In
Virginia, CWA Stewards Army Takes on Verizon
CWA members and locals in Virginia are putting the
Stewards Army to work in a big way to block Verizon's
attempt to eliminate all state government oversight of
the sale or transfer of telephone company assets.
This week, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine vetoed a bill that
would have eliminated the requirement that the State
Corporation Commission approve the sale or transfer of
any telephone company and ensure that the transaction is
in the public interest.
CWA locals have been building support to sustain the
expected Kaine veto. The big test comes next week, with
a vote in the legislature on an attempt to override the
governor's veto of the anti-worker and anti-consumer
measure, and CWA locals throughout Virginia are ready.
Gov. Kaine stated when he vetoed the bill: "Such a
change would represent a significant deviation from
established practice and remove an important layer of
oversight that the SCC has long exercised to protect
Virginia customers. Access to telephone service
continues to be vital for residents across the
Commonwealth, and it is imperative that we act
reasonably to ensure that this access is not
diminished."
CWA President Larry Cohen announced Kaine's veto at
CWA's Legislative-Political conference on Wednesday. He
stressed that building political support for working
families – and helping to elect officials like Gov.
Kaine who support working people – is what CWA's
political program is all about.
"District 2 and our Virginia locals have done a
terrific job in mobilizing against Verizon's stealth
campaign to avoid public scrutiny of telecom deals,"
said Cohen. "Because of their efforts, we have a good
shot to sustain the veto by our friend Tim Kaine – and
we must keep the momentum going."
Verizon hoped to quietly get the measure through both
houses of the legislature, said CWA Local 2201 President
Chris Lane, and all the locals throughout Virginia
united to stop it. After the House approved the bill,
CWAers focused their attention on the Senate, spreading
the word that the measure was a broad attack on consumer
rights and meant that customers would have no recourse
to address bad service or higher rates.
"We put a good plan together and everyone
participated, from every local throughout Virginia to
the district and national CWA staff. Phone calls from
President Cohen and District 2 Vice President Pete
Catucci to Governor Kaine helped a lot," Lane said.
"We sent people daily to the state Capitol to meet
with their representatives, we sent out several flyers
and we produced newspaper and radio ads to get our
message across," Lane said. After the Senate voted to
eliminate state oversight, we stepped up our
mobilization, Lane said.
"We encouraged all members to take petitions to their
neighborhoods, their community groups and their
churches, calling on the governor to veto this very bad
bill," Lane said. The local's executive vice president
Richard Hatch organized phone banking and all the locals
participated. "We also used three rounds of recorded
'robo' calls to urge Virginia residents to contact the
governor," he added.
"Now, we're not taking any chances and will be
working hard through next week, but our success so far
in stopping this sneak attack by Verizon is all that
workers here are talking about," Lane said.
Lane said the action was very good training for the
Stewards Army program, which locals are building in
Virginia. "This issue really brought around some members
who hadn't been involved or engaged. It motivated them
to take some ownership."
Legislative, Women's and Safety & Health Activists
Join to Build a Political Movement for Change
Local leaders and activists came to Washington for
three major conferences over the past week to help build
a political movement for change focused on CWA's top
strategic issues – workers' rights and protecting jobs,
health care and retirement security.
For the first time, the union's Health and Safety and
National Women's conferences were held back to back in
conjunction with the annual Legislative-Political
Conference, which drew over 800 participants this year.
At the Women's Conference, March 23-24, women
activists discussed how to make political change happen,
how to get the resources necessary to support worker-
friendly women candidates running for public office and
how to run for office themselves. District 7 Vice
President Annie Hill outlined CWA's strategic campaign
to gain health care for all and what it will take to win
real reform.
A dramatic presentation by Doreen Griffin of CWA
Local 1033 brought the determination of Rosa Parks to
life in her portrayal of the civil rights activist. CWA
Executive Vice President Jeff Rechenbach said the
courage of Parks and other civil rights activists
continued to inspire the fight to restore workers'
rights.
Meanwhile, Safety and Health conferees, meeting March
24-25, participated in wide-ranging panel discussions
and breakout sessions covering electrical safety,
hazardous materials, indoor air quality, ergonomics,
legal rights and other topics.
From Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), chair of the House
Subcommittee on Workforce protections, they got an
overview of a new attitude in Congress regarding health
and safety as she pledged her subcommittee will hold the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration to a
higher degree of accountability.
The Employee Free Choice Act had a starring role at
CWA's 2007 Legislative-Political Conference, March
25-28, as leaders on Capitol Hill, including five
candidates for president, took turns at the podium
championing the urgently needed worker bargaining and
organizing bill.
(Note: The Employee Free Choice Act was formally
introduced March 29 in the Senate by Sen. Edward Kennedy
(D-Mass.), with 46 co-sponsors, and designated as bill
number S. 1041.)
"To the 57 million Americans who polls show would
join a union if they could, to them we say, 'Help is on
the way,'" said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of
California, the first woman to preside over the chamber.
CWA President Larry Cohen praised Pelosi has the
"best speaker of the House ever," because she kept her
promise to workers and pushed the Employee Free Choice
Act to a bipartisan victory in the House in the first
100 hours of the 110th Congress.
Pelosi and other members of Congress spoke
passionately about the financial squeeze on the middle
class and the impossible choices working families with
low wages, no health care or other benefits have to face
daily.
CWA President Larry Cohen spoke of CWA's own battles
at Verizon, Comcast and other companies where corporate
greed has bulldozed workers' rights, all of the fights
illustrating how badly American labor has been eroded
over the past three decades.
"We are building a political movement, we are
fighting back and we are winning," Cohen said,
describing CWA's dynamic new Stewards' Army as one of
the key tools to educate, inspire and mobilize members.
CWA Secretary-Treasurer Barbara J. Easterling and EVP
Rechenbach contrasted the policies of the
Republican-controlled Congress with the changes that
working families can expect from a House of
Representatives headed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a
Democratic Senate, starting with full support for
workers' rights.
The Employee Free Choice Act was a primary topic as
groups of CWA leaders and activists from across the
country met with U.S. senators and representatives from
their home states.
CWA's Speed Matters campaign was another priority in
the meetings, with members urging lawmakers to take
legislative steps to ensure that all Americans, from
rural areas to inner cities, have high-speed Internet
access. They explained that the United States, the
country that created the Internet, has fallen to 16th in
the world in high-speed Internet penetration, and that
U.S. standards for "high" speed are far lower than other
nations.
The nation's health care crisis was a third major
topic in meetings on Capitol Hill and conference
speeches, with each presidential candidate pledging to
fight for universal health care coverage.
Also on the agenda were trade policies such as NAFTA
and CAFTA that have cost millions of American jobs while
insisting that no labor or environmental standards be
included for companies that move jobs to other
countries. Other key topics included pension reform and
retirement security.
Five of the seven Democrats who have announced that
they are running for president spoke and pledged support
for the Employee Free Choice Act: Sen. Joseph Biden,
Delaware; Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Ohio; Sen. Barack Obama,
Illinois; former Sen. John Edwards, North Carolina; and
Sen. Hillary Clinton, New York. A sixth candidate, Gov.
Bill Richardson of New Mexico, sent a taped message.
Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut was unable to attend.
Cohen emphasized that CWA isn't making any
endorsements at this point but is proud to have so many
good candidates who have been strong supporters of CWA
and workers' rights.
Other speakers included CWA President Emeritus Morton
Bahr, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard
Dean, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Sen. Claire McCaskill
(D-Mo.), Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), who chairs
the Congressional Black Caucus, House Majority Whip
James Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Stephanie Tubbs Jones
(D-Ohio).
EVP Jeff Rechenbach to Head National Telecom Office
The CWA Executive Board voted to designate Executive
Vice President Jeff Rechenbach to head the new National
Telecom Office as the Board continues to review CWA's
structure in telecom and other sectors in keeping with
the mandate in Ready for the Future.
Rechenbach has played a major role in coordinating
the work of the Telecom Industry Committee, set up in
September 2005, as well as the various campaigns and
issues affecting nearly 300,000 CWA telecom members,
noted President Larry Cohen.
Rechenbach said the new office is an outgrowth of the
committee's activities, aimed at mapping strategies and
coordinating staff activities at the major telecom
employers. The committee is composed of the eight
district vice presidents along with the vice presidents
for Telecom and Communications & Technologies.
"The National Telecom Office is the next step in that
process of better coordinating the staff resources that
we have in each of our districts and at headquarters and
sharpening our focus," Rechenbach said.
He noted that the telecom committee recently has
launched major Strategic Industry Fund campaigns at
Verizon and Alcatel Lucent and also to promote the
rollout of high-speed Internet services to spur job and
economic growth under the banner of Speed Matters.
"From mergers and spinoffs to new technologies to
attacks on our jobs and our contracts, we face constant
threats as well as opportunities in telecom. We need to
address these issues in the most clear-sighted and
efficient way possible, and that's what we're trying to
do," Rechenbach stated.
Board Approves Diversity Committee Recommendations
The CWA Executive Board this week approved
recommendations by its special Diversity Committee,
which will be submitted to the 2007 CWA convention as
called for by convention delegates last year in adopting
the Ready for the Future program.
Among the proposals are adding four at-large
diversity members to the Executive Board and
establishing a permanent Diversity Committee of the
Board.
In reviewing the recommendations at this week's
Legislative-Political Conference in Washington,
Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling, who chairs the
committee, said: "The broader the perspectives we bring
to the Executive Board room, the smarter the decisions
that emerge from it will be. The more our leaders
reflect our members, the more responsive to their needs
we will be."
President Larry Cohen said: "We made a commitment to
increase diversity on our Board and that's what we've
done. I'm proud of the work of this committee."
The Diversity Committee held sessions with local
leaders around the country to solicit input, posted
meeting notes on the Ready for the Future website, and
e-mailed a survey last year to all locals seeking ideas
and suggestions, Easterling noted. "We reviewed all –
and I mean all – survey responses," she said.
The recommendations call for adding four new at-large
diversity Board seats to be filled by women and persons
of color. The four at-large seats will come from four
geographic regions, the Northeast, Southeast, Central
and Western areas of the country.
The four at-large members will have the same
policy-making and voting authority as other Board
members. They will not be full-time officers. Their
expenses and lost-time wages will be paid for attending
Board meetings and performing other responsibilities as
assigned by the president. Elections for at-large Board
members will be held at the 2008 convention using the
same procedure as that used for electing national
officers.
Serving with Easterling on the Diversity Committee
are Vice Presidents Annie Hill, Noah Savant and Brooks
Sunkett, Women's Committee members Susan McCallister,
Local 7704 secretary-treasurer, and Mary Lou Schaffer,
Local 13550 president; and Committee on Equity members
Keith Robinson, Local 6310 steward, and Jetty Wells,
Local 4009 executive vice president.
Pension Freeze, Other Demands Lead to
Suspension of ABC Talks
NABET-CWA negotiators have suspended talks with ABC
Television after a careful assessment of contract
demands from the network that would do irreparable harm
to workers' job security, pensions and other rights and
benefits, according to union leaders.
The union and ABC management had been meeting for
three weeks to bargain a new contract covering 2,500
technicians, camera operators, news writers and other
employees throughout the United States. The current
four-year contract expires March 31, 2007. Talks stopped
March 22 when ABC announced that it wants to freeze the
NABET-CWA members' pension plan. Doing so would reduce
the average participant's retirement benefit by 25
percent, negotiators said.
"The union bargaining committee's review of ABC's
proposals found nothing but company attacks on the
seniority system, attacks on the pension plan – despite
the plan being financially healthy – attacks on
jurisdiction of work and attacks on a multitude of other
work rules and conditions," NABET-CWA President John
Clark said. "These attacks come on top of ABC's apparent
refusal to consider new training and job opportunities
for workers as the industry's technology rapidly
evolves."
He said the pension proposal "will pull the rug out
from underneath people who are depending on it for their
retirement security after a lifetime of service to ABC.
It is deplorable."
The union has informed ABC that it will be ready to
resume talks by mid-May after completing meetings around
the country to discuss the situation with members.
CWA Backs FCC Action Requiring
New Investment In Puerto Rico by America Movil
CWA President Larry Cohen commended the Federal
Communications Commission for requiring critical
investment commitments by America Movil to finalize its
purchase of Puerto Rico Telephone Company from Verizon
Communications.
To win transfer approval, America Movil committed to
invest $1 billion in information services in Puerto Rico
over the next five years. "CWA views this as a promise
to the people of Puerto Rico, and will be watching that
America Movil meets this commitment. We expect that the
FCC and the Puerto Rico Regulatory Authority will be
vigilant in monitoring compliance," Cohen said.
CWA installers for Puerto Rico Telephone Company are
represented by CWA affiliates Union De Trabajadores de
las Comunicaciones de Puerto Rico/CWA Local 3010.
This Puerto Rico Telephone sale is the first time
that a foreign company will own wireline
telecommunications facilities on U.S. soil, and the FCC
indicated that it needed to set a high bar to ensure
that the transfer serves the public interest. America
Movil is a Mexican company owned by Carlos Slim Helu,
providing telecommunications services to 14 countries.
Verizon bought Puerto Rico Telephone Company in 2000
but made negligible investment in the network, and under
its ownership, telephone penetration declined from 74 to
61 percent. The infrastructure is in such poor condition
that most lines are not DSL capable, denying customers
access to changing technologies.
IN BRIEF:
Rutgers University has installed a plaque at
its Labor Studies Center honoring the late Clara Allen,
a longtime District 1 staff official and pioneering
women's rights leader who served in the mid-1970s as New
Jersey's first director of its Division of Women in the
Department of Community Affairs.
At a ceremony on March 23rd to mark the occasion, CWA
President Emeritus Morton Bahr and Local 1150 President
Laura Unger spoke about Allen's devotion to both CWA and
women's issues during her 47-year career. She was a
founder of Local 1150, and served as administrative
assistant to Bahr and later Vice President Larry
Mancino. She died in 1997.
For years, Princeton economist Alan Blinder –
a longtime supporter of free trade and a NAFTA booster –
was convinced that free trade was the key to economic
growth and that it eventually benefited everyone. Today,
he's had a change of heart and is just catching on to
what workers have known for years – that the "downside"
to free trade is deeper than most economists ever
realized.
Now Blinder says that the job insecurity workers face
today is "only the tip of a very big iceberg" and that
changes in technology and global communications are
making it possible to send even more jobs overseas.
Perhaps as many as 40 million American jobs will be
at risk of being shipped out of the country over the
next two decades because of these advances that allow
services to be delivered from anywhere, he says.
Blinder now says that the harm done when some workers
lose their jobs will be more painful and disruptive than
free traders want to acknowledge. He is calling on the
U.S. government to do far more for workers than the few
months of retraining that some get and is studying
changes in tax law to reward companies that produce jobs
that stay in the U.S.
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