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"TAX THE RICH!"

Public-sector union members jam the Capitol, press Dayton's budget plan with legislators.

March 22, 2011 at 6:30PM

Hundreds of unionized public employees jammed nearly every inch of the state Capitol rotunda and rattled its dome with their bellowed chants during the lunch hour Tuesday, demanding that the state's budget not be balanced on the backs of middle-class Minnesotans.

"The richest Minnesotans are not paying their fair share of taxes," Elliot Seide, executive director of AFSCME Council 5. "There is a budget fix -- that budget fix is tax the rich!"

"TAX THE RICH," the men and women shouted in a call and response.

"Who does the work?"

"WE DO!"

Cut back?"

"FIGHT BACK!"

Seide, who heads the 43,000 member union, assailed "cheap labor conservatives" -- among them Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker -- "who want to take the right to collectively bargain away from us -- and we're not going to let them do it."

Public workers, ranging from a snow plow driver to a clerical worker, whipped up the crowd, calling for protection of their pensions, protection for local government aid and endorsing Gov. Mark Dayton's plan to raise income taxes on the wealthiest Minnesotans as a way to close the state's budget gap.

"The difference between Madison and St. Paul is a governor named Mark Dayton," Seide said.

Organizers delivered oversized $3.4 billion checks to the offices of Republican legislative leaders, symbolizing the amount of the budget gap they said could be closed if Dayton's tax increases become law. And after the rally, they fanned out across the Capitol campus to lobby legislators.