• CWA and Verizon to Resume Early Negotiations
• CWA, Unions Turn Out Huge Election Victory in Mississippi
• Violence Escalates Against Trade Union Leaders in Colombia
• Cohen Pledges Super Delegate Vote to Barack Obama
• Sheriffs, Detention Officers in Iowa Affiliate with CWA
• House Panel Votes to Extend Family Leave to Flight Attendants
• IN BRIEF:
  • California Paper Publishes Retiree's Op-Ed on State Budget Cuts
  • Deadline is May 30 for CWA's Annual Newsletter Contest
  • Rally Spotlights Verizon's Poor Track Record in D.C.

CWA and Verizon to Resume Early Negotiations

CWA Districts 1, 2 and 13, together with the IBEW, have agreed to resume early negotiations with Verizon, covering the Verizon "East" contract, with a tentative start date of May 27 to begin the talks.

The parties initially engaged in early contract bargaining beginning last November but the talks were suspended earlier this year.  Verizon has continued to agree to limit its bargaining agenda to health care while the unions have an unrestricted agenda and the discussions will cover the ability of members to have access to jobs of the future in the growth areas of the company.

Once again, CWA is bargaining jointly with the IBEW.  The current Verizon "East" contract, covering 55,000 CWA members, expires on August 2, 2008.

CWA, Unions Turn Out Huge Election Victory in Mississippi

Travis Childers campaigns at veterans home in Oxford, Miss.

CWAers and union members throughout Mississippi pulled together to bring about a stunning election victory as Democrat Travis Childers won election to the U.S. House of Representatives from the traditionally Republican first congressional district.  CWA locals coordinated efforts with political alliance partner the United Steel Workers.

This was the second such win in less than two weeks. On May 3, voters in Lousiana's sixth congressional district voted in Don Cazayoux, a Democrat, from a district that had sent Republicans to Congress for the past 34 years.

CWA District 3 Legislative-Political Coordinator Beverly Hicks said every CWA local union and unions throughout the state got involved and worked together. "It's so important to put people in office who will be accountable and who will support working families and the issues that are so important to us. That's exactly what happened in this election," she said.

District 3 sent out mailings to every CWA member in the district and deployed "robocalls" with a recorded message from Vice President Noah Savant, urging members to go to the polls for Childers.

Garry Jordan, president of CWA Local 3517 in Tupelo, said the key to the election was making members fully aware of the issues and what Childers stood for, and local members "carried that message to churches, ballgames, civic meetings, and around the dinner table."

"People here know what the issues are and they stayed focused. They weren't swayed by the Republican advertising that was so terrible" or Republican attempts to distract voters from the economy, health care and other concerns for working families, he said.

"We'll do it all over again in November" when Childers must run again, Jordan said, adding that union members were seeing a real change in Mississippi and the opportunity to elect a U.S. Senator and other representatives who would "get people health care, get them workers' rights and the Employee Free Choice Act and stay focused on their issues."   

Members of CWA Local 3511 also played a big part in the campaign, joining in phone banking and making sure everyone knew how important it was to vote. Coordinating activities across unions was Debra Noble of Local 3511.

Brenda Scott, president of Local 3570, the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees, said locals sent information to union members, had team captains in charge of work locations to further talk with members and organized phone banking. "We did everything we could to make sure that Travis Childers had an audience to talk about his message," she said.

Scott noted that the Republicans put out a lot of "negative and untrue advertising," a tactic which backfired. "People in Mississippi are suffering and wanted a candidate who they knew would work hard for them," she said.  "We put all our energy together and had a big impact. And we're not going to let up," she said.

Violence Escalates Against Trade Union Leaders in Colombia

Cohen speaks at news conference with Colombian unionists and congressional supporters.

While the Bush administration continues its strong-arm tactics to try to pass the anti-worker Colombia Free Trade Agreement, members of Congress and U.S. unions this week welcomed a group of Colombian labor leaders who have received death threats, survived attempts on their lives and are still bravely fighting for workers' rights in a country where union activists are murdered.

At a news conference on Capitol Hill with Colombian union leaders and key members of Congress, CWA President Larry Cohen praised the great courage of Colombian workers and unionists. In Colombia, "workers have no rights. Only owners have rights," he said.

The paramilitary groups that carry out the threats and killings are almost never caught and punished. Between that terror campaign and some of the world's weakest workers' rights laws, only 2 percent of the workforce is unionized, Cohen said.                       

"Multinational corporations have become part of the anti-union culture," Evan Torro Lopez of the bank workers' association in Colombia told the media, naming well known American brands. "They take advantage of the anti-union culture to make more profit."

"We are witnessing a terrible increase in the violence against trade unionists," Cohen noted. "Already in 2008, 24 have been murdered, a rate of over one a week. Last year at the same time, 17 unionists had been assassinated."

Cohen and visiting Colombians were joined at the news conference by other union leaders and by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine). Answering a reporter's question, Brown said almost all Democrats are opposed to the Colombia FTA and so are a growing number of Republicans.

In April, the labor movement's pressure on Congress to reject the Colombia FTA paid off when the U.S. House voted 224-195 to lift the 90-day "fast track" time limit to vote on the flawed proposal. Without fast track, Congress can delay action on the pact indefinitely, though the White House is pushing for action.

Brown condemned the administration's "job-killing trade agreements" and said the Colombia pact "is a disadvantage for workers and unions in Colombia and a disadvantage for workers and unions in the United States."

Michaud said he has personally confronted Colombian President Uribe about the violence against labor activists in his country. "He issued an unconvincing flat denial in the hopes that we would turn a blind eye toward the violence in order to pass a free trade agreement," he said. "I am here to say that the congressional majority will not turn a blind eye."

Pointing out the visiting Colombians, he added that, "There is a human face to these trade agreements, and those faces are here today."

Cohen Pledges Super Delegate Vote to Barack Obama

CWA President Larry Cohen, a super delegate and member of the Democratic National Committee, today announced his commitment to support Senator Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Cohen said in his statement that this is his personal endorsement, and that CWA will put the issue of an official union endorsement to CWA convention delegates next month.  He noted that in CWA's online political poll last fall, members recommended that CWA refrain from making a national endorsement and that the poll showed their support was split among various candidates. 

"We continue to encourage member activism in the remaining states and Puerto Rico," Cohen said. "With the primary process nearly at an end, it's important for super delegates to decide and announce their commitments so that we all can focus on the November election and on the record of Senator John McCain, the Republican presumptive nominee.     

"I'm convinced that Senator Obama's message of hope and 'change we can believe in' has resonated across our country. He is building a broad base of support, inspiring new voters to join in the political process and demonstrating great appeal to all those who are looking for positive leadership to move us beyond politics-as-usual in Washington."

He continued:  "CWA is focused on four key issues to restore our nation's middle class – real health care reform, jobs and fair trade, retirement security and the restoration of real workers' rights through the Employee Free Choice Act. On these and more, Senator Obama has a solid program to move our nation forward and bring about the positive change and economic justice that American families need, now more than ever."

Cohen commended Senator Hillary Clinton, "who is an excellent candidate and a staunch friend and advocate for American working men and women."  CWA Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling, who is also a DNC member and super delegate, earlier had pledged her support to Clinton.

Sheriffs, Detention Officers in Iowa Affiliate with CWA

Concerned over pay, intimidation by management, and job security, a unit of 100 detention officers and 39 deputy sheriffs in the Woodbury County Sheriffs Department in Sioux City, Iowa, voted to affiliate with CWA last week, reports District 7 Vice President Annie Hill.

CWA was the overwhelming choice over the Fraternal Order of Police as a merger partner because of CWA's clout and expertise in representing public safety officers. The workers belonged to an independent association but were not able to address the issues facing the workers. Low pay is a major issue for all of the workers, and the detention officers, unlike the deputies, are at-will employees who can be fired for any reason and have no due process rights.

Not having a union to stand up to management is also an issue. "Workers find that it is extremely difficult when they attempt to exercise their right to organize, or engage in concerted activity," said CWA Representative Midge Slater, who assisted in the affiliation along with Local 7103. Elsewhere in the district, CWA has extended union representation to some 1,000 public safety officers in Arizona in the past year through AZCOPS Local 7077.

Last week CWA recorded two other organizing victories in District 7, when 75 workers gained union representation at AT&T Mobility retail stores in Idaho and at SPC Printing in Hibbing, Minnesota. The workers at AT&T were assisted by CWA Local 7603 and Spokane AT&T Mobility retail sales worker, Michelle Manning, who is represented by CWA Local 7818. At SPC Printing, a bargaining unit of 38 mailroom workers voted for union representation with Hibbing-Virginia Typographical Union 727/CWA Local 14726 in an NLRB election.

House Panel Votes to Extend Family Leave to Flight Attendants

A House committee voted to close a gaping loophole in the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) that allows airlines to deny coverage to flight attendants and pilots. This week, following a year-long lobbying campaign by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the House Education and Labor Committee voted unanimously to approve legislation that would extend FMLA coverage to some 200,000 crew members.

Congress never intended to exclude flight crews from FMLA coverage when the legislation was passed in 1993, but flight attendants and pilots are regularly denied coverage because of the way airlines calculate their working schedules. The full-time schedule for a flight attendant is, on average, 960 hours a year, but FMLA sets the minimum qualifying working hours at 60 percent of a normal 40-hour workweek (1,250 hours a year).

Flight crews are often required spend up to 4 - 5 days a week away from home and family, or are put on reserve status (ready to be called up at moment's notice), but airlines do not count these hours as working time.

Being denied leave to attend to even the most urgent family matters has had a devastating impact on workers and their families. In Congressional testimony, AFA member Jennifer Hunt, a US Airways flight attendant, said she was not allowed to take leave to tend to her husband who was diagnosed with cancer after returning from serving 15 months of military duty in Iraq. To get any coverage under FMLA, flight attendants and pilots have been forced to negotiate for it with airlines.

The legislation now moves forward for action by the full House of Representatives where the measure, H.R. 2744, has 240 co-sponsors. A similar measure in the Senate, S. 2059, has 24 co-sponsors.

IN BRIEF:
 

• CWA retiree leader Addie Brinkley has taken advantage of one of the best tools at any union activist's disposal: Her local newspaper's op-ed page, in which she described how planned California state budget cuts "will decimate services essential to seniors like me."
  
  Brinkley, president of CWA's District 9 Retired Members' Council, secretary-treasurer of CWA's national RMC and a member of the California Alliance for Retired Americans, wrote in the Modesto Bee about traveling to Sacramento for a rally in April with more than 1,500 seniors.
  
  Brinkley said those who could make the trip were giving voice to hundreds of thousands more who will be hurt by cuts to in-home care and Supplemental Security Income. Her op-ed column described their fears, but also looked at the bigger budget picture.
  
  "I didn't go to Sacramento to defend only the programs that affect me, she wrote. "I am also incensed to see children lose health care, to see teachers laid off and to see state parks closed. These cuts affect all Californians, and unless something is done we will feel their impact for decades to come."
  
  CWA encourages union activists to follow Brinkley's lead and make their voices heard by way of op-ed columns and letters to the editor. Check your local newspaper's website for instructions on how to submit materials.
  
  
   
• The deadline is just two weeks away to enter CWA's annual competition for local newsletters.
  
  All entries must be received by May 30. Winners, decided by a panel of non-CWA judges in journalism and public relations fields, will be announced at the CWA Convention in Las Vegas in June.
  
  The forms to enter both General Excellence and individual categories – such as best news story, best front page and best original photograph – can be downloaded or printed at http://www.cwa-union.org/newslettercontest.
  
  
   
• Putting a spotlight on Verizon's neglect of its Washington, D.C., customers, the Connect-DC Coalition – a project of CWA and Jobs with Justice – turned out several dozen activists Thursday morning for a demonstration in front of the city's Public Service Commission building.
  
  The demonstrators marched and chanted for 90 minutes, handing out fliers to passers-by about Verizon's many service problems and job cuts in the District, and its failure to rollout high-speed Internet services in D.C. while the company focuses on deploying its state-of-the-art FiOS network in suburban Maryland and Virginia.
  
  Inside the building at the site of the rally, the PSC held a closed hearing Thursday on what Connect-DC says is a flawed settlement with Verizon over its customers' many service complaints stemming from lost jobs and minimal investment, if any, in the existing network.
  
  "It is time for the D.C. government to stop giving in to  Verizon's demands and hold the company accountable," the fliers stated. "Let the PSC know that it is their responsibility to ensure that D.C. residents have access to equitable, reliable, quality phone service."  For more information:  www.connect-dc.org.