SEIU Minnesota Questionnaire

This document contains the full, unabridged responses to SEIU Minnesota’s questionnaire, including the “Unions for All” pledge and all four section preambles (each in bold), since the organization’s own submission form imposed character limits that did not allow for complete answers.

Unions for All

Minnesotans believe in a state where all families, no matter our race, zip code, gender or religion, are able to live free from fear so we can care for each other, where every family has the economic security to provide for our loved ones, and where every child has access to good education and a clean environment to grow up in. But right now a handful of large corporations and the richest 1% are pushing politicians to divide us by race, religion, zip code, gender and jobs to distract from their own greed, causing too many families to fall behind. CEOs and the richest 1% have rigged the economy to line their pockets, pushing down wages and eliminating too many of the good, union jobs that provide financial security for our families and community. Then they try to distract and divide us by saying we should scapegoat immigrants and people of color for the hardships their own greed has caused. SEIU works to ensure our government, our economy, and our whole state put the needs and values of working families ahead of the interests of powerful corporations, by ending gender oppression and racial discrimination, and by building a more democratic government, including strong worker organizations, so that everyone has an opportunity to live joyful lives, free from discrimination and corporate greed.

My response to the above preamble: The claim that CEOs and the richest 1% have rigged the economy to push down wages does not match the recent record. From 2019 to 2024, low-wage workers saw the fastest real wage growth in over four decades, roughly 15.3% cumulative by the Economic Policy Institute’s own measure, and that gain came from a tight labor market where employers had to compete for workers, not from new government mandates or union power. When that labor market cooled in 2025, low-wage growth slowed, which is a real and documented problem, but it reflects labor market conditions, not a conspiracy by the wealthy to suppress pay. It’s true that wage inequality has grown substantially since the late 1970s, and that’s a legitimate long-term concern worth addressing through genuine economic growth and a competitive labor market, not through a narrative that treats every employer as an adversary. I’d also note that this preamble, like the pledge that follows it, frames anyone who raises concerns about race, religion, or immigration policy as doing the bidding of corporate greed. That’s not an economic argument, it’s a way of ruling entire categories of legitimate political debate out of bounds before the conversation starts, and I don’t accept that framing. My focus is on policies that actually grow wages through a competitive economy and targeted accountability where real problems exist, not on adopting an us versus them framework as the starting premise.

Unions for All Pledge

I affirmatively seek the endorsement and support of SEIU, its members and their families. In seeking this endorsement, I acknowledge and pledge that I will:

• Use all levers at my disposal to help working people form unions free from interference, intimidation, reprisals, or delays, while publicly taking on large corporations and CEOs and holding them accountable for the good, union jobs our community needs, including speaking with employers and demanding they respect the legal right to organize and bargain collectively and showing up at worker actions in support of strong contracts and worker power;
• Rewrite the rules to reflect how jobs and work have changed and ensure that the majority of workers who have been historically excluded from being able to join together in a union, largely women and people of color, are able to join together in worker organizations to hold powerful corporate employers accountable, including through sectoral bargaining boards, joint employer liability, making it harder for employers to misclassify employees, and guaranteeing access by unions to their members;
• Oppose attempts by greedy corporations and billionaires to further rig the system against working people, including but not limited to voter suppression or disenfranchisement, paycheck deception, attacks on union leave, additional burdens on dues deduction, and so-called “Right-to-Work”;
• Run a campaign that leads with our shared Minnesota values to create a state where everyone has what we need to live safe, happy and healthy lives and incorporates policies that empower workers in any economic plans or platforms;
• Call out large corporations and the richest 1% who would serve their own greed by scapegoating parts of our community to divide us by race, gender, religion, and zip code, and distract us from coming together to win on our shared goals like Unions for All and bold solutions on healthcare, climate and racial justice;
• Respect and wisely use the campaign contribution(s) I may receive from SEIU’s Political Fund, which comes from SEIU members, who voluntarily give small donations to support champions for working people; and
• Measure my success in office by the real improvements in the lives of the people I am elected to represent.

My Response: Disagree. I will not sign this pledge. Several of its commitments are specific legislative pledges, not general goodwill language, and I’m not willing to make them. The pledge asks me to “oppose attempts… to further rig the system against working people, including but not limited to… so-called Right-to-Work,” which is a direct commitment to oppose right-to-work policy, a mainstream position I’m not walking away from before I’ve even taken office. It also commits me to “use all levers at my disposal” to help unions organize and to support “sectoral bargaining boards” and “joint employer liability,” both specific legislative mechanisms, not just friendly rhetoric. I support workers’ right to organize and I’m glad to engage with SEIU and its members in good faith on shared priorities, but I cannot commit in advance to opposing right-to-work or to specific legislative mechanisms I haven’t seen yet, and I’m not going to sign a pledge that reads as a preemptive commitment on how I will or will not campaign on other issues.

Fair Economy for All

Minnesotans are united in the belief that while corporate profits, CEO pay and the prices these corporations set on basic goods our families need continue to skyrocket, working families should have pay and benefits that allow for economic security for our families. We are committed to passing policies that improve the economic wellbeing of our communities, while ensuring that all work is respected and workers, no matter our job, race or zip code, are treated fairly.

My response to the above preamble: Corporate profit margins and CEO pay did rise well above historical norms in 2021 through 2023, and that’s documented by mainstream economic research, not just advocacy groups. Where I part ways with this preamble is on what caused it and what follows from it. Economists across the spectrum broadly agree that a demand driven economy, fueled by pandemic era stimulus, gave companies with real market power room to expand margins; where they disagree is whether that reflects coordinated “greed” as opposed to the ordinary behavior of firms operating in an economy that was flooded with federal spending. Either way, the record of the last few years actually argues against this preamble’s implied solution. The years with the strongest real wage gains for lower income workers, 2019 through 2024, came from a tight, competitive labor market forcing employers to pay more to attract and keep workers, not from new labor boards or state mandated wage floors. I support genuine competition policy and transparency where market concentration is the real problem, and I’ll evaluate the specific proposals that follow in this questionnaire on their own merits, but I don’t accept the premise that the answer to rising profits is inserting government into wage setting across every sector of Minnesota’s economy.

Question 1. The employment status of drivers for rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft is highly contested by those very same companies, depriving these workers of the right to form a union under federal labor law. However, states across the country are chart a different path. Like California, Illinois, and Massachusetts, Minnesota can establish a path for rideshare drivers to join together in a union and collectively bargain with the rideshare companies regardless of their employment status, giving drivers a seat at the table to fight for the compensation and protections they need, without having to repeatedly ask the legislature to act. Will you support statewide collective bargaining rights for rideshare drivers regardless of their employment status?

My response: No, I do not support extending mandatory collective bargaining structures to independent contractors regardless of employment status. Minnesota already addressed rideshare driver compensation and protections through the 2024 law that established statewide minimum pay rates ($1.28 per mile, 31 cents per minute), guaranteed insurance coverage, and created a fair deactivation process, all while preserving drivers’ independent contractor status and the flexibility that comes with it. That compromise, negotiated between drivers, the companies, and the legislature, addressed the core concerns raised in this question without imposing a mandated bargaining structure on a workforce that, by federal law, operates outside the traditional employer/employee relationship. I support continuing to strengthen those existing protections through the legislature rather than creating a parallel unionization framework for independent contractors. I’d also note that similar mandated bargaining arrangements for independent contractors in other states have run into federal antitrust challenges, since collective price-setting among separate businesses raises legal questions distinct from traditional employer/employee unionization. That’s a real risk for any driver protections the legislature enacts, not just a technicality.

Question 2. Labor Standards Boards bring together representatives of workers and employers in a given industry with government and community stakeholders to improve their wages and working conditions in a given industry, while engaging and training workers on those new standards. In 2023, Minnesota created its first Labor Standards Board specifically for nursing homes, which has already taken action to increase wages for nursing home workers. Will you support the creation of a broad State Labor Standards Board that can convene other industry-specific boards, particularly in low-wage sectors like child care or fast food?

My response: No. The 2023 Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board already set an industry-wide wage floor, which has already taken action to increase wages. Extending that model into a standing State Labor Standards Board empowered to convene boards across child care, fast food, and other low-wage sectors on an ongoing basis would replace market-based wage-setting with a permanent government wage-setting apparatus across large parts of the state’s economy. Child care and fast food are dominated by small, often family-owned and franchise operators with thin margins, and California’s experience with its statewide Fast Food Council, which pushed the industry minimum wage to $20/hour in 2024, is instructive: It drew immediate legal and political pushback and remains contested over its effects on hours, staffing, and entry-level job availability. I support wage growth in Minnesota, but I believe it should come through a competitive labor market and targeted legislative action where there’s clear evidence of a problem, not through a standing board with the authority to expand itself into new industries.

Question 3. Large employers often use subcontracting to insulate themselves from their responsibilities under labor law, as well as from the bad behavior used by their subcontractors to drive down costs and benefit the large employer. Will you support holding businesses who fail to do due diligence jointly liable for labor law violations by their subcontractors?

My response: No. Businesses that knowingly collude with subcontractors to violate labor law already face liability under existing conspiracy, joint employer, and unjust enrichment doctrines developed through case law. A blanket “failure to do due diligence” standard shifts legal risk onto businesses that may have limited visibility into or control over a subcontractor’s day to day labor practices, and it would fall hardest on small and mid-size Minnesota businesses that rely on subcontracting to compete, not on the large employers this question targets. That kind of open-ended liability standard raises compliance costs and litigation exposure in ways that discourage businesses from contracting with smaller, local subcontractors at all, which runs counter to what SD49’s job market needs. I support enforcing labor law vigorously against businesses that actually commit violations, and I support real penalties where a company knowingly structures subcontracts to evade its labor obligations, but a standalone due diligence liability standard as written here is too broad and too vague to support.

Question 4. In 2023-2024, the Minnesota Legislature took significant steps to modernize Minnesota’s Public Employee Labor Relations Act (PELRA). Will you defend PELRA against attacks by public employers to roll back these changes, and continue to improve the rights of public employees in their worksites?

My response: No. The 2023-2024 changes expanded mandatory bargaining subjects to include staffing ratios, and for school employees, class size and student testing ratios, while stripping public employers of inherent managerial authority over personnel levels. The Minnesota School Boards Association, Minnesota Association of School Administrators, Association of Metropolitan School Districts, Minnesota Rural Education Association, and Saint Paul Public Schools all opposed these provisions because they shift core management and budget decisions away from locally elected school boards and onto the bargaining table, with the cost ultimately landing on property taxpayers. I support fair processes for public employees to organize and bargain. I don’t support a blanket commitment to defend every future PELRA expansion regardless of its substance, particularly provisions that pull budget authority away from locally elected boards and the taxpayers they answer to.

Question 5. In 2023-2024 Minnesota passed a historic set of proposals to improve the lives of working families, including free school meals, paid family and medical leave, earned sick and safe time, protections for reproductive rights, improvements to the minimum wage law, and free public college for more than half of the state’s households. Will you oppose any attempt to weaken or roll back these historic victories?

My response: No. This question bundles several distinct programs and policies together and asks for a single pledge to oppose any change to any of them, indefinitely. I evaluate each program on its own merits rather than as a package.

Question 6. As jurisdictions work to revitalize their downtowns, they are often supporting the conversion of office buildings to residential. However, these conversions often result in the loss of property service jobs with better wages and benefits to lower paying property service jobs with no benefits. Will you support responsible contractor requirements for downtown building conversions to ensure that ongoing property service jobs continue to be good paying jobs with benefits?

My response: No. Minneapolis’s own 2024 ordinance streamlining office-to-residential conversions moved in the opposite direction of this proposal. The city exempted conversion projects from site plan review, traffic studies, and inclusionary zoning because these projects are financially marginal and needed fewer added costs to pencil out, not more. Declining office tower values have already shifted Minneapolis’s property tax levy burden from homeowners paying 47% in 2023 to over 51% today, as vacant and undervalued office buildings pay less into the system. Layering a new responsible contractor wage and benefit mandate onto conversions that are already struggling to be financially viable risks the opposite of this question’s stated goal. It would likely mean fewer conversions happen, more office towers stay vacant, and even more of the property tax burden falls on homeowners, including in SD49. I support fair pay for property service workers, but not through conditions tied specifically to conversion projects the market is already finding difficult to finance.

Question 7. Similarly, stadium renovations and large-scale developments often receive significant public subsidies or tax incentives, but the property service jobs these projects create often bring low-wages and lack basic benefits. Will you support requiring strong labor standards, including fair wages, benefits, and job protections, for property service workers as a condition of receiving public subsidies or tax credits for stadium renovations or large developments?

My response: No. This question assumes the debate is only about what conditions attach to stadium and large development subsidies, when the more fundamental accountability question is why these subsidies exist at all. U.S. Bank Stadium alone cost Minnesota taxpayers a $498 million state bond commitment plus $150 million from the City of Minneapolis, and the city also committed $7.5 million a year in ongoing operating subsidies, roughly $225 million more over the life of the deal. Independent analysis, including a New York City budget office review cited in coverage of Minnesota’s own stadium costs, has found little evidence these kinds of subsidies generate a net fiscal benefit to the surrounding area. Layering new labor standard requirements onto these deals adds compliance complexity to arrangements that shouldn’t exist in this form in the first place, and it does nothing to address the core problem, which is taxpayers underwriting billion dollar private projects for well connected developers and team owners. I’d rather see the legislature scale back corporate welfare for stadiums and large developments and put the savings toward property tax relief than negotiate the terms of subsidies I don’t think should be handed out at that scale to begin with.

Question 8. When workers bargain to successfully raise their own labor standards, they can increase wages and benefits across the whole community. But employers know that time is on their side in contract negotiations, because they understand the incredible burden that a strike places on workers, particularly low-wage workers, who must put the financial well-being of their own family in serious jeopardy if they strike to achieve these community-wide benefits. This is why strikes, especially those lasting more than a week, are not only uncommon, but are a last resort of workers who are forced out on strike by their employers’ refusal to bargain a fair contract. Will you support extending Unemployment Insurance benefits to striking workers, just as any other worker who receives these benefits after one nonpayable week?

My response: No. HF3446 remains a proposed, unenacted bill. Extending UI to strikers changes the program’s purpose from insuring involuntary job loss to funding one side’s leverage in a labor dispute using employer-paid trust fund dollars. Minnesota’s UI Trust Fund was fully depleted during the pandemic and required a $2.7 billion state bailout in 2022, which is reason for caution about adding new eligibility categories. I recognize strikes are difficult for the workers involved, but the answer to that is a strong union strike fund and a fair bargaining process, not shifting the cost onto every employer who pays into unemployment insurance.

Question 9. No one who works full time should live in poverty, yet so many essential workers still struggle to make ends meet. In 2024 the legislature made progress to improve the minimum wage by eliminating subminimum wages for youth and employees of small businesses and increasing the cap on inflationary increases to 5%. Will you support efforts to continue to improve the state minimum wage by eliminating the subminimum wage for workers with disabilities, creating a training certification for the training subminimum wage, and increasing the wage in stages to at least that of Minneapolis and St Paul (currently $16.37), while maintaining the state’s long-standing One Fair Wage that prohibits the use of tip penalties by employers?

My response: No. Before addressing the specific proposals, this section’s framing deserves a correction. By the federal government’s own measure, full-time work and poverty rarely coincide. The most recent BLS data show only 2.4 percent of full-time workers fall below the official poverty level, compared with 9.4 percent of part-time workers. “So many essential workers still struggle to make ends meet” is likely pointing to a different measure, the ALICE Household Survival Budget used by Minnesota’s United Ways, which found 35 percent of Minnesota households fall below that cost-of-living threshold in 2024. That’s a real and worthwhile number, but it measures something different from poverty, and it isn’t caused by employer wage-setting alone. A real share of that cost pressure comes from policies SEIU itself lobbied for. The payroll tax funding paid family and medical leave, a program SEIU pushed hard for, already grew from the 0.7% promised at passage to 0.88% before paying out a single benefit, a cost split between employers and workers straight out of paychecks. SEIU also celebrated the $70.2 million CFSS rate increase as part of a state budget that grew 37 percent under the 2023-24 trifecta, spending that ultimately gets funded through higher taxes on the same working families this question claims to speak for. On the specific proposals, I support phasing out the disability subminimum wage in favor of the training certification model described here. I don’t support a mandated statewide minimum wage increase to $16.37, that’s a 43 percent jump from the current $11.41 rate, set for Minneapolis and St Paul’s cost of living, not the rest of the state. On the tip credit ban, I’d want to look at that separately before committing either way.

Question 10. As the nature of work has changed over the last couple decades, protections against overwork have failed to keep pace. Whether that is working part-time but seven days per week or working shifts with very little time off between them (eg: closing and opening shifts, or “clopens”), overwork protections need to keep up with the changing work environment. Will you support overtime pay for working on state holidays, or for working a seventh consecutive day or shifts without sufficient time off since the previous shift?

My response: No. Minneapolis and St Paul already have fair scheduling ordinances that require predictability pay, at least 11 hours of rest between shifts, and limits on consecutive workdays without consent, and those cities chose that approach for their own retail and hospitality heavy labor markets. Minnesota also already has a stronger overtime standard than most states, since it’s the only state with a 48 hour workweek written into law rather than the federal 40 hour threshold. A new statewide mandate covering overtime pay for state holidays or a seventh consecutive day, applied uniformly across every industry rather than the service sectors these local ordinances were built for, takes a decision cities have already made for themselves and forces the same rule onto small businesses and industries with very different staffing needs across the state. I’d rather see cities and industries that want these protections continue building them where they fit than layer a one size fits all mandate on top.

Question 11. Public employers must live up to the commitments they made to their workers for retirement. The PERA board has proposed moving low wage workers, often Education Support Professionals, out of the defined benefit pension and into a defined contribution plan. Will you oppose any attempts to change our state’s public pension (PERA) from a defined benefit system to a defined contribution plan, and ensure that all workers are included?

My response: No. I’m not going to pledge in advance to oppose any change to PERA’s plan structure regardless of what the legislature or the board actually proposes. PERA’s General Plan is currently 89.1 percent funded with a projected full funding date of 2034, which is a reasonably sound position, but pension design is something the legislature needs room to adjust as funding conditions change over a member’s career, not something to lock in permanently through a campaign pledge. I support Minnesota keeping the commitments it has already made to current retirees and current employees who built their retirement planning around the existing defined benefit structure, and any changes affecting those members should be handled carefully and without breaking promises already made. Beyond that, I’m not committing to block every future proposal sight unseen.

Question 12. In 2023-2024, the legislature made Minnesota a more welcoming state for all its residents, regardless of immigration status, but many immigrants continue to be locked out of important public programs like unemployment insurance. Will you oppose any legislation that codifies the exclusion of immigrants from state services and support legislation that makes state services like access unemployment benefits more inclusive of immigrant families regardless of document status?

My response: No. Unemployment insurance is legally different from other public programs because eligibility is tied to being authorized to work, which is why UI programs nationwide, not just Minnesota’s, generally exclude undocumented workers regardless of which party controls the legislature. States that have tried to get around this have had to build separate funds outside the UI system entirely, like New York’s 2.1 billion dollar Excluded Workers Fund or California’s contested Excluded Workers Pilot Program, precisely because extending UI itself risks the state’s federal certification for the program. Minnesota’s own 2025 budget agreement, negotiated under a legislature split almost exactly down the middle between both parties, already rolled back MinnesotaCare eligibility for new adult applicants who are undocumented, which tells you where the state’s current governing consensus actually sits on this question, not just where one party’s activists want it to go. I don’t support building a new state funded benefit program for undocumented residents, whether through UI directly or a parallel fund, and I’m not going to pledge in advance to oppose every future bill this question’s framing might consider an exclusion.

Question 13. Airports are the engine of a local economy, and are funded as a public good, and yet airport service workers are often not able to make ends meet. Profits and extraneous public subsidies allow both airports and airlines to grow and structurally invest, but workers are often not considered in that investment. Now, with Medicaid funding slashed to fund tax breaks for the country’s wealthiest corporations like Delta, we expect that gap to become an abyss for airport workers. Will you support legislation that ensures a minimum wage and health and welfare rate to airport service workers, as 14 other airports in the country have done?

My response: No. The claim linking Medicaid cuts to Delta tax breaks specifically isn’t something I could verify, and I’d want a real source before treating that as fact. On the actual proposal, this is the same kind of sector by sector, government set wage and benefit mandate I’ve opposed for fast food, child care, and other industries earlier in this questionnaire, just applied to airport service workers this time. Minnesota already has a statewide minimum wage that applies to every employer in the state, including those operating at MSP, and I’d rather see wage growth happen through the general market and the existing minimum wage framework than through a new carve out that singles out one more industry for its own government mandated pay scale. Airport worker pay and conditions are also something workers at MSP can and do address directly through collective bargaining where they’re organized, which is the right channel for sector specific concerns like this one.

Question 14. Housing costs continue to skyrocket in large part because local city governments use zoning limits, parking minimums, and other mechanisms to strictly limit the amount of more affordable multi-family housing that can be built. In addition to driving up housing costs, these policies entrench racial and economic segregation, while promoting climate change and making our mass transit infrastructure less viable. Would you support state level efforts to reduce or eliminate municipal restrictions on housing supply, especially along transit corridors?

My response: No. The claim that local zoning entrenches racial and economic segregation and promotes climate change treats a contested, ideologically driven argument as settled fact, and it isn’t. There’s also a circular logic problem baked into the mass transit argument here. Transit systems in this region were originally built and funded on the premise of moving people from outlying areas into the urban core, meaning the transit infrastructure was justified by the existing pattern of where people already lived. Now the argument has been inverted to claim that without mandated multi-family housing built in those same outlying areas, transit access somehow becomes unviable, which reverses the original cause and effect used to sell these transit investments in the first place. On the actual question of state preemption, cities like Eden Prairie and Minnetonka should retain control over their own zoning and development decisions rather than have that authority overridden by a state mandate built on this kind of reasoning.