This is a cross-post, by Doug Foote, from Working America's Main Street blog. 

This week, Minnesota state Rep. Jason Metsa (D) is taking the Working America Minimum Wage Challenge—living on the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. He’ll report his experience back to the Minnesota legislature, where they are considering a bill to raise the minimum wage to $9.95.

On Wednesday, Metsa’s challenge was to find a place to live. Why a challenge? His budget that he set out on Monday allowed for only $359 a month for housing.

This is a cross-post, by Aruna Jain, from Working America's blog Main Street.

As legislation to raise the minimum wage to $9.95 makes its way through the Minnesota Legislature, Rep. Jason Metsa (D) is taking up Working America’s challenge to live on Minnesota’s current minimum wage for five days.

Here's a look at some of the key battles in the states over the past week.

When a company locks out skilled employees and replaces its entire workforce with inexperienced new hires, here’s what happens: productivity plunges and profits tank.

Losing money is not a wise corporate strategy. Yet, unless American Crystal Sugar Co. agrees to return to contract negotiations with the 1,300 workers the company locked out a year ago, the company is on course to repeat its sorry fiscal 2012 performance. After the company replaced all its seasoned employees, production costs increased by 23 percent and payments to its shareholders lagged behind the rest of the industry, which saw their shareholder payments increase. That followed a year in which Crystal Sugar was hugely profitable, with $1.5 billion in net earnings.

(Sign a petition calling on American Crystal Sugar CEO Dave Berg to treat workers fairly and return to the bargaining table.)

It’s been nearly a year since the 1,300 American Crystal Sugar Co. workers with the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) have gone to work. The workers are locked out of five American Crystal Sugar processing facilities and other facilities.

Just as a burglar prefers the dark of night and avoids well-lighted homes, Minnesota state Rep. Mark Buesgens (R) tried to skulk through the 2 a.m. dark of night last week to revive a so-called right to work bill that has been stalled after a massive outcry from working families and their allies.

While anti-worker bills in state capitols across the country still threaten middle-class families, Republican state legislatures are beginning to second guess whether to continue pursuing their extreme agenda attacking working families.

Yesterday morning, the Republican-controlled New Hampshire Senate tabled HB 1677, the so-called “right to work” bill.  This bill is the pet of Speaker Bill O’Brien, dubbed by a recent Concord Monitor editorial as a “self-drawn caricature of vindictiveness and power run [amok].”  “Right to work” failed last year, and so far this year it has failed to muster a veto-proof majority.

More than 1,500 Minnesota working men and women packed the state Capitol hallways Monday to protest a corporate-backed bill that would put a so-called right to work (RTW) state constitutional amendment on the November ballot. The state Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill by a 7-6 vote.

This is a cross-post by Chase Brandau from Working America’s Main Street blog.

In late 2008, 28-year-old Rochester, Minn., native Tim Wynn injured his hand on the job while working as a machinist and was eventually unfairly fired due to the injury. “It was at that time I had to file for unemployment insurance,” Wynn recalls. “Which was only a little over $400 a month, but we were able to make it work with one of us still working.”

This is a cross-post  by AFL-CIO Community Services Director Will Fisher.

For generations, the sugar beet industry has been the lifeblood of northwest Minnesota’s Red River Valley.