-ballot publicly elected municipal offices you endorse.
I beg to differ with some of the statements made in this article about the Hiawatha Golf Course.
First, Lake Hiawatha and Hiawatha Golf Course are one of many park properties built on swampland. Other examples that serve South Minneapolis are Lake Nokomis Park, Pearl Park, Sibley Park, Phelps Park, and Meadowbrook Golf Course. It is possible that no one would build these park properties today. But no one is stating that these other parks are too problematic to continue. And, singling out of Hiawatha Golf Course for unwarranted criticism has gotten really tiring. Yet, the big difference in Lake Hiawatha Park and the other parks is that water from the WHOLE watershed drains through Lake Hiawatha. This is not true of these other parks. In fact, water from Pearl Park, Sibley Park, Nokomis Park and Meadowbrook Golf Course all drain through Lake Hiawatha, and we have seen nothing done in the watershed to relieve Lake Hiawatha and the Hiawatha neighborhood of this burden. Instead, we have seen more burden placed on this neighborhood by the watershed. Three examples are: 1) the commencement of the dumping of an estimated 60 million gallons of Minneapolis storm water onto the Hiawatha Golf Course pond system every year starting in 2012 that is then pumped out on the other side, 2) the closure of Rich Acres Golf Course for an airplane runway in 2012 which now sheds an unknown amount of water into Lake Nokomis which ends up in Lake Hiawatha, 3) the separation of storm water from sewage water in the early 2000’s in the City of Minneapolis which put more water through the storm sewer system, and thus into Lake Hiawatha. So, Hiawatha Park and Golf Course, along with Lake Hiawatha, have been increasingly overburdened over the years. This has to change. It is unacceptable to place such a heavy burden on one small neighborhood in South Minneapolis and then claim that it is the problem.
I also don’t agree with respect to the Community Advisory Committees (CACs). Yes, they do exist, but my experience with them has been less than positive. When I was appointed to the Hiawatha Golf Course CAC I spoke with a person who had been on another CAC. He said that it was a waste of time because the Park Board would do what they wanted regardless of input from the CAC. Then, in the Hiawatha Golf Course CAC it became very obvious that the Park Board was only interested in moving their agenda and ignoring opposing community input. Plus, the CAC process was, all of a sudden, cut short. The CAC members were not allowed to vote on the proposal as was allowed in other CACs. The Park Board just sent out an e-mail to all CAC members saying that the process was complete. So, in my experience these CACs have been questionable at best. And I believe that Kay Carvajal Moran expresses a valid concern that many in the community share.
I did! And I found it really helpful in deciding how to vote for Park Board. Wow… I must be above average!
There were many areas I raise issue with in this article, but I am not well versed in some of the subject area. What I am well versed in is labor movements and labor-managment conflicts. Having negotiated several union contracts myself, I have had many management teams try and get “performance based pay raises” onto the contract. Sure, on paper, to a “reasonable” person this may seem fine – reward someone for how well they do, right?
Unfortunately, the reality of many jobs, especially those involving labor unions, is that there is favoritism, bias, and discrimination. What counts as good performance? Who determines that? I bet you money that management will not add language into the contract defining it. “Performance based pay raises” really means “We’ll give raises whenever we feel appropriate, to who we think deserves them”.
Even if management is pushing for that language with complete earnest, unconscious bias exists. I have been at many workplaces where myself, a white man, is given praise and rewarded for doing a standard job. Meanwhile, female coworkers and coworkers of color who do just as good a job or better – are overlooked, or treated like they are slacking. “Performance based pay raises” opens the door for incredible inequity.
Another area I raise issue with is how the author cites that the striking park workers make up such a small portion of the total represented unit of LiUNA workers – 2% from the article. However, in union environments, there is a concept of solidarity – the idea that “An injury to one is an injury to all”. What this means practically is that a larger union body, other unions entirely, and whomever else (Such as the musicians you mentioned later) view harm done to workers in a bargaining unit as harm done to workers everywhere. Even if that bargaining unit is a small one. If something unfair or unjust is done to even a small bargaining unit, and is allowed to happen, other groups take notice, and may use the same tactics against unions in their organizations. This concept of solidarity is an important one, and has led to many of the hard earned worker protections we have enshrined into law today – with significant parts of that history happening right here in Minneapolis!
Reducing the number of stewards allowed is also an important issue to raise concern about. Less stewards mean that there will be more work for the fewer stewards who do remain – leading it to be a more burdensome task, and leading to burn out. It also means less stewards for the average worker to connect with. More stewards means more coverage, which is better for all workers! If you are a worker who has a legitimate grievance with something a manager has done, you should be able to have easy access to a steward. Reducing the number makes that harder. Not to mention if a steward is out sick or on vacation. There is no harm in having more stewards. It creates a more fair and equitable work environment for everyone. All stewards do is inform their coworkers of their legally protected rights, connect them to resources, and help them file grievances – as well as represent them in disciplinary situations – Again, helping them enforce their legally protected rights. If the park board felt they treated employees well, then having more stewards wouldn’t be an issue. It confuses me as to why the number of allowable stewards is even language in the contract in the first place, as that should be up to the union itself.
Additionally, it was mentioned that the Park Board simply wanted to keep the contract in line with what similar organizations in the area have. Again, this seems innocuous on paper – I can see why some people may read that intent and believe it is fair. However, as someone who has negotiated contracts before, it reads more as “We do not want change” – “We do not want to allow progress”.
Imagine, if you will, if that mindset was used for all union contracts. If everyone wanted to “Stay in line with the norms”, then there would be no significant progress for the workers. If people had agreed to stay within the norms back in the 20th century, we could still have things like no overtime pay, or child labor. Of course these are extreme examples – so here is a more moderate example – A union wants to negotiate paid family leave into their contract. Management responds “No other comparable unions have paid family leave, sorry”. The union accepts this and drops the proposal. If that were the norm, nobody would get paid family leave! (I know we have a new state law for this, it’s awesome. I just used this for the sake of example)
The “norms” cited had to become the norms at some point in the past, right? And I’m sure some of those “norms” may have been considered radical at the time.
Lastly, I am glad that the author did not have to experience any of the issues that came from the strike. I remember several significant services lacking. There was a large storm at the time – I remember seeing large branches and debris blocking paths and sidewalks in several major Minneapolis parks during the strike, that went untouched for days. I saw many trash cans that went unemptied. The implication from the sources cited meaning that the labor lost from striking workers has minimal value, which is simply not true. Our park workers, every single one of them, contribute immensely to the beauty and wellbeing of the city we all call home. In some cases, their labor may go unnoticed – but that does not mean it is any less vital.
Do you think anyone is reading this? Brevity is a virtue. Make it shorter
Personally, I appreciate the in-depth coverage and extensive detail. In an age when people form deep political convictions and make voting decisions from 300-character tweets (roughly 50-60 words) or 60-second videos, it’s a rarity to get something more substantive.
This is not moving the needle. You think the average voter will find this article and care enough to read the whole thing?!