Minneapolis park labor talks break down again over disagreement over wage facts

With key factual disputes over wages at the heart of the ongoing park workers strike, negotiations between the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) and the Laborers Local 363 union broke down again Tuesday night after park officials walked out.

With the strike now entering a third week, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is offering to step in as convener, “helping bring both sides together to move good-faith negotiations forward.”

The union accepted, but Park Board President Meg Forney declined, saying state law does not provide the mayor a role in public contract negotiations between the Park Board and its employees.

Local 363, which represents laborers working for the city of Minneapolis as well as the Park Board, ratified a 3-year contract with the city this April that they lauded as a huge win. Meanwhile, more than seven months of bargaining with the Park Board has devolved into workers protesting Park Board meetings and picketing daily in Minneapolis’ most popular destinations. There was delayed cleanup of tree limbs downed by recent storms and musicians observing the strike have cancelled concerts at Harriet Bandshell.

Local 363 Business Manager AJ Lange has called on the Park Board to model their 3-year contract after the city’s, saying the park offer “cannot compare.”

“Mayor Frey and the Minneapolis City Council met the moment, they recognized the value of our labor and the need to invest in their workforce, we can be sure they do not appreciate the Park Board trying to compare their anti-worker, union-busting proposal to the earnest efforts of the City of Minneapolis’ leadership,” Lange said.

Park officials assert their offer is actually a better deal for workers than the city’s contract.

“The MPRB’s last, best and final offer made on July 1, 2024 matched and exceeded the contract the City Council approved earlier this year for city Local 363 workers,” Park Superintendent Al Bangoura stated in a letter to the City Council on Tuesday, shortly before a council majority issued a resolution in support of park workers.

Forney questioned why the union went on strike on July 4, three days after the Park Board offer, which she also believed to be superior. “It’s really kind of been crazy for us that the basis of the strike is about wages, and yet the wages that have been on the table are higher than the city’s,” she said.

Forney requested the Star Tribune conduct an independent evaluation of wages for comparable job titles under the city’s ratified Local 363 contract and the Park Board’s pre-strike “last, best and final offer.”

Both the Park Board and the union have conducted analyses comparing Local 363 park jobs to city jobs. But because there is no direct correlation between park and city job classifications, the two sides are each comparing park-specific job titles including “Parkkeeper” and “Arborist” to vastly different city jobs, resulting in disparate conclusions.

For example, the Park Board compares “Parkkeeper” to “Custodian Property Services” to demonstrate that park keepers would earn more, while the union compares “Parkkeeper” to “Public Works Service Worker I” to show park keepers would earn less. Neither comparison is ideal for the unique “Parkkeeper” job, which requires pool and pesticide licenses and the responsibilities of maintaining indoor and outdoor park assets system-wide including turf, trails, gardens, athletic fields and courts, golf courses, beaches, wetlands, playgrounds and ice rinks. The city’s “Custodian” job is an indoor janitorial position with the only outdoor responsibilities of removing snow and ice from walkways. The “Public Works Service Worker I” position is similar to “Parkkeeper” in that it’s the city’s general laborer job, but it requires a commercial driver’s license for driving heavier equipment than Parkkeepers typically need.

Both agencies have cement finishers. The union says the park position of “Cement Finisher” is most closely aligned with the city position of “Cement Finisher Journeyman,” though the park position would earn $7 less per hour under the Park Board’s proposal. The Park Board acknowledges that, but compares the city position to its own “Cement Foreman” position, which would earn 80 cents more an hour. The union disputes that analogy because the foreman position is a supervisory role. The Park Board argues that although the city position duties are closer to the park finisher role, it is slightly elevated because it also requires a commercial driver’s license.

The union has argued that if the Park Board modeled its proposal after the city’s ratified contract, workers would be making more money due to the city front-loading cost-of-living increases and market adjustments into the first year of the 3-year contract, which come out to a large 9.5% raise plus $1.50 an hour in 2024. It is followed by a 2.5% plus $1 an hour increase in 2025, which is then repeated in 2026.

The Park Board’s final pre-strike offer was a 2.75% wage increase in 2024, 4.5% plus a 50-cent an hour market adjustment for limited job titles in 2025, and 3% plus another 50-cent adjustment in 2026.

That means that if the park-specific job of “Arborist” had been a part of the city contract, the most senior arborist would earn $40.63 an hour by 2026, compared to $36.58 an hour if they had accepted the Park Board’s proposal. Those hourly differences add up to a difference of $24,000 over the course of the three-year contract when assuming the usual 2,080 hours worked by a full-time employee.

Tuesday night, park officials ended negotiations, citing an impasse over both the financial package and non-wage contract language. Park spokesperson Robin Smothers said the union wanted a front-loaded market adjustment of $1.75 an hour in 2024, but that the Park Board can’t afford those increases this year “as there is no budget for it.”

Park officials estimate their latest offer as of Tuesday to cost $5.1 million over the three years of the contract, resulting in a highest-in-recent-memory 2025 property tax levy increase of 10.07%, which would increase property taxes by approximately 1.76%. They are asking the union to offer the proposal to members for a vote by Friday.

Local 363 Marketing Manager Kevin Pranis said the union “was planning and willing to work on a schedule that works for MPRB” on implementing the market adjustment of $1.75 when park officials left the table.

“Economics is not a barrier to settlement in any way,” he said.

Rather, Lange, Local 363 business manager, said in a video statement Tuesday night that the impasse is over the Park Board non-financial proposals to remove the majority of union stewards, double the length of new hire probation and make regular seniority wage increases discretionary — provisions that offend workers, he said.

Lange said he would announce the Park Board’s request to the union membership, but predicted they would reject it because the members voted 94% in favor of authorizing a strike in June, when the Park Board had been proposing “less severe concessions.”