Cam Gordon
Candidate for Minneapolis City
Council - Ward 2
914 Franklin Terrace
Minneapolis, MN 55406
332-6210
gordo030@tc.umn.edu
MINNEAPOLIS PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYEES
ASSOCIATION
ENDORSEMENT QUESTIONNAIRE
1. What are you top three goals while
holding office in the City?
While I have a number of goals and
priorities for the City, I offer the
following three broad goals as a
foundation for my work, if elected, as a City
Council Member:
A. I will bring principle-based
leadership to policy decisions on the council.
Specifically, I will use the four
basic principles of social and economic
justice, ecological wisdom,
grassroots democracy and nonviolence to both guide
and evaluate decisions and policies
of the City and the City Council.
These, together with a future focus
on sustainability and the values of personal
and global responsibility, respect
for diversity, feminism, community-based
economics and decentralization,
represent the framework upon which to build a
more healthy, just and humane city.
B. I will work to open up our
political and economic institutions and systems so
that individuals and neighborhoods
have more opportunities in them and more
control over them. To help do this, among other things, I will maintain
healthy communication with my
constituents and people throughout the city and I
will bring new vitality and
energy to our City Council seat and
provide active,
responsive representation to all the
people of the Second Ward. I will
reconnect and redefine the
relationship between citizens and government in
Minneapolis.
C. I will provide needed leadership
and skills on the Council that will help
create an improved and more effective
climate of cooperation and respect in the
City Council and throughout City
government, where diverse ideas are
appreciated and used to find common
goals and the best solutions possible to our
problems.
The first part of my campaign has
focused on the following areas:
¥ Creative solutions to the housing
crisis
¥ Economic, cultural and educational
vitality and living wage jobs
¥ÊCommunity-centered policing and
justice
¥ÊClean land, air and water for
everyone
¥ÊInvesting in city services
¥ÊTransportation options that work
for everyone
¥ÊA Commitment to communication.
2. What do you think the relationship
should be between Council Members and City
employees.
While I respect that Council Members
play an important oversight role and must
maintain a broad perspective that
places a priority on service to citizens of
the city, I think this relationship should be one of partnership, mutual
respect and cooperation. The City Council and City employees share
common goals
and intentions to make our city the
best place it can be. We must work
together
to accomplish this and to do that
there must be a respectful relationship
characterized by honest, open,
genuine communication free from intimidation,
patronization and fear. I believe that by listening to City
employees the
Council is most likely to learn the
best ways to improve City services.
3. How do you feel about retaining
professional employees in the City? What
measures would you take to maintain
and obtain professional staffing?
Professional staff are valuable and
essential to the City. It is important that
we retain and maintain a quality
professional staff. The City must offer
adequate compensation, including
benefits, to attract and retain the best staff
possible. I would make sure that this
is a priority at budget time.
4. What role does labor play in the
City work force?
Labor plays a very important part
supporting employees and providing employees
with a democratic way to have their
voices heard and their positions known.
Labor has played and continues to
play a very important role in helping
City
employees have a safe, decent,
quality workplace.
5. How do you feel about privatizing
Civil service positions?
I am generally opposed to
privatization unless it is absolutely necessary. If
service can be provided through
public employees they ought to be. I
would like
to review some of the currently
privatized services and look into bringing some
of those services and positions back
to public employees. I am also an advocate
for a municipally owned and operated
power company.
6. What is your priority ensuring
that companies include union and living wage
jobs for Minneapolis residents within
their business plans?
This is a high priority for me. I want to strengthen policies that require
companies receiving City subsidies to
create living wage jobs and (if not
already providing unionized jobs)
companies should at least honor the rights of
workers to organize to form or join a
union if they so choose. We must work
harder at holding these companies
accountable after the subsidy has been
provided. I would like to see efforts
to ensure that any private company doing
any work for the city supports the workersÕ right to organize,
with special
consideration being given to already
unionized companies. I would also like
to
look at innovative Living Wage
ordinances like those recently passed in Santa
Monica that require the largest
companies in the City to provide living wage
jobs even without receiving any
public subsidy.
7. MPEA took a strike vote on their
last contract negotiations. Some
Council
Members stated that they would honor
the picket line. What action would you
take if you were confronted with an
MPEA picket line?
I would honor the picket line and
march with the picketers. I would also
help
organize others and use my position
as Council person to call attention to the
concerns of the employees. If the strike continued, however, and it
became
clear that the City Council was
meeting despite the picket and that decisions
were to be made, I would advocate
that the CouncilÕs business be conducted
outside of the City offices so that
the line would not need to be crossed.
If
this was not possible and there was a
majority of Council Members meeting I
would have to carefully weigh the
consequences of my vote and voice not
being
at the Council meetings. Still, however, when possible I would stand
and meet
with the picketers and I would use my
position as Council Member to help raise
the issues in the media and the
public eye.
8. MPEA has agreed to table our
compensatory time benefit for this
contract....Do you support such
benefits as compensatory time? Do you support
other benefits such as paid maternity
leave etc.
I do support the prudent use of the
compensatory time benefit and think that it
was serving the city well. If the
MPEA is united in its support for the
compensatory time benefit for exempt
employees in the future I think it should
be reconsidered and reinstituted. I
am concerned about the recent contract and
feel that even if the compensatory
time benefit is determined to be preferable
to the 2% pay raise it will pose a
hardship on employees to have to repay money
already paid them. I would be
interested to learn more about this from MPEA
members.
I do support paid maternity, as well
as paternity, leave and feel that the City
could and should be a model in this
for other cities and for private companies
doing business in the city as
well. I am committed to trying to find
the
resources to provide this benefit. I
also feel that it is time to revisit the
domestic partnership benefit for City
employees.
Cam Gordon
for Minneapolis City Council, Ward 2
Green Party/Labor Endorsed
914 Franklin Terrace
Mpls. MN 55406-1101
(612) 332-6210
http://www.camgordon.org