Mark Dayton Pushes American Crystal Back To Negotiating Table With Union

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Written By:
Rob Port

Dec 5, 2011
4:33pm

These are desperate times for the American Crystal union workers. Their protests haven’t garnered them much sympathy from the public. Their attacks on replacement workers, including verbal abuse up to and including racial epithets, didn’t scare anybody off. Not even their appeal to the Obama-controlled, union-friendly National Labor Relations Board bore fruit.

So with no signs of the dispute ending, the union has brought in their friend Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton who claims to have gotten an agreement from American Crystal management to begin marathon, day-and-night labor negotiations next week.

No word yet on whether or not the American Crystal management actually agreed to any such thing with Governor Dayton, let alone the marathon morning-and-night negotiations he’s suggesting, but rest assured that the unions are getting their money’s worth out of Dayton. He’s trying to force unionization on child care workers in Minnesota, and he’s now trying to force Crystal back to the negotiation table with the union which has yet to make any real concessions.

Since when is it appropriate for a politician to intervene in this sort of a private contract dispute? American Crystal has the upper hand in these negotiations – they’ve put multiple iterations of a reasonable contract on the table only to have them rejected by the obstinate union – so why should they be pressured back into making more offers to the unions by this politician who, clearly, has some skin in the game?

Politicians should take a “hands off” approach to these negotiations. They really have no business intervening in either side, but that doesn’t seem to bother Democrats. First it was Senator Kent Conrad making threats over the sugar program, now Dayton is throwing his weight around too.