Democrats’ VP Choice Tim Walz Has a History of Working on the Side of Monied Interests Against Workers

I suppose the headline is obvious at this point, or Minnesota Governor Tim Walz wouldn’t be on the Democrats’ ticket, but it’s worth remembering amid all the hype.

I first became familiar with Walz last year when some in the media were describing Minnesota as a  shining example of progressivism and the “best state for workers”, so I started to look into the legislation.

No doubt the state passed some decent bills. Here’s a thread listing them all:

They made school lunches free for all students, leading to Governor Tim Walz being adorably mobbed by elementary schoolers.

(Special mention to my amazing friend @SydneyJordanMN, a chief author and major proponent of this bill.) https://t.co/JsulllBX8I

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) May 23, 2023

What the thread misses, however, is that last year working Minnesotans organized and got two major pieces of legislation near the finish line that would’ve dramatically improved their lives, but those bills threatened the interests of the capital class. The monied interests in this case were Uber, Lyft, and the Mayo Clinic, and when their bottom lines were threatened they all responded with various threats. In each of these instances, Minnesota’s elected officials — led by Walz — quickly backed down.

So while Walz might be a former union member, he might look positively saintly next to the other finalist for the VP spot Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, he might make for a friendly photo op and sound relatable to people who work for a living, but recent actions make it questionable just how much of a friend he is to American laborers.

Let’s look at the two cases last year where the Mayo Clinic, Lyft, and Uber provided marching orders to Walz. First the Mayo Clinic. Here are the details on the nurse staffing legislation from The Minnesota Reformer:

The Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act (HF1700/SF1651), backed by the nurses’ union, would require hospitals to form committees made up of nurses and other hospital staff to create “core staffing plans” that include the maximum number of patients each nurse can typically safely care for.

In response Mayo threatened to take its plans for new facilities and infrastructure worth billions to other states. [1] A Mayo executive wrote the following to the governor and legislative leaders:

Because these bills continue to proceed without meaningful and necessary changes to avert their harms to Minnesotans, we cannot proceed with seeking approval to make this investment in Minnesota. We will need to direct this enormous investment to other states.

Democrats quickly caved, led by Walz who agreed to exempt the Mayo Clinic from the union-backed legislation. Once Mayo sprung a leak in the legislation, cracks began to emerge everywhere as other hospitals declared the double standards unfair,  and soon the entire bill was dead.According to Mayo, Walz was key in throwing nurses under the bus. From Becker’s Hospital Review:

Its relationship with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was essential to its exemption from the Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act — and the bill’s final-hour revisions, the health system said.

Mayo Clinic’s President and CEO Gianrico Farrugia, MD, said the health system remained “steadfast” in its position throughout the legislative session and expressed gratitude to those who backed them up — including the governor.

The good news is that Mayo workers are soldiering on without him. From The Star Tribune:

Mayo Clinic is one of the world’s top hospitals, but hundreds of Rochester workers say the medical system isn’t treating its workers like they’re world-class. About 1,600 unionized clinical technicians, personal care attendants, janitors and others are seeking at least $20-per-hour wages, in line with other hospitals around Minnesota. Rochester nurses are looking into unionizing, which would create a union with more than 6,500 members in Minnesota’s third-largest city.

Meanwhile, thousands more workers are set to come to Rochester as Mayo builds its $5 billion expansion downtown.

Aside from better wages, the chief concern of nurses at Mayo facilities is inadequate staffing — the very problem that Walz caved to Mayo on:

Karrie Ellingson, a personal care attendant and a member of the SEIU bargaining team at St. Marys, said her department needs 28 attendants to serve about 150 patients on average each day.

“We consistently have been working 30 percent short every day, not including PCAs who may call in ill,” she said.

Ashley Rohwer, a certified surgical technologist at Mayo for almost two decades, said in her department at St. Marys, union and nonunion workers put in a combined average of 30 hours of overtime each day.

“Most employees if they’re [scheduled] at an eight-hour shift on a regular basis, most of them are working 12-hour shifts,” she said.

Mayo is now threatening its nurses with more limited work flexibility and “workforce issues” should they unionize.

Mayo, which in 2017 decided to prioritize the care of privately insured patients over those on Medicare and Medicaid, also killed efforts to create a Health Care Affordability Board in Minnesota last year. The committee would have monitored health care market trends and provided recommendations and oversight. Mayo didn’t just demand to be exempted from this bill but that it be axed altogether, writing:

This bill is extremely problematic and poses a huge threat to the well-being of Minnesota’s health care system as drafted. It must be removed from the HHS omnibus bill and consideration for Mayo to move forward with the previously stated investment.

Once again, Mayo got what it wanted.

Now to Uber and Lyft. Details of the failed worker-friendly bill from the Minnesota Reformer:

The bill required transportation network companies, including Uber and Lyft, to pay drivers a $5 minimum fee plus $1.45 per mile and 34 cents per minute in the seven-county Twin Cities metropolitan area. Drivers in greater Minnesota would have been entitled to $1.25 per mile and 34 cents per minute. The minimum rates would have increased with inflation.

Drivers would also have been entitled to 80% of cancellation fees if they already departed to pick up a rider as well as $1.25 per mile and 10 cents per minute if the companies charge customers for a “long pickup.”

Drivers were ecstatic at the prospects of better pay and protections:

Senator @OmarFatehMN gets the hero’s welcome after his Transportation Drivers, aka Uber/Lyft bill, passes Senate pic.twitter.com/JbYCssEfLF

— John Croman (@JohnCroman) May 21, 2023

But elected officials lacked the courage to stand behind workers when Uber went scorched earth, and in statements to news outlets across the state said the following:

If the bill is signed into law, beginning August 1, Uber will stop operating our ride service outside of Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. In the metro area, we will only offer premium products to match the premium prices required by the bill.

In the end, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz vetoed the bill. A watered down version passed this year, however, which raises pay by $1.28 per mile and $0.31 per minute. Eid Ali, president of the Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association, said the law is progress, but still a letdown, especially in light of Walz vetoing a better version last year. “Letdown” is putting it kindly. What this year’s bill really did was strengthen Uber and Lyft’s duopoly in the state of Minnesota. From the Minnesota Reformer:

…the new law includes a series of anti-competitive mechanisms that will disadvantage any new competitor against the incumbents.

The application fees for ridehail  companies are the biggest unaddressed issue that cements an anti-competitive market in place. Any Uber competitor entering the market first has to hand over nearly $100,000 in annual licensing fees to Minneapolis, St. Paul, and the Metropolitan Airports Commission.

The Minnesota bill also removed cities’ ability to set wages, enforce them, and to collect data about ridehail operations in their jurisdiction. More:

Lastly, the bill didn’t advance Minneapolis’ ordinance language requiring ridehail companies to pay 80% of special event or surge pricing, and drivers know very well that “platform fees” and “external fees” eat deeply into their existing take rate. Some drivers have publicly posted earnings of $13 on a $55 Lyft ride.As only 28% of riders ever tip, and gross Uber wages are overall down 17% since 2022, it would be no surprise if drivers saw even less earnings after the implementation of this bill. It’s odd that this element of Minneapolis’ language didn’t make the final bill, but then again, it’s odd that most elements of this bill benefit Uber and Lyft at the cost of drivers, riders and competitors.

So, to summarize: the Legislature’s ridehail bill is anti-competitive. It increases the costs for new competitors and for riders, and raises the barriers of entry for competitors, while not readjusting the regulatory fee to compete against Uber and Lyft. It removes the ability for drivers to influence their city councils to secure higher wages again. It introduces potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of undefined and extortive costs to be compliant with nameless driver’s advocacy organizations, while disallowing those organizations to once again coordinate with competitors to provide an alternative for Uber and Lyft.

Walz, obviously, touts the bill as a major win for workers, but a closer look at the rideshare legislation and his servitude to big healthcare money show that “America’s dad” isn’t quite the friend of the common man he’s being made out to be.

Notes

[1] As the Minnesota Reformer pointed out at the time, what possibly concerned the bigwigs at Mayo the most is that nursing staffing standards could have slammed the brakes on its emerging automation efforts, including an initiative with Google Health. Mayo touts its automation advances as a way to conserve PPE — not that they really use it anyways:

Beginning Monday, April 10, wearing a face mask will no longer be required for patients and staff in most patient care areas on Mayo Clinic and Mayo Clinic Health System campuses.

Learn more about the updated masking policy: https://t.co/IUzLoKut3q

— Mayo Clinic (@MayoClinic) April 4, 2023

Here’s Mayo on its automation “advances”:

Mayo Clinic has demonstrated the feasibility of using a robotic system to perform simple tasks in a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patient room. Mayo’s experiment, which used a manikin in a simulated intensive care unit (ICU) room, shows the potential of robotics to reduce the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and the exposure of health care workers to COVID-19.

The experiment, described in the February 2021 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Innovations, Quality & Outcomes, demonstrated the ability of a robot to successfully:

• Push a button on an intravenous pole

• Adjust a ventilator knob

• Push an ICU monitor button to silence an alarm for false alerts

• Adjust an oxygen flow rate knob

• Push a nurse call button to “off”