Thousands of Twin Cities workers at Cub and Festival near strike — and other labor news

Yahoo

16-05-2025

Workers with UFCW Local 663 demonstrate outside Lunds and Byerlys in Edina on April 27, 2025. (Photo by UFCW Local 663)
Take a seat in the Break Room, our weekly round up of labor news in Minnesota and beyond. This week: Nearly 3,0000 grocery store workers threaten strike; paid family and sick leave unscathed in state budget deal; Minnesota employment flat in April; and hundreds of federal workplace safety employees reinstated.
Nearly 3,000 workers are headed toward unfair labor practices strikes at 38 grocery stores across the Twin Cities after they rejected the latest offers from UNFI-owned Cub, Haug and Knowlan's Festival Foods.
It was an unprecedented vote by workers who could walk off the job around Memorial Day if they don't reach a deal with the companies, according to leaders with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 663.
'They're not listening. Pure and simple. They're ignoring everything we've suggested,' said Nicolas McBride, assistant meat manager at Haug's Cub in Minnetonka and member of the bargaining team.
McBride said the companies want to shift more health care costs onto workers, which would more than double his cost and eat up the modest pay raise of $3 per hour spread over the life of the three-year contract.
He also said the companies' proposed pay raises would only kick in once the contract is ratified, with nothing retroactive to when the contract expired in March. That would add up to hundreds of dollars for workers.
'I've been in the union for 28 years and every single contract we've gotten back pay,' McBride said.
UFCW Local 663 has been negotiating with the companies since January, along with Lunds & Byerlys, Jerry's Cub Food, Kowalski's and Radermacher's Cub Foods. Workers at those four companies ratified contracts over the weekend, averting a strike.
While the offers were similar, UFCW Local 663 President Rena Wong said the companies made good faith efforts to listen to workers and respond to their proposals. For example at Lunds & Bylerlys, workers wanted to raise part-time wages, particularly for the custodial staff.
'They came back and they made that change. They listened,' Wong said. 'That is contrary to what UNFI, Haug's and Knowlan's did.'
The union has filed an unfair labor practice charge against UNFI with the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees private sector unions, alleging the company has not bargained in good faith. The union also alleges Haug's and Knowlan's have violated labor protections for collective bargaining.
In a statement, UNFI said it has been negotiating 'diligently and in good faith' and has offered 'strong wage increases, continued market-leading union health care and significant increases in our contributions to the union's pension plan.'
Paid family leave and earned sick time came out of difficult budget negotiations largely unscathed under a deal announced by legislative leaders and Gov. Tim Walz on Thursday. The deal doesn't have complete buy-in from progressive Senators because it would roll back access to MinnesotaCare for undocumented adults, however. Much could still change between now and the end of the session.
Paid family leave and earned sick time have faced stiff resistance from business leaders, who have found sympathetic ears among moderate Senate Democrats and newly empowered House Republicans in control of half the lower chamber.
The budget agreement would reduce the maximum payroll tax for the paid family leave program from 1.2% to 1.1%. The change may be insignificant since payroll taxes might never rise to the tax cap, depending on how many people claim benefits. The program is slated to start next year with a payroll tax of .88%, with employers paying at least half of the cost.
The tweak is far less significant than cuts proposed by two moderate Democrats and Republicans earlier this year, which would exempt businesses with 15 or fewer employees and reduce the total number of weeks employees could take off in a year from 20 to 14.
Moderate Senate Democrats also recently voted with Republicans to exempt small farms and businesses from providing paid sick and safe time — at least six days a year for full-time employees — among other changes sought by business leaders. That proposal appears to be dead.
Democrats did make concessions on unemployment insurance for hourly school workers, with legislative leaders agreeing to repeal the benefit in 2029.
School districts complained paying for unemployment for school bus drivers, paraprofessionals and cafeteria workers threatens their tight budgets and makes it harder to fill part-time summer positions. Democrats vowed to protect the benefit, although they will have to win back control of state government to do so if the deal becomes law.
Minnesota employment stayed relatively flat in April, losing 1,300 jobs out of about 3 million statewide, according to data released by the state Department of Employment and Economic Development on Thursday.
The labor market has stayed strong despite upheavals in the global economy since President Donald Trump took office and launched a trade war, halted billions in federal funding, and moved to eliminate more than 120,000 federal jobs.
DEED reported 200 federal jobs lost in Minnesota last month, a small percentage of the 18,000 federal employees in the state, not including postal workers and military personnel. Many of the Trump administration's layoffs have been reversed or paused, while those workers who took the 'Fork in the Road' buyout offer won't show up in the data until they are off the payroll.
'We would expect to see a drop at some point, it's just hard to say when,' said Angelina Nguyen, director of the labor market information office at DEED.
Unemployment also ticked up slightly to 3.2% in April, mainly due to 3,300 joining the labor force. The unemployment rate remains 1 percentage point lower than the national rate.
The Trump administration reinstated hundreds of laid off workers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health this week, including those who screen coal miners for black lung and those who provide services to the first responders to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.
The reversal comes after intense public pressure from unions, members of Congress and a lawsuit brought by a coal miner, which led to a federal judge ordering nearly 200 workers be reinstated on Tuesday. The following day, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Congress 328 employees at NIOSH had been reinstated.
Some 900 workers, or more than 90% of the entire agency, were planned to be permanently cut as part of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency's campaign to drastically shrink the size of the federal workforce.
The agency, which is part of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, helps reduce workplace injuries and illnesses across industries by investigating workplaces to mitigate exposure to toxins, inspecting personal protective equipment for nurses and firefighters, and tracking cancer in firefighters.
On Wednesday, the AFL-CIO, leading a coalition of unions, filed a lawsuit challenging the dismantling of the agency, saying it would lead to more workers dying on the job.
'Working people have fought too hard for these critical protections to now watch an unelected billionaire dismantle them and take us back to a time when chronic disease and death on the job was commonplace,' said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler in a statement.