President's Corner: April 2025

MAPE kicked off negotiations with the State of Minnesota yesterday on our 2025-2027 contract. We sat across the bargaining table from Minnesota Management and Budget (MMB) and exchanged proposals.  

Our proposals are grounded in the reality our members are living through. They reflect lessons learned from the pandemic, the erosion of trust caused by the Return to Office (RTO) order, and the urgent need to protect workers from arbitrary decisions. We’re proposing concrete protections around telework, scheduling, artificial intelligence and investigations because members have been hurt when those protections didn’t exist.  

MMB’s proposals, on the other hand, are regressive. They 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. 

The State’s proposals centered on four themes:  

1. Centralizing discretion in management’s hands, particularly around scheduling, discipline and training. 

2. Dismantling union rights by limiting steward time, removing bulletin board access and tightening controls on Association leave. 

3. Undermining job security by eroding layoff and recall rights, including the outright elimination of bumping—a core protection for senior employees facing layoff. 

4. Adding new disciplinary mechanisms, including step reductions, that give supervisors broader power with fewer checks. 

The proposals targeting layoff protections are the most disturbing. Our members are already navigating one of the most traumatic job loss periods in recent memory. To meet that moment with a proposal that would eliminate bumping and strip away claim rights is anti-worker and cruel. It abandons people when they’re most vulnerable. It says, “You’re on your own.” 

These proposals don’t reflect fiscal necessity. They reflect a choice to shift more risk onto workers when they can least afford it. 

MAPE is no longer negotiating for what’s nice to have. We’re 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.” They need enforceable rights. And we won’t settle for less.