MAPE opens 2025-2027 contract negotiations

MAPE and the State of the Minnesota met yesterday for the first time to negotiate MAPE’s 2025-2027 contract. MAPE introduced 25 proposals and Minnesota Management and Budget (MMB) offered 89. 

Hundreds of members across the state also celebrated the start of contract bargaining. Nearly 150 members greeted negotiators in St. Paul and 350 others participated virtually from Duluth to Mankato.   

“Our proposals are grounded in the reality our members are living through. We’re proposing concrete protections around telework, scheduling, artificial intelligence and investigations because members have been hurt when those protections didn’t exist,” MAPE President Megan Dayton said. “MMB’s proposals take aim at the foundations of workplace stability, weaken union representation, undermine due process and, most cruelly, strip away rights that protect employees during layoff. At a time when we are seeing hundreds of layoffs and we know more are coming, the Employer chose to bring proposals that would accelerate harm.” 

Negotiations Co-Chair Sean McIntyre said he, too, is especially concerned about the number of proposals MMB brought that focused on layoffs, “Twenty of MMB’s proposals highlight layoff language, often taking away our collective bargaining rights. They’re also trying to weaken the telework process all the way around. We’re fighting for a fair contract but none of this matters if you don’t have a job, no matter how secure you think you are in your seniority.”  

MAPE’s proposal themes include Limiting Unilateral Actions, Telework, Worker Rights and Protections, Investment in the Workforce, Health Care and Technical Proposals. Both MAPE’s and the Employer’s proposals are located here.  

Thousands of employees in all agencies have been teleworking since the pandemic in 2020. Employees have been more productive and MAPE has not been made aware of any problems associated with this arrangement. Many new employees were hired with the understanding that telework was a long-term option. Gov. Walz’s Return to Office at least 50 percent of the time edict has forced the union to propose new telecommuting language that would effectively roll back Gov. Walz’s order and protect current arrangements from further unilateral interference. 

MAPE is also proposing changes to the ways investigations are handled, limits on exempt employees being forced to work long hours at no additional cost to the State, deferred compensation plan enhancements and ensuring some level of wage stability by incorporating inflation into part of the negotiated across-the-board wage increase. 

Health care will be negotiated in coalition with other unions beginning later this month. Negotiators put MMB on notice that members are committed to protecting health care. Negotiations Co-Chair McIntyre reminded them, “MAPE was willing to go on strike 24 years ago and we have no doubt our members would strongly consider it again.” 

“It’s upsetting to see how they want to treat our members,” Negotiations Co-Chair Carolyn Murphy said. “The Employer wants to have discretion over medical leave. This opens the door for them to treat us inhumanely; they cannot dictate who does and does not qualify for leave while our members are living with chronic illness or recovering from cancer and other debilitating diseases.”   

To learn more about the contract proposals, attend a contract town hall on Thursday, April 17, at 12 p.m. on Zoom.  

Dayton reiterated MAPE is “fighting for what’s necessary to survive and sustain a public workforce. I hope MMB understands the tone has changed because our members have been through enough. We want a contract that protects workers from political whiplash, from unstable leadership and from being cast aside during downsizing.” 

“Our members don’t need platitudes about being ‘valued,’” she added. “They need enforceable rights. And we won’t settle for less.”