Building a Worker Justice Ecosystem in Minnesota

“When you center voices, and workers are empowered, it creates opportunities for people to contribute to their communities, participate in local economies, create vibrant places and safe infrastructure for everyone. It’s not just about the impact on workers, there is a ripple effect.”

- SARAH HERNANDEZ, McKNIGHT FOUNDATION

Across the state, Minnesota workers are coming together to build power, gain more equitable working conditions, and advance a more inclusive, resilient economy where employee morale is high, turnover is low, and every worker can count on a safe job and a family-sustaining paycheck. When workers are treated justly, they can build wealth and invest back into their communities–achieving their aspirations, enriching our social fabric, and strengthening local economies.

These workers are building power by learning their rights and expanding their capacity to fight for them. Some are joining unions, and others are gaining collective momentum through worker centers and community-led organizations. Many of these groups, ranging from formal 501(c)3 nonprofits to grassroots cooperatives, are collaborating and learning from each other in real-time, even as they respond to the specific needs of the communities they are led by and serve.

For more than 17 years, the worker-led nonprofit Centro De Trabajadores Unidos En La Lucha (CTUL) has been fighting to protect and expand the rights of non-union workers in the Twin Cities area. In October of 2024, CTUL celebrated a milestone for the construction industry in Minnesota and beyond by announcing that two nonprofit developers have joined their Building Dignity and Respect (BDR) program. 

The program aims to advance a new approach to increasing economic mobility and job safety for Twin Cities construction workers, with a mission of advancing “the human rights of the workers that are building our communities.” Its primary focus is to establish fair, equitable employment standards within the construction industry, which has faced scrutiny for worker exploitation, wage theft, and unsafe working conditions. “These acts of injustice are what’s hidden in the shadows of our economy, hidden in the shadows of the buildings that are being built, and hidden inside the back rooms and kitchens of the restaurants where we’re eating,” said CTUL Co-director Merle Payne.

Developers who sign onto the BDR commit to providing paid time for workers so they can attend know-your-rights workshops offered by CTUL, and there is a hotline for workers to call if they have a workplace concern or want to know more about their rights, plus an independent monitoring program to audit the chain of subcontracting and construction and ensure workers are being treated equitably. 

“The code of conduct was defined and written by workers about the protections they needed in the workplace,” said Payne, who noted that the program empowers workers to protect their rights without fear of retaliation. 

CTUL is one part of Minnesota’s growing worker justice movement. Efforts to protect and expand workers’ rights are growing beyond the construction industry. Across sectors, hardworking Minnesotans face unsafe job conditions, wage theft, stagnant wages, discrimination, and more. Unions, community-led nonprofits, and workers’ centers are co-creating power-building opportunities for everyone who does work in our state. They are making sure workers are developing the knowledge and skills they need to organize and use their power.

“These acts of injustice are what’s hidden in the shadows of our economy, hidden in the shadows of the buildings that are being built, and hidden inside the back rooms and kitchens of the restaurants where we’re eating.”

– MERLE PAYNE, Centro De Trabajadores Unidos En La Lucha

Minnesota’s Cross-Sector Worker Justice Ecosystem

Take, for example, Fe y Justicia, a Central Minnesota-based faith-based organization primarily serving Latine communities with a focus on the agricultural and meatpacking industries. Meatpacking, in particular, is dominated by immigrant workers: According to data from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, 44.4% of meatpacking workers are Latine and 38% of the meatpacking workforce are immigrants. In comparison, immigrants make up 17% of the US workforce. 

In Minnesota, workers at meatpacking plants have protested unsafe working conditions that have led to injuries and the rapid spread of illnesses like COVID-19. Those workers have also feared reprisal from meatpacking companies if they spoke out. 

Fe y Justicia trains workers to be leaders fighting for justice, and they work in partnership with other organizations to reach other communities of workers in their region. 

“We work to support the workers so they can stand up for themselves and raise their voice so change can be made,” said Ma Elena Gutierrez, Executive Director of Fe y Justicia. 

Gutierrez also shares that Fe y Justicia is a collaborative organization,so they partner with other organizations that reach and build with workers across other industries.

“We meet with the Latinos, we work with the organizations working with the Somalis and the white folks so that they meet each other and know that their struggle is the same. They all work hard but they are all not being paid enough to pay their bills,” said Gutierrez. “Sometimes they might feel like they must oppose the other groups, but when they get together, they find out that their struggle is the same. It’s why we work with other organizations, because it brings the groups together and that builds power.”

Building Power Through Collaboration & Partnership

That sense of collaboration and partnership as a power-building tool is a throughline across Minnesota’s worker justice movement–and it’s growing.

“We understand our work is part of an ecosystem,” said Sheli Stein, Lead Organizer for the Centro de oportunidades de restaurantes de Minnesota (ROC-MN). “As I’ve spoken to folks across the country, one thing often highlighted about the power of the Minnesota ecosystem is that each organization holds personal and organizational relationships with each other, so we can actually move quite quickly together.”

That ecosystem is made up of multiple organizations, collaborations, and partners. Partner organizations include government bodies like the Office of the Attorney General and funders like the McKnight Foundation who see their role as a bridge between workers and the policy-makers and decision-makers they otherwise might not have access to. 

For the last several years, ROC-MN has been doing “workplace community building,”bringing workers together to leverage their collective power and make positive change happen in their workplaces and setting higher employment standards for the restaurant industry and beyond. 

“Particularly in restaurants and food service, we have racial divisions, gender divisions, and other identity divisions that are actually drawn along occupational lines,” said Stein. “A big part of the work is helping workers identify how to build bridges together and how to identify unifying issues so they can fight together.”

Stein also shared that the biggest divisions are not between workers, but between employers and employees because employers can be so disconnected from the lived experience of workers. 

“The last four years, we’ve had some really big wage theft fights that we’ve done, as well as some smaller things along the way, supporting individual workers taking on their employers,” said Stein. “We’ve also supported workers fighting not just for what their rights are under the law, but also what we call extra-legal demands, which are things we believe workers deserve but that the law does not protect.”

Those extra-legal demands include health insurance, fair scheduling practices, and a unionization campaign supporting workers at various restaurants, cafes, and music venues. “That’s exciting for us because many of the workers came through our leadership development programs,” said Stein. 

 “As I’ve spoken to folks across the country, one thing often highlighted about the power of the Minnesota ecosystem is that each organization holds personal and organizational relationships with each other, so we can actually move quite quickly together.”

- SHELI STEIN, RESTAURANT OPPORTUNITIES CENTER OF mINnESOTA

Developing Leaders for a Stronger Movement

Leadership development is at the core of community organizing, as are power-mapping and providing people-centered community education-all practices being leveraged across Minnesota’s labor movement. Like CTUL, many organizations offer know-your-rights trainings where workers learn to advocate for themselves in their workplace to organize against wage theft, gender-based violence, and other mistreatment by their employers.  

“We are not only assisting people to get into jobs, but we also give them information about their rights. We meet every Sunday, because that’s when workers are available,” said Claudia Lainez, Director of the COPAL Workers’ Center. “We bring different people to talk about the law, their rights, and in the case of wage theft, which is very common, we work together with them to try and find ways to collect those wages. We will write a letter, we will contact the Attorney General, we will contact the Department of Labor and Industry, and we’ve been successful in getting back some of those wages.”

COPAL’s worker’s center opened three years ago, providing a broad portfolio of services to workers: employment and career for adults and youth (16-24), know-your-rights education and support, computer classes, drivers license practice test orientation, vaccine clinics, and connections to other resources. The nonprofit has locations in Minneapolis, Mankato, and Rochester. 

Lainez believes that organizations like COPAL–which stands for Comunidades Organizando El Poder Y La Acción Latina (Communities Organizing for Latine Power and Action)–will be called to do more community education in the future, because of the recent election. 

“We have a lot of people who are scared about what’s going to happen. We’ll have to do a lot of education and organizing, because we want everybody to know their rights and ensure that they are prepared in case anything happens,” said Lainez. 

Resourcing Minnesota’s Worker Justice Movement

To resource Minnesota’s worker justice movement, organizations like McKnight are deeply considering how they can support a worker-driven movement for justice, and striving to center the most impacted communities within their changemaking strategies.

“What we mean by Accelerating Economic Mobility is advancing quality jobs through a worker justice lens,” said McKnight senior program officer Sarah Hernandez, who leads the Foundation’s “Accelerating Economic Mobility” portfolio within its Vibrant & Equitable Communities program.“We’ve got our eye on family-sustaining wages. What does it mean to move people into quality jobs and move low-income and no-income individuals into jobs that pay family-sustaining wages? That’s our north star in terms of measurement.”

“When you center voices, and workers are empowered, it creates opportunities for people to contribute to their communities, participate in local economies, create vibrant places and safe infrastructure for everyone. It’s not just about the impact on workers, there is a ripple effect,” said Hernandez. 

According to Payne, there are businesses out there that want to do the right thing and they’re just looking for the opening. He says creating spaces where businesses like construction companies can step up will invite those businesses to the table – and that’s good for workers and employers. 

Gutierrez at Fe y Justicia imagines a day when every worker in Minnesota has a quality job that empowers them to pursue their highest aspirations. When jobs are safe and pay fairly, she says, “people can do more than just work on a dairy farm. They can run for office. They can do more to make the change they are seeking.” said Gutierrez.

Sobre el Autor: Cirien Saadeh, PhD is a community organizer, community journalist, and educator. Saadeh is currently the program leader for Critical Social Justice and Solidarity (Bachelor of Arts) and Organizing and Community Justice (Master of Arts) programs at Prescott College. Outside of her teaching work, Saadeh is a community journalist and community journalism educator focused on practicing and teaching journalism in pursuit of a racially just and sustainable world.