Driving a Soft Bargain

Teamsters Local 638, representing more than 100 drivers of those big green Star Tribune trucks, gave the thumbs-up last week to a four-year contract only a penny-pinching corporation's mother could love.

Some veteran drivers took exception when they learned that the union negotiated the elimination of as many as 14 non-union jobs in the Star Tribune's circulation department. Duties such as fixing broken paper dispensers, collecting the coins, and managing accounts with stores who keep a rack by the register are being transferred to drivers.

Gregory Kujawa, who has been a driver for 28 years and served on the union's bargaining committee, says the concession is "embarrassing."

"I don't think organized labor ought to be in the business of eliminating other people's jobs," he says. "That's corporate behavior. We should be organizing those people."

Robert Moore, a spokesman for the union, says Local 638 tried to organize the circulation workers four years ago and were turned down. "My job was to negotiate extra work" for union members, Moore says.

According to Kujawa, he raised this issue with a member of the Local 638 bargaining committee before the vote. The response, he says, was a four-and-a-half word essay on Teamster leadership: "Fuck 'em, they're non-union." —Jeff Severns Guntzel

Nobody's Home

The number of vacant homes in St. Paul has swelled to more than 1,500. Fueled by the ongoing foreclosure crisis, residences are being abandoned at an alarming rate.

In January, there were just 56 homes added to the vacant-housing rolls. By May, that number had ballooned to 105. Three months later, 372 more houses sat empty. The number of city employees tapped with inspecting vacant homes has doubled, from three to six, to deal with the crisis.

"It has gone up dramatically," says Bob Kessler, head of St. Paul's Department of Safety and Inspections. "It's getting out of control."

What's more, Kessler points out that these grim numbers only reflect the abandoned houses that have been cited by city officials. "The only way we hear about them is if someone calls to complain," he says. "We probably only hear about half of the vacant buildings that are out there." —Paul Demko

Naughty and Nice

Angela Milburn was working at the Richfield Target when her boss asked her a simple question: Where have all those gift cards been going?

Unfortunately for Milburn, the cops also thought it a valid question. By the time they were through interrogating the 20-year-old, she'd confessed to stealing 25 cards from the store in November to the tune of $13,000, according to a police report.

But before you paint Milburn as just another checkout girl gone bad, consider this: According to Richfield police, she gave several of the $500 gift cards away to friends and family—just in time for the holidays. —Jonathan Kaminsky

Uniquely Minnesotan

Saturday was National Celebrate Your Unique Talent Day. (As if you didn't know.) Wait. What's that? You had no idea? You neglected to celebrate your unique talent?

Totally understandable; it sneaks up on you. But we weren't about to let the day go by unobserved. We caught up with a few Minnesota icons to see what they were doing to mark the occasion. Here's what we observed:

• At a Bush fundraising event, Sen. Norm Coleman touted his independence from the Bush administration while maintaining a straight face.

• Bob Dylan made the mere act of not dying look cool.

• In just one column, conservative Strib columnist Katherine Kersten linked a recent rash of sectarian violence in Iraq to Twin Cities bicyclists, RNC protestors, homosexuals, and science.

• Craig Finn wrote a 14-stanza song whose lyrics included nothing but the names of assorted Twin Cities landmarks, parks, and bodies of water repeated over and over.

• Mary Tyler Moore made it after all. —Matt Snyders