Minnesota janitors protest over unpaid overtime wages

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On Wednesday April 25, about a dozen workers held a press conference outside of the Kmart on Nicollet Avenue and Lake Street to reiterate the complaints that they made in a lawsuit filed last year against Diversified Maintenance Systems for requiring them to work up to 80 hours a week without overtime pay. Diversified Maintenance Systems is a nationwide cleaning contractor for retail stores including Kmart, Target and Best Buy. The workers were joined by other members of the workers’ organization CTUL (Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha or the Center for Workers United in Struggle).Their press conference coincided with a report released by CTUL, which points out historical wage problems among many retail cleaning contractors, over the past ten years.”We’re here today because we’re fighting to make sure our rights are being respected,” said Alejandro Quirino, who cleans Kmart and Best Buy stores contracted through Diversified. “We don’t want to see our rights violated.”According to CTUL’s report, over the last five years, Diversified has been subject to at least seven private lawsuits as well as an investigation by the US Department of Labor.Leticia Baeza is one of those Diversified employees who charges that she didn’t receive overtime pay, even though she worked eight hours a day, seven days a week — which comes to 16 hours of overtime she didn’t receive.”I am not asking for anything extra,” Baeza said during her speech at the press conference. “Just to be paid what I am owed.”Baeza also claimed that Diversified threatened her when she complained, telling her that “the doors of the store were very wide and [she] could leave if [she] wanted to.”Diversified is also subject to some more serious charges, says Michael Healey, the attorney for the 12 Minnesota workers filing suit against Diversified, such as fraud. Continue Reading

MUSIC REVIEW | Night Moves, Moonstone Continuum, Food Pyramid, and Buffalo Moon wow the Varsity Theater

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Headliners Night Moves played to a full crowd on April 13 at the Varsity Theater with openers Food Pyramid, Buffalo Moon, and Moonstone Continuum. The relatively new Minneapolis buzz-band is seeing rapid exposure after being signed to London-based major label, Domino Records, who represents some big names like Franz Ferdinand, the Kills, Animal Collective, and the Dirty Projectors to name a few.

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Not NIMBY, just equality: Richfield residents say affordable housing should go to Edina

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On the night of March 26, Richfield’s city planning committee looked out at yet another full house. The council chamber was so crowded that they added extra chairs outside the room. For meetings that typically deal with the approval of bylaws and city budget changes, this was no regular turnout. The sheer number of attendees was due to an ongoing feud, sparked by a proposal to build a 70-unit affordable housing apartment complex on South Pleasant Avenue by Edina-based Ron Clark Construction.Property Values and CrimeThe loudest opponents have been Richfield Commoners United, who have spearheaded the opposition to the proposal made by Edina-based Ron Clark Construction. Richfield Commoners United cited a study by the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, pointing to statements about negative impact on property values and crime rates from high density (typically above 50 units) affordable housing projects, while lower density and dispersed projects tend to have no impact. Continue Reading

St. Paul studies streetcar options, North Minneapolis looks for connection

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Earlier this month, the city of St. Paul decided to move forward with a $250,000, year-long study, following sister city Minneapolis to determine whether or not streetcars are a good addition to the city’s public transportation grid.The study will analyze what routes might make sense as well as looking at possible financing options for those routes — the end result, ideally: to create a cheaper, more alluring system that also has the potential to feed into the light rail.”They offer many of the same benefits as light rail,” said St. Paul City Councilmember Russ Stark, in an email interview. “The permanence of tracks (as opposed to bus routes that can be moved around), the lure of riding trains, and high economic development potential along the route — at about 1/3 to 1/2 the cost.”However, that’s not the only benefit, wrote Stark. In a city as built up as ours, it’s important to seek transportation methods that can coexist with other modes of travel, such as cars, bicycles, and even buses, especially on some of our narrow urban streets.Streetcars have already become successful fixtures in several cities across the United States, including Portland, Tampa, Memphis and outside the states, in cities such as in Toronto, which may share the most similarities with our own two snow-bound cities.While Stark believes it’s too early to talk about when and where a first line might be built, he does believe the streetcar system in St. Continue Reading

Bike lane basics: Explaining Minneapolis markings

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From block to block, bike lanes seem to change — from solid lines, to dotted lines, to no lines at all. It doesn’t end there. Last September, the Minneapolis Department of Public Works began installing green bike lanes and green shared lanes. As bicycling has become more popular, over the past two years the city has begun implementing new symbols and rules. While some people find them confusing, the new markings actually are intended to help make the streets safer.Most of the confusion comes from what appears to be an inconsistency in the green marking, which sometimes appears in a bike lane out of nowhere, and other times stretches out the entire street. Continue Reading