Around 500 Minnesota state employees protested Saturday in St. Paul, calling on DFL Gov. Tim Walz to reverse course on a policy to require more in-office work. The governor says having more employees spend at least half their time at their workplaces will improve communication and collaboration.
State employee unions oppose the policy, saying it will require many people to reorder their lives after five years of pandemic-imposed remote work habits.
The Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 5 together represent around 40,000 employees. MAPE organized the protest outside the governor’s official residence on Summit Avenue.
Lee and Joe Sullivan are tax auditors at the Department of Revenue and live in Little Canada. Lee Sullivan says her department has a different office configuration now.
“We rented half of it out and we also changed our parking ramp and so we never thought they would be going back to the office,” she said. “And so to suddenly come of the blue and give us no warning at all and demand that we go back to the office, that’s going to disrupt a lot of things.”
The Sullivans say working out child care before the policy goes into effect June 1 will be challenging. It’s a problem for Katie Fountain of Woodbury as well.
An employee at the Department of Corrections, Fountain said the governor’s policy will force her to pay unexpected child care costs over the summer, when she could be home working and lightly supervising her school-aged kids.
“What that would cost me is actually more than I would make. So at that point it’s not working anymore, and I know a lot of other people are in the same exact situation.”
Walz estimated around 60 percent of state workers have been in the office full time and others are on hybrid home and office schedules.
Minnesota state employees protest new work rules outside of the governor’s residence in St. Paul on Saturday, March 29. (Anne Guttridge / MPR News)
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Minnesota Management and Budget guidance says that workers who live less than 75 miles from their state offices would have to work a full day from their principal office location, or another qualifying office, for the time to be counted toward their 50 percent target.
Some workers can apply for reasonable accommodations to continue working remotely.
Dana Ferguson, Peter Cox and Clay Masters contributed reporting for this story.
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