• Verizon Brushes Off Majority Union Support by Business Techs:
  Attacks Unions and Employee Free Choice Act.
• NABET-CWA Blasts ABC Proposal to Freeze Pension Plan
• Series on Mentally Unfit Soldiers,
  Jailed Journalist Win Top Guild Awards
• Airline Jobs at Risk as DOT Opens Door to Foreign Competition
• IN BRIEF:
  • Five Presidential Candidates Set for Legislative Conference
  • 40 Million Have Substandard Wages and Benefits

Verizon Brushes Off Majority Union Support by Business Techs; Attacks Unions and Employee Free Choice Act.

As the House-passed Employee Free Choice Act works its way through Congress, Verizon has emerged as one of the legislation's fiercest opponents. Though employing 97,000 union members, the company has joined with the nation's most extreme anti-union elements in seeking to defeat the legislation that would enable workers to win bargaining rights once they demonstrate majority union support.

Verizon voiced its opposition in a 10-page, anti-union ("Union Awareness") e-mail to its Verizon Business technicians last week, claiming the measure would violate workers' right to a secret ballot in a union election. Yet Verizon's unstated but major objection is that workers would gain the ability to organize before an employer could crush their campaign. 

Sixty percent of the Verizon Business techs in the Northeast have already signed cards petitioning Verizon for recognition, as verified in card counts by elected officials in New York and Massachusetts.   Verizon's response has been to mount a classic union-avoidance campaign with mandatory meetings, supervisory one-on-ones and "fact sheets" full of distortions about unions.

Verizon's anti-union e-mail to the techs was careful to proclaim "respect" for its employees' right to form unions. But it showed disrespect for its CWA and IBEW-represented Verizon core employees, referring to unions as a "Third Party" that "impedes" the company's business and stands in the way of a "fair and open working environment." Verizon touted as "a good place for union information" the rabidly anti-union websites operated by the so-called Center for Union Facts, and bankrolled by the Chamber of Commerce, and the National Right to Work Committee.

The company encouraged the techs to send letters to Congress opposing the Employee Free Choice Act by going to websites sponsored by employer organizations. One called the "Alliance for Worker Freedom," www.workerfreedom.org, refers to unions as being run by "goons" and "hired thugs." Another, using the misnomer, Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, www.myprivateballot.com, falsely claims that it is made up of a "coalition of workers, employers, associations and organizations," yet no workers' groups are listed.

CWA President Larry Cohen blasted Verizon for breaking from the mainstream of the telecom industry and turning its back on its union employees and the nearly 60-year collective bargaining relationship the company has had with its unions.  "Since the 1940s, hundreds of thousands of CWA and IBEW members have worked to make Verizon and its predecessor companies into one of the nation's leading corporations," said Cohen.

"For top management to suggest that its union workers constitute a 'third party' who are 'impediments' to the company's business is an insult to every union worker who ever worked at Verizon – and they are due an apology," said Cohen, noting: "To Verizon's customers, union members are the very face of this company."

NABET-CWA Blasts ABC Proposal to Freeze Pension Plan

Angered NABET-CWA leaders say negotiators for ABC, Inc. told the union bargaining team this week that the company wants to freeze the workers' pension plan effective Dec. 31, 2007.

"Your proposal is unethical, immoral and you should be ashamed of yourselves," NABET-CWA bargaining team member and pension plan trustee Dennis Allen told the ABC representatives.

NABET-CWA President John Clark said the proposal came nearly three weeks into negotiations, and only eleven days before the current four-year agreement expires on March 31.

"It is a completely unacceptable demand on top of the many other attacks on jurisdiction, seniority and other working conditions in the company's proposal," Clark said. "ABC executives want to pull the rug from under the people whose hard work, professionalism and talent make the network run. We will not stand for it."

Clark said the ABC pension plan is not only healthy, but has a credit balance. Yet ABC's proposal, according to the union's early analysis, would reduce the average plan participant's retirement benefit by nearly 25 percent.

The union represents about 2,500 technicians, news writers, camera operators and other employees at ABC from coast to coast. In addition to the pension bombshell, the company is also proposing to allow layoffs without regard to seniority, eliminate paid meal period and subcontract certain bargaining unit work.

Job security, pension protection, retiree medical benefits and wages, which have fallen behind other networks and even independent TV stations, were top issues for NABET-CWA going into bargaining.

At one bargaining session, for instance, Local 59051 President Kevin Wilson gave a PowerPoint presentation showing how, during the term of the current agreement, KGO employees in the San Francisco Bay Area have failed to keep pace with the wages and working conditions of competitors in the local TV market.

Regular bargaining updates - posted daily as sessions are scheduled - are available online at www.abc-contract.info.

Series on Mentally Unfit Soldiers,
Jailed Journalist Win Top Guild Awards

A Hartford Courant series investigating the U.S. government's ongoing deployment of soldiers who suffer pre-existing mental illness and other psychological conditions has won the 2006 Heywood Broun Award.

In "Mentally Unfit, Forced to Fight," reporters Lisa Chedekel and Matthew Kauffman revealed that senior military officials have sent troops into combat in Iraq despite clear evidence of bipolar disorder, depression, suicidal episodes and post-traumatic stress.

The Newspaper Guild-CWA is also honoring jailed freelance journalist Josh Wolf, who has been held in federal prison since last August for refusing to turn over to authorities a video he shot of a protest against the G8 summit in San Francisco in July 2005.

Wolf will receive the Herbert Block Freedom Award, named for the legendary Washington Post cartoonist who was devoted to free speech rights and compassion for the disadvantaged. The first Block award, given in 2002, also went to a journalist – Vanessa Leggett of Texas -- who braved jail rather than surrender her notes in a criminal case.

Broun judges said the Hartford Courant series exemplified the legacy of the award's namesake, a Guild founder and crusading columnist. "In publicizing the little-known plight of mentally ill soldiers, the paper helped prompt new legislation addressing the flaws in the military's mental health system," they said.

Both the Broun and Block awards come with a $5,000 check. They will be presented May 3 at the union's annual Freedom Award Fund dinner in Washington, D.C. The keynote speaker will be Newsweek senior editor and NBC contributor Jonathan Alter.

Other winners will be also be honored. Debbie Cenziper of the Miami Herald will receive the Broun award for substantial distinction for her series, "House of Lies," an investigation that uncovered corruption in the Miami-Dade Housing Agency. In the broadcast division, Lorrie Taylor of WJW-TV in Cleveland will be recognized for "Disappearing Homes," a story about a predatory real estate company. Both winners will receive a $1,000 prize.

The Broun winners were selected from entries from across the United States and Canada. Judges were Deborah Howell, ombudswoman for the Washington Post; Tom Kunkel, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland; Chris Lehmann, senior editor at CQ Weekly; and Jack Nelson, retired Washington bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. The panel was chaired by Dick Peery, longtime president of the Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild who retired last year after 35 years with the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The David S. Barr awards will also be presented May 3. They recognize a college and high school student for achievements in journalism, with scholarship awards of $1,500 and $500, respectively.

Kendyl R. Salcito of the University of British Columbia won for her article, "War Brewing Over Mineral Rights in Rural BC," a report on a controversial government program that allows mineral staking on private property. Elizabeth Curry Andrews of Henry W. Grady High School in Atlanta won for her story, "Fulton County Blues," which exposed the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions at the courthouse jail in Fulton County.

Airline Jobs at Risk as DOT Opens Door
To Foreign Competition

A federal Transportation Department decision this week that opens the door to foreign competition in the domestic aviation industry will put American jobs at U.S. airlines in jeopardy, AFA-CWA leaders say.

The ruling will allow a proposed airline called Virgin American – backed by Virgin Atlantic owner Richard Branson, a British citizen -- to enter the U.S. market. Last year, the airline made the same bid but was rejected because it could not prove it was owned and operated by American citizens.

Now, days before European officials will decide on a controversial "open skies" treaty between the United States and the European Union, DOT officials say Virgin America meets the citizenship test.   The proposed Virgin American hired a new CEO and tweaked its structure a bit for the second application, but it's clear that it is still closely tied to Virgin Atlantic, AFA-CWA contends.

"The decision is nothing but a trade off to buy European approval of the US/EU treaty," AFA-CWA President Patricia Friend said. "The U.S. aviation market is one of the last, strong domestic industries that has not been invaded by foreign competition, yet our officials seems dedicated to destroying it. And through their shortsightedness, it will once again be the flight attendants and the rest of the middle class who suffer."

The ruling came in spite of an AFA-CWA letter-writing blitz to local and federal officials urging them to reject Virgin America's application and protect the recovering domestic aviation industry from foreign control.

The open skies accord that will be decided shortly by Congress and the 27 European Union member countries would allow any European or American airline to fly any route between any city in Europe and any city in the United States.

The New York Times reported that there has been British opposition to the treaty because Virgin Atlantic and British Airways believe it gives away too much to U.S. carriers. Presently, the two airlines, as well as United and American Airlines, have exclusive rights to fly between the United States and London's Heathrow Airport.

A Virgin America spokesperson told the Times the company was pleased with the DOT ruling and hopes to start flights between San Francisco and New York by this summer. The airline could begin serving Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., within another nine months.                    

IN BRIEF:

 

• At least five of the Democrats running for president in 2008 will address the CWA Legislative-Political Conference beginning Sunday in Washington, D.C.
  
  Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois, Hillary Clinton of New York and Joseph Biden of Delaware; Rep. Dennis Kucinch of Ohio; and former Sen. John Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential candidate, have confirmed that they will speak.
  
  Biden is scheduled for Sunday afternoon, Kucinich on Monday morning and Obama, Edwards and Clinton on Tuesday morning.
  
  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, the first female speaker of the House, will give the keynote address at the conference's Wednesday morning breakfast.
  
  Other speakers include Sens. John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.); Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee; House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.); Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.); and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.
  
  
   
• More than 40 million jobs in the United States – about one in three – pay roughly $11 an hour or less and rarely include health insurance, retirement accounts, paid sick days or other benefits, according to a new report by The Mobility Agenda, a project affiliated with the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
  
  "All too often these low-wage jobs are replacing jobs that have supported a broad middle class," said Margy Waller, one of authors one "Understanding Low-Wage work in the United States."
  
  The full report is available on the Center's website at www.cepr.net.