Amid barrage of legislation, workers ask ‘Where is the focus on jobs?’

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4755

By Barb Kucera, Workday editor
11 February 2011

ST. PAUL - Construction workers in hard hats and safety vests mixed with nurses and professional employees at a packed legislative hearing Thursday on a proposal to freeze wages and undermine public workers’ right to collective bargaining. Amid a slew of such anti-worker legislation, union leaders asked, “Where is the focus on jobs?”

In a scene likely to be repeated many times in the coming months, unions and allies turned out to protest legislation they say will undermine the middle class and destroy – not create – good-paying jobs in Minnesota.

The bill before the House Governmental Operations Committee, HF 192, authored by Rep. Keith Downey, R-Edina, encapsulated many of the issues of concern to workers. In addition to mandating a wage freeze for state employees and undercutting their rights under the Public Employment Labor Relations Act, it originally mandated a 15 percent cut in the state workforce and included a so-called “Right to Work” provision.

At the hearing, Downey eliminated the latter two provisions because they are already moving through the Legislature as separate bills. The committee passed Downey’s amended legislation on a party-line vote, but not before several people testified in opposition and Democrats on the committee raised numerous objections.


Workers crowded the hearing room in the State Office Building to oppose HF 192.

‘Bad for working families’

“HF 192 is bad for Minnesota and bad for working families,” said Josiah Hill, a high school English teacher and president of the St. Croix Education Association. “There are union families out there and there are working families out there that are going to be hurt – hurt badly – by this bill.”


FULL story at link.