A new group is pressuring the school board to eliminate seniority in hiring, placement and layoff decisions as it negotiates a new contract with the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, Corey Mitchell reports. The federation's leader allows that the group has good intentions, but their recommendations amount to an attack on teachers. The initial blog post is here, updated story is here.

For now, those rules remain in place, as do rules that govern employment at the grand old City Hall downtown. The Municipal Building Commission, the city-county conglomerate the runs the builiding, didn't follow a 1903 law when it canned four security guards and replaced them with county and private guards, a federal judge ruled. She ordered the commission to rehire the four and give them back pay, Steve Brandt reports.

It's not clear whether a fired Minneapolis police officer will get his job back, after his wife recanted her claim of domestic violence and the officer, Mukhtar Abdulkadir, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct, David Chanen reports.

The likelihood of a confrontation between Occupy Minnesota demonstrators and Hennepin County authorities grew after the county said winter's arrival could end the four-week-old encampment, Randy Furst reports. Outside the Target Center a few blocks away, things were so quiet as a result of the cancelled Timberwolves opening game - a victim of the NBA-player labor dispute - that sports columnist Patrick Reusse wandered over to the Occupy Minnesota crew, whose minds were very much on something else.

Whether the Vikings will keep playing in Minneapolis remained in limbo, after a failure to reach an agreement at the Capitol scuttled a pre-Thanksgiving special legislative session and kicked the whole issue into next year, Mike Kaszuba and Rachel Stassen-Berger report.

And in case you missed these stories Wednesday:

One year into the job, Minneapolis parks superintendent Jayne Miller is called a "breath of fresh air," Nicole Norfleet reports. A rash of cell phone snatching on the Hiawatha light rail line has prompted advisories to hold your phones tightly, Pat Doyle reports. A divided school board approved a policy that will require the superintendent to give the board more information about pay raises to her staff, but doesn't require prior approval, Corey Mitchell reports.