Minneapolis parks workers want you to know why they are striking

Dan Ament is working seven days a week all summer long so Minneapolis can play.

He is a golf course foreman and oversees two of the city’s public golf courses – Hiawatha and Fort Snelling. The terms of his contract require that each public golf course always have a full-time employee on staff. Ament has two golf courses and is one of two full-time employees. So.

“We work seven days a week, from the beginning of the season to the end of the season,” says Ament, who maintains two historic golf courses and 27 holes with the help of 15 part-time seasonal groundskeepers.

When it came to negotiating a new contract, he and his colleagues asked the park administration for more full-time employees. The administration, he said, refused – budgets tightened by the pandemic and inflation did not stretch that far.

As golfers made their way to the green on July 4, Ament joined the picket line.

“I love what I do. I really don’t want to do anything else,” he said Tuesday, the sixth day of a planned seven-day strike by Minneapolis park workers. “I love public golf more than anything, that’s why I’m here. I’ve had opportunities to go to other organizations – I’ve turned them all down. … I firmly believe that every individual should be entitled to great public golf in our state.”

On the picket line in the park, workers in orange union uniforms waved “STRIKE” signs in front of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Behind them stood Spoonbridge and Cherry, the big blue chicken, and 27 acres of lovingly landscaped public park, a city treasure tended by workers who say they have been asked to do too much for too little for too long.

In most parts of Minneapolis, you are never more than six blocks from a park. Mitchell Clendenen certainly never wanted that. The parks of his hometown were his playground as a child. Today, they are his life’s work.

“I grew up in these parks,” said Clendenen, who was named Park Board Volunteer of the Year in middle school. He applied for a job when he was 18 and is now a foreman in charge of maintenance at six parks in south Minneapolis. “I learned to ride a bike (in the park). My brothers taught me how to play hockey at Lake of the Isles. … The neighborhood parks were just everyone’s backyard. Being part of that makes you feel good.”

But a child can only ride a bike in the park if someone is out there picking up broken glass from the paths. The neighborhood park only feels as safe and welcoming as your own backyard because someone is out there picking up the trash, planting flowers, mowing the lawn, and frantically cleaning up after people who treat public spaces like an outdoor toilet. Minneapolis’s parks are a gem because of workers like Mitchell Clendenen, who is on strike for his beloved job.

Wednesday is the last day of a week-long strike by City Employees Local 363. About a third of the park’s workforce walked off the job on Independence Day.

Before they get back to work – now that the Parks Department has backed down from its threat to lock them out – they hope Minneapolis residents will look around their beautiful parks and see the people who keep them in their pristine condition.

“We called a week-long strike to raise awareness,” said arborist Scott Jaeger, sitting on a park bench in the shade of one of the trees he maintains. “We all care about our parks. We love the parks. I would say we all use the parks as much, if not more, than the residents of Minneapolis.”

Jaeger and his team maintain a city forest. 58 arborists, 600,000 trees provide shade for the city’s parks and boulevards. Jaeger says he cannot afford the salary of an arborist.

At park board meetings, “they keep saying, ‘We don’t want to make anybody rich.’ Neither do I,” says Jaeger, who had to move from Minneapolis to cover the cost of an apartment on his $67,000 income. Single-family homes in Minneapolis start at $300,000. “I just want to buy a house and be able to live in the city. If that’s what the park board considers ‘rich’ – being able to afford a house in Minneapolis – then I think that sends a terrible message.”