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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

AG Swanson issues a response to staff members' letter


In an e-mail sent to her entire staff this morning, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson offered a response to a letter sent by three of her assistant AGs late last week calling upon her to recognize a union in the office. (As Minnesota Lawyer reported yesterday, the letter represents the first time current staff members in the AG’s Office have stepped forward and openly advocated for a union.)

Swanson said she was sick with the flu last week when the letter was posted on the Internet, and that she was “disappointed” the employees distributed the letter to the public and the media before she could respond.

“This suggests a communication that is more about a political swipe and less about a good faith attempt to communicate,” Swanson wrote. “It does not further the mission of this office to have political debate with staff members who are supposed to represent this office as professionals.”

(In their letter, the three had disclaimed having any political motivation. “[This effort] is not supported by any outside political interests, nor is it the product of any political vendetta,” they wrote. The three assistant AGs who wrote the letter were all hired during the administrations of AGs from the DFL Party – one under Swanson, one under Mike Hatch and one under Skip Humphrey.)

Swanson said in the e-mail that she “strongly disagrees” with the accusations in the letter, which include assertions that a campaign has been waged in her office to stifle the unionization attempt.

She said she will have two of her deputies meet with the three assistant AGs who wrote the letter to “to flesh out the purpose of the letter and whether the three signatories actually represent the rest of the staff.” She also said she has her own "sense of the staff" and plans to gauge the staff further.

Swanson also noted in the e-mail that Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, yesterday distributed copies of the three staff members’ letter on the floor of the House and called for an investigation of her office.

A copy of the full text of Swanson’s e-mail appears as a comment to another post on this site. We have verified through independent channels that staff members received the posted e-mail.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

From: Lindberg, Debby
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 8:32 AM
To: 0800-Attorneys; 0900-Attorneys; 1100-Attorneys; 1200-Attorneys; 1300-Attorneys; 1400-Attorneys; 1500-Attorneys; 1800-Attorneys; 1900-Attorneys; AG Deputies; AG All Managers; Litfin, Leanne; Johnson, Gunnar; Gregor, Doug; Henchen, Darryl; O'Hern, Tom; Kuretsky, William
Subject: A Message from Attorney General Swanson

Dear Colleague:



As you know, three staff attorneys sent me a letter stating that they represent the attorneys on staff. Unfortunately, they have declined to indicate how many attorneys they purport to represent.



In an effort to get a sense of the staff, I have asked the Honorable Miles Lord and the Honorable Jonathan Lebedoff to conduct an informal advisory on the issue. Judge Lord was Minnesota Attorney General from 1955-1959. He was appointed by President Kennedy as United States Attorney for Minnesota and by President Johnson to the United States District Court. Judge Lebedoff was appointed a United States Magistrate Judge in 1991. He became Chief Magistrate Judge in 2002. Judge Lebedoff served as a Hennepin County Municipal Judge from 1971-1974 and a state district court judge from 1974-1991.



Judges Lord and Lebedoff will be visiting the staff attorneys today to help me get a sense of the staff. They will advise me of their opinion this afternoon.



Sincerely,



LORI SWANSON

Attorney General

Anonymous said...

AG Swanson had a "sense of the staff" when she was presented with signed union cards from a majority of the attorneys in the office. She chose to ignore her staff's wishes.

Anonymous said...

Swanson has made mistakes, but made a good call in allowing employees to use a private ballot to finally put this distraction to bed. The voting process was impeccible. The judges, who have good straight-shooter credentials entered a room. The employee(s) came in, together with a union organizer who read a script, a manager who read a script, a person carrying a closed ballot box with a slit on the top, and a paper ballot for each employee. The two scripts were read, the judges promised that they alone would count the ballots, and everybody left, leaving the employee(s)alone to cast their secret ballot. When the employee(s)finished, the ballotbox-holder person returned to the room, and picked up the box. End of show.
Yes, some people were out of the office during these two days, at hearings and trials, sick at home, or whatever, but that's just random--not evidence of error or bias. The purpose of the vote was entirely clear: do we want a union managing our employment or not. The pro-union people have inaccurately characterized this process as intimidating. The balloting process was not intimidating because the process was thoughtful and respectful of employee privacy. And, frankly, we are not easily intimidated. We are all lawyers -- with at least 19 years of education, advanced degrees, high incomes, adversarial skills, communications skills, and some kind of commitment to use those advantages in the public interest of Minnesotans. We are not easily cowed, and speculation to the contrary is inaccurate.
Moreover, with the exception of Dave, who's probably the state's oldest living civil servant, and plans to go out with his Minnesota Assistant Attorney General boots on, all of us can walk out and earn higher incomes elsewhere. Public service is not exactly the place to go for great wealth or job flexibility. The persistent state budget squeeze has wrung the excess from agency budgets. We work here for the usual reasons. A commitment to the work, good co-workers and bosses...
This so-called union effort is all just boringly political-with far-right republican ideologues and far-leftist ideologues predictably in bed together, trying to handicap Attorney General Lori Swanson and the Minnesota Attorney General's Office from doing its work. By way of illustration, the Communist Party USA is urging its readers to "call the legislators who appropriate funds for the Attorney General’s Office: Senator Don Betzold (651-296-2556) and Representative Phyllis Kahn (651-296-4257). Tell them not to fund the Attorney General’s union-busting activity."
The employee who is a CPUSA member and the employee who is a Republican should get a life!

Anonymous said...

Swanson has made mistakes, but made a good call in allowing employees to use a private ballot to finally put this distraction to bed. The voting process was impeccible. The judges, who have good straight-shooter credentials entered a room. The employee(s) came in, together with a union organizer who read a script, a manager who read a script, a person carrying a closed ballot box with a slit on the top, and a paper ballot for each employee. The two scripts were read, the judges promised that they alone would count the ballots, and everybody left, leaving the employee(s)alone to cast their secret ballot. When the employee(s)finished, the ballotbox-holder person returned to the room, and picked up the box. End of show.
Yes, some people were out of the office during these two days, at hearings and trials, sick at home, or whatever, but that's just random--not evidence of error or bias. The purpose of the vote was entirely clear: do we want a union managing our employment or not. The pro-union people have inaccurately characterized this process as intimidating. The balloting process was not intimidating because the process was thoughtful and respectful of employee privacy. And, frankly, we are not easily intimidated. We are all lawyers -- with at least 19 years of education, advanced degrees, high incomes, adversarial skills, communications skills, and some kind of commitment to use those advantages in the public interest of Minnesotans. We are not easily cowed, and speculation to the contrary is inaccurate.
Moreover, with the exception of Dave, who's probably the state's oldest living civil servant, and plans to go out with his Minnesota Assistant Attorney General boots on, all of us can walk out and earn higher incomes elsewhere. Public service is not exactly the place to go for great wealth or job flexibility. The persistent state budget squeeze has wrung the excess from agency budgets. We work here for the usual reasons. A commitment to the work, good co-workers and bosses...
This so-called union effort is all just boringly political-with far-right republican ideologues and far-leftist ideologues predictably in bed together, trying to handicap Attorney General Lori Swanson and the Minnesota Attorney General's Office from doing its work. By way of illustration, the Communist Party USA is urging its readers to "call the legislators who appropriate funds for the Attorney General’s Office: Senator Don Betzold (651-296-2556) and Representative Phyllis Kahn (651-296-4257). Tell them not to fund the Attorney General’s union-busting activity."
The employee who is a CPUSA member and the employee who is a Republican should get a life!

Anonymous said...

Here is the communist party article.
www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/891/1/58/

Anonymous said...

and their nice republican friend, Tom Emmer:
http://www.minnesotademocratsexposed.com/2007/05/08/breaking-news-representative-tom-emmer-files-updated-data-practices-request-with-attorney-general-swanson%e2%80%99s-office/

Anonymous said...

You aren't seriously proposing that the labor unrest at the AG's Office is some sort of communist front, are you? Doesn't take long for the McCarthyite tactics to start, does it?

Anonymous said...

No, not hardly. I am suggesting that there is no "labor unrest."
I am suggesting that you personally have lost sight of the forest for the trees. You have lost perspective because you always win, always. It makes you a good lawyer and a poor "labor leader."