The new state law creates a five-tiered system that ramps up the minimum wage over the next three years.

Franken's 98 percent career voting record in favor of AFL-CIO positions is the fourth-highest among all U.S. Senators.

Shar Knutson and Brad Lehto, Minnesota AFL-CIO; David Olson, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.

State lawmakers are introducing a workers’ compensation proposal that business and labor leaders alike regard as the most significant change to the system in 18 years.

Legislation that would significantly raise the state's minimum wage for the first time in eight years is headed to the House floor. The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley, cleared the Ways and Means Committee on a voice vote Monday.

The Minnesota AFL-CIO wants to boost the minimum wage to $10.55 an hour and index it to inflation moving forward. That would be an increase of nearly 50 percent over the current rate of $7.25 an hour.

Frenetic early-morning celebrations capped an historic Election Day in which Minnesota voters defeated two ballot initiatives that were a hallmark of the GOP-controlled Legislature that swarmed to victory two years ago on a national wave.

Despite the continuing legal drama surrounding the two constitutional amendments headed for this fall’s ballot, the groups formed to support or defeat the amendments to outlaw gay marriage and mandate voter ID are in something of a holding pattern

On Tuesday, the group announced it would run television and radio ads targeted at handful of Republican senators.

The labor umbrella group Minnesota AFL-CIO is officially opposing the constitutional amendment proposal on the 2012 ballot to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman.