Anger is growing among striking employees at the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Center: “How are we supposed to make ends meet?”
The strike by workers at the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board (MPRB) in Minnesota entered its 13th day on Tuesday, following an announcement on July 10 that the strike would be extended indefinitely after initially being proposed for only one week. The strikers are members of Local 363 of the Laborer’s International Union of North America (LIUNA), which represents about 300 full- and part-time employees. Workers voted in favor of the strike last month by a 94 percent majority.
The strike is the first in the park system’s 141-year history and reflects the militancy of park workers and the growing class struggle internationally. Workers are demanding significant improvements in safety, health care and wages. Minneapolis’s park system is regularly ranked among the best in the U.S., while the workers who keep it running can barely afford rent and basic necessities.
“How are you supposed to make ends meet?”
During Sunday’s picket line, a striker who has worked for the MPRB for six years told the WSWS: “I can tell you what my core issues are and what I want to achieve with this strike. It is a fair starting wage for new people.”
“Currently, starting pay is $18 an hour. I did that job with the parks department as a summer job when I was a teacher. I quit teaching and did that job for three years and was rewarded with a promotion to full-time with a $3 an hour pay cut. I didn’t like that.
“They also told me that I would have weekends off within a year and a half. And they lied to me about that in the interview. Instead, I would have had weekends off for at least five years. I have worked every holiday for the last two years except Labor Day.
“The park rangers in the suburbs of Minneapolis make about $8 to $10 an hour more than we do. In the Minneapolis Forest Service, our top pay is $2 an hour less than the St. Paul Forest Service’s starting pay. That’s a significant amount of money.
“For me, the most important thing is the starting salary for new employees. If rent for an apartment is $1,500 a month, how can you make enough money? I have a wife and two children. How can you make ends meet?”
Democrats accelerate efforts to end strike
Closed-door negotiations between LIUNA 363 and MPRB lasted until Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday afternoon, MPRB presented a new “final” offer and asked for it to be put to a vote by Friday, local news reported. The proposal would include a wage increase of 10.25 percent over three years – an effective reduction in real wages given the sharp price increases of recent years.
LIUNA 363 negotiators said they would accept the wage proposal but rejected other elements of the offer. LIUNA Executive Director AJ Lange said Tuesday he was “open” to putting the contract to a vote, but added: “The board does not dictate the union’s internal procedures and how we conduct our votes.”
The striking Minneapolis park workers are state government employees and are thus in direct combat with the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, as the Democratic Party of the State of Minnesota is called. The DFL controls all nine MPRB commissioners, the MPRB superintendent and the mayor.
The DFL Parks Administration has used the fact that property and business taxes have fallen as a reason to increase that burden by drastically cutting workers’ living standards. The Democrats’ claim that there is not enough money to provide workers with a good standard of living and decent working conditions is a lie. The Biden administration and both parties in Congress are wasting tens of billions of dollars on their proxy war in Ukraine and on arming and funding the Israeli government in its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
There are growing signs that the Democratic Party is stepping up its efforts to end the strike and force through an austerity deal. Democratic politicians are particularly keen to prevent the strike from becoming a catalyst for a broader upsurge of workers’ struggles, especially amid the explosive political crisis and instability ahead of the 2024 US elections.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, is “working with both sides to reach an agreement,” the mayor’s office said. LIUNA 363 officials have repeatedly called on Frey — a key political representative of the Twin Cities’ corporate interests — to intervene.
Also on Tuesday, the City Council passed a toothless resolution to “support” the striking park workers, but signaled that the strike must end. At a joint press conference with representatives of LIUNA 363, Councilman Aurin Chowdhury (whose candidacy was endorsed by the pseudo-left Democratic Socialists of America) said, “We must push for an end to this strike, and we must do it through a fair collective bargaining agreement, so that we can return to providing services to our constituents.”
The endless appeals of LIUNA 363 officials to the Democratic Party and the MPRB are a dead end. Any deal that emerges from closed-door talks with the political representatives of the city’s major corporations will inevitably be a betrayal of what the workers are striking for.
The most urgent task facing workers now is to take the strike into their own hands by forming action committees. An urgent appeal should be made to all other workers in the Twin Cities and the region to join and expand the strike.
The arrogance of the MPRB board members and their complete rejection of workers’ demands has led to growing outrage, including at a public MPRB meeting on July 10.
Park administrator Alfred Bangoura opened the meeting by reading a prepared text and said he would return to the negotiating table, “but only after the 363-member leadership has allowed members to vote on the final offer.”
Booing broke out in the hall and a staff member shouted: “We already have it! How many votes do you want?”
A park worker with 10 years of experience took the microphone and pointed at Bangoura. “He shouldn’t say that he knows that Local 363 members are telling him that we don’t want to strike. So? We’re here!”
“And that’s not his decision. That’s our decision. If he has that much power, we’re just slaves. Because that’s slavery… and that’s how you treat all of us. And the community will not tolerate that.”
The worker blasted Bangoura for paying only $1,300 a month to live in a large, renovated 19th-century house in Lyndale Farmstead Park on a $210,000 salary, compared that to the $2,000 a month he pays himself.
“You pay my rent and I pay yours. And I feel better. Because $1,300 sounds a lot better than my $2,000. And you make much, much more than I do.”
“A general strike – across the board”
When asked about the DFL’s role in the parks strike, the parks worker on Sunday’s picket line referred to the UFCW Local P-9 strike in 1985 and 1986 at the Hormel meat processing plant in Austin, Minnesota.
“This is a more peaceful strike than the strike at Hormel when the governor (Rudy Perpich-DFL) deployed the National Guard. I was a young man then. And I felt like the union there was being crushed and the workers were losing their rights, they were losing their working conditions, they were losing their pay and they were losing their jobs.
“We have the right to strike. I need my wages just like everyone else. But here I am. I stand with these people. I stand with the people who are fighting for us, not the managers who are fighting against us.”
“Still, I love this job. I want to keep doing it, but I want new people to come into the job and have a fair chance in life. You don’t get that for $18 an hour.”
“If you brought all the city workers together, it would really shut down the city. People would realize how important it is for everyone to work together; a general strike – across the board.”
However, LIUNA and AFL-CIO have not done anything to mobilize the power of the city’s working class behind the strike and will not do so.
Local 363 has built its campaign on pushing the Democratic Party to compromise. But at the monthly Parks Board meeting on July 10, the commissioners and superintendent sat stone-faced and unmoved as the strikers angrily slammed into each other. Eventually, Board Chair Meg Forney interrupted and told the strikers, “…I must, as I said, close the open period and get back to our business,” and the board walked out of the meeting.
The strike can be won, but a new strategy is needed.
The park workers should form a strike committee to communicate with other sections of the workforce and coordinate their struggles.
Park workers must reach out to the entire working class and fight to mobilize them. Strikers should go to the workplaces of other city workers, to lobbyists for teachers, postal workers, health care workers, railroad workers, airport workers, utility workers, and construction workers, not just in Minneapolis but throughout the Twin Cities metropolitan area. A special appeal should be made to college students protesting the Biden administration’s support of Israel in carrying out the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
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