Gov. Dayton tells union workers at convention to demand better pay

Gov. Mark Dayton told several hundred union workers at SEIU Local 26′s Contract Convention in St. Paul Saturday that they’ll have to step up to the plate if they want to get the wages they deserve, Minnesota Public Radio reported.

The DFL governor said he wouldn’t have believed graduating from college 40 years ago that there were be a day “where some of the basic foundational principals and the institutions were under the kind of assault that they are.”

Among those at the convention were janitors, security officers, airport service workers and retail cleaners.

MPR said that service workers are scheduled to negotiate in the next few weeks several contracts that expire Dec. 31.