Author: Johnni Lopez

Photo by Max Nesterak/minnesotadigest.com.Starbucks workers at an Edina store voted 9-0 to unionize, becoming the fifth store in Minnesota to do so. The election at the Edina store — at 5122 Edina Industrial Blvd. — is the latest success in a wave of unionization drives across the country, with workers at more than 220 Starbucks stores voting to unionize. Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, has won five of the seven union elections in Minnesota and is challenging the two it lost, alleging unfair labor practices. Two more stores — in Roseville and Rochester — are awaiting…

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The Minnesota Nurses Association can call a strike with 10 days notice. Photo by Max Nesterak/minnesotadigest.com.Union nurses at 15 hospitals in the Twin Cities and Duluth area voted to authorize a strike on Monday, escalating pressure on hospital executives as the two sides remain far apart on staffing levels and wages. The strike authorization, which required a two-thirds vote, allows the Minnesota Nurses Association to call some 15,000 nurses away from the bedside and to the picket line for any duration with 10 days notice. “We’re ready to fight. We’re ready to put patients before profits. What happens next is…

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Trader Joe’s worker and union organizer Sarah Beth Ryther (right) embraces her coworker Michelle Houston after winning an election to unionize on Aug. 12, 2022. Photo by Max Nesterak/minnesotadigest.com.Workers at the Trader Joe’s in downtown Minneapolis voted 55-5 to unionize, becoming the second store in the country to do so. “We are so absolutely excited,” said Sarah Beth Ryther, a union organizer and crew member at the store. “We’re also really excited to get the hard work started of bargaining and making our workplace safer.” Workers and Trader Joe’s managers clad in the store’s signature Hawaiian shirts gathered at a…

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Minnesota Nurses Association President Mary Turner announces on Aug. 11, 2022 that 15,000 nurses will vote on whether to authorize a strike. Photo by Max Nesterak/minnesotadigest.com. Unionized nurses at 15 hospitals across the Twin Cities and the Duluth area will vote on Monday on whether to authorize a strike, as negotiations remain stalled over staffing levels and wages.  A vote to strike wouldn’t lead to nurses immediately walking off the job but would allow the Minnesota Nurses Association to call some 15,000 away from bedsides to picket lines for any duration with 10 days notice.  “We don’t take this lightly,”…

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An Iowa poultry operation. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images. The attorneys general of 10 states are backing a proposed rule by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that is meant to get poultry growers fair agreements with meat processors, but they want stronger oversight. “One of the many reasons it’s tough for small poultry farmers — and small farmers of all kinds — to afford their lives is because of imbalances of power, money and information between farmers and processors,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said Monday when he joined his counterparts in nine states to publicly comment on the USDA…

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Election Judge Elise Smith-Dewey checks in a voter at a polling place in Woodbury in November 2020. Photo by Max Nesterak/minnesotadigest.com.Colorado’s election officials, like so many across the country, faced a surge of violent threats after the 2020 election. Federal authorities are prosecuting a man who pled guilty to threatening a Colorado election official on Instagram, where he wrote: “Do you feel safe? You shouldn’t.” And Colorado police arrested a man accused of calling Secretary of State Jena Griswold and saying that “the angel of death is coming for her.” So when the Colorado secretary of state’s office learned early…

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A screen shot captured from video of Stephen Lowell speaking at the Dakota County Patriot Block Party on July 30.In a speech about voting and trust in elections, a Minnesota Senate candidate said people need to “grow teeth” by “voting with a ballot before we have to vote with bullets.”  Stephen Lowell, the GOP-endorsed candidate for Minnesota Senate District 52, said Republicans should vote in droves, comparing the turnout needed to the number of protesters who demonstrated in the Twin Cities after George Floyd’s police murder in 2020. “We have to vote just like they’re throwing Molotovs up in Uptown.…

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Blood sample tube positive with Monkeypox virus, new epidemic disease in 2022 Photo by Getty Images. WASHINGTON — Federal public health officials said Thursday they are working with state and local health departments to boost messaging and vaccinations for those most likely to contract monkeypox, including at large-scale events. But Biden administration officials at a press briefing also struggled to explain differing statements about how the vaccines should be administered, a crucial part of the White House strategy. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved an emergency use authorization earlier this month to switch from giving the vaccine subcutaneously, the…

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OXFORD, MICHIGAN – DECEMBER 03: People attend a vigil to honor those killed and wounded during a shooting at Oxford High School on December 03, 2021 in Oxford, Michigan. Four students were killed and seven others injured on November 30, when student Ethan Crumbley allegedly opened fire with a pistol at the school. Crumbley has been charged in the shooting. His parents were also charged. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images.Dawn Gillard’s life revolved around her children. Everyone who loved her knew that. The rest of the world would read about it in her obituary. On May 27, Gillard was shot…

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The attorney general’s office said this is the ninth settlement with an opioid company in the last two and a half years.Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Wednesday announced another settlement with an opioid company that will further swell the state’s opioid settlement pool, which is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Over the past two and a half years, the attorney general’s office says it has reached nine settlements with opioid companies — the majority through multistate coalitions — for their role in the opioid epidemic. Many of the agreements say the companies willfully misrepresented the addictiveness and…

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