Northwoods Socialist Collective

1,400 Teamsters Local 320 service workers at the University of Minnesota have overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike to demand dignity, respect, and living wages. After 24 hours of strike mediation with the university on Thursday and Friday this week, we have failed to reach an agreement. Unless the university changes course, a strike could begin as early as Wednesday, August 20 on the Duluth campus, Friday, August 22 on the Crookston campus, and Monday, August 25 on the Twin Cities campus. Key Issues: UMN has offered only a 3.0% wage increase to Teamsters in year one of a new union contract, and 1.5% in year two—less than the 3.5% annual raise promised to President Cunningham and agreed to with Graduate Labor Union - UE Local 1105 for both years. UMN has proposed a 10.2% healthcare hike that would wipe out wage gains for many UMN service workers. UMN refuses to agree to full anti-harassment rights for Teamsters or increases to the night shift differential. In UMN’s food se...

In a social media post on Sunday, Donald Trump has demanded homeless residents of Washington DC leave the country’s capital or face eviction, and again promised to use federal officers to jail criminals, even though violent crime in the city was at a 30-year low when he took office in January. “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Sunday morning, shortly after being driven from the White House to his golf club in Virginia. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.”

With the ever increasing crisis unfolding in Gaza, where the population is literally being starved to death by the Israeli military, local activist are planning a series of Palestine solidarity actions.  The goal is keep ramping up pressure on Israel, and their allies in the U.S. government, to end the carnage.  Here is a list of upcoming events.  Mark your calendar and help us spread the word!

 >> The essay below was written by Howie Hanson, and is reprinted from his blog www.howiehanson.com Let’s not sugarcoat it. Duluth didn’t just get two shiny new ho spitals. We got a full-blown health care skyline. Essentia’s $900 million Vision Northland and St. Luke’s $130 million expansion have forever reshaped the East Hillside and Central Hillside neighborhoods — and not just visually. These are towering, fortress-like monuments to modern medicine, carved straight into the guts of working-class neighborhoods that never asked for any of it.

Today was the 15th and last day of the Minnesota Nurses Association strike at Essentia Health.  Picketing stopped today at noon, and workers will begin returning to work tomorrow. The union held a press conference today at 10am at the 2nd Street picket line.  At it, the union announced that both the striking Clinic RNs and Advance Practice Providers voted to return to work.  This moves comes after movement by Essentia in which the company agreed to allow the different Clinics to bargain together, and agreed to schedule a number of additional negotiation days in the coming weeks.  Contract negotiations will continue, and the union stressed that they view the fight as an ongoing one. You can view footage of the MNA press conference at this link: https://www.facebook.com/MinnesotaNurses/videos/1716031602607105 We plan on writing a longer piece summarizing the strike and what comes next in the days ahead.  And we'll be sure to post any additional statements from the...

On any given day, 190,600 women and girls are incarcerated in the United States . Over 60,000 women are detained pretrial , presumed innocent, caged in US jails simply because they cannot afford to pay bail. Their average yearly income is just $11,000. Over 66% are mothers with minor children. These facts are taken from the website: https://lethergohome.org/   It was set up in conjunction with musician Fiona Apple, who wrote a song called “Let Her Go Home” to bring attention to this terrible situation. We urge our readers to check out the website and the music video: