Take a seat in the Break Room, our weekly round-up of labor news in Minnesota and beyond. This week: laid off miners likely to receive a year of unemployment; lawmakers still deadlocked over noncompete agreements; nurses union accuses health systems of skimping on charity care; and Colorado governor blocks repeal of right-to-work-style law.
Some 630 idled workers at two northern Minnesota mines will be eligible for a full year of unemployment benefits under a bipartisan agreement between the House and Senate announced on Thursday.
Workers are typically only eligible for 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, which cover about half their earnings while they look for new jobs. But six-figure mining jobs won’t be easy to find in the area until Cleveland Cliffs restarts operations at Minorca Mine in Virginia and Hibbing Taconite, raising the prospect that workers would have to move out-of-state.
“We have to make sure that the steelworkers that are laid off at our mines stay in our communities on the Iron Range … for when our mines are ready to get back up and operational,” bill author Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, said on the Senate floor last month.
Doubling unemployment benefits for miners was never in doubt even as Republicans looked to repeal all unemployment benefits for bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other hourly school workers. Republicans championed their own bill extending benefits to laid off miners, and the...
Prosecutors say the settlement resolves serious allegations under the False Claims Act. Here's how much they'll pay. BUFFALO, N.Y. — Two companies have agreed to pay more than $1.75 million to sett...