Minnesota Lawyer Blog

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.

We received an interesting comment to the post directly below, "Billable hours are sooo 2007." (Believe it or not, we do read all your comments!)

This particular comment has nothing to do with the post to which it is attached, so we thought we'd pull it out and place it here in its own post so folks concerned with the topic would have the opportunity to get a look at it.

We do, naturally, have some thoughts on the topic the commenter asks about, but first wanted to open it up to see if anyone else had any input on this subject before we formulate a response. So, without further ado, here is the comment. Add anything you like, and we promise to address the substance of this sometime next week.

I'm disappointed in Minnesota Lawyer's recent lack of coverage of the ongoing story of attempts to organize a union at the AG's office and AG Swanson's ham-handed efforts to undermine that effort (the Keystone Cops would have done a better job a union-busting). Minnesota Lawyer's blog help make the story public earlier and exposed the questionable decision to keep Mike Hatch on board. Now Minn Lawyer appears to have forgotten to do any follow up coverage. It was big deal when there was unrest in the US Attorney's Office but somehow the departure of 1/3 of the line attorneys at the AG's office in the past year and ongoing unionization efforts doesn't make for a story of public interest? C'mon. Where's the journalism?

While you are waiting for our insightful reply, we suggest you check out the piece Steve Perry wrote last week for his blog, the Daily Mole. ("It's cat-and-mouse in the AG's Office as staffers try to unionize.")