• IUE-CWA Pact at GE Boosts Pay and Pensions
• Unions Turn Up Heat on Capitol Hill for EFCA
• AT&T to Return 650 More Outsourced Jobs
• Retired Rep Crystal Roberts Led GOTV Efforts in Ohio
• IN BRIEF:
  • WashTech Urges Trade Adjustment Aid for Tech Workers
  • High Unionization, High Productivity, says EPI

IUE–CWA Pact at GE Boosts Pay and Pensions  

IUE-CWA GE Conference Board delegates unanimously recommended ratification of a new four-year agreement reached with General Electric on June 17. The tentative pact, covering about 10,000 workers, delivers a projected 16.1 percent wage increase, significant pension gains, an extra holiday and other improvements.

Even with some increases in health care costs, the average IUE-CWA member will realize a net income gain of almost $17,000 over the term of the contract. The bargaining committee was able to hold the overall health care cost share for represented workers to about 20.5 percent vs. 26 percent for all GE employees.

"GE and the unions have agreed to accelerate our joint efforts to address the difficult health care issues our nation faces," IUE-CWA President Jim Clark said, congratulating the bargaining committee. "This will help to address a critical issue for not only GE employees but all American workers."

Conference Board Chairman Bob Santamoor said, "At this time when our troops are in harm's way, GE has agreed to now allow its workers to honor U.S. veterans with the first new holiday in a decade, Veterans Day. This package is a huge victory for our members."

Other gains include:

• Two early retirement windows with combined opportunities for 900 members.
• A nearly $4,000 average improvement under a regular pension update.
•  Workers could see as much as a 30-percent improvement from guaranteed pension tables when combined with income boosts over the length of the contract. 
• An extra week of vacation and 66-percent increase in night differential for more recently hired workers. 
• Preferential placement expanded to include laid-off workers.

Additionally, GE said it is recommending to its board a special pensioner increase, which would be the first since 2000. The formula will give the biggest boost to those who have been out the longest.

Local rallies and an action at the GE shareholder meeting in South Carolina focused on the plight of older retirees whose pensions have been losing ground to inflation.

IUE-CWA, representing 10,000 workers in various GE industries nationwide, and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE), representing another 4,000 both reached agreements on the final day of the old contracts, prior to their expiration at midnight. GE has also been bargaining with the Machinists, IBEW, Auto Workers, Steelworkers and other unions which, combined, represent another 9,000. All belong to the 13-union Coordinated Bargaining Committee, formed in 1966 to share information and strategies and to prevent GE from playing one union against another.

Unions Turn Up Heat on Capitol Hill for EFCA

As the U.S. Senate began debating the Employee Free Choice Act, more than 4,000 union activists turned out in 96-degree heat Tuesday for a Capitol Hill rally to demand that lawmakers pass the bill and begin restoring America's embattled middle class.

The boisterous, sign-waving crowd included several hundred red-shirted CWA members and staff along with others from AFSCME, UAW, IBEW, AFT, Teamsters and virtually every other national union.

CWA President Larry Cohen asked the entire crowd – as he has asked all CWA members and their families – to call each of their two senators to either thank them for supporting the bill or urge them to do so. A vote in the Senate could come as early as June 25.

"Every senator needs to know how serious we are about this bill," Cohen said. "They need to know that tens of millions of union members and workers who want to be union members want the Employee Free Choice Act. The entire labor movement is watching this vote," Cohen said.

The Employee Free Choice Act, which would restore workers' badly eroded rights to organize unions and bargain collectively, was passed by a wide margin in the U.S. House in March. 

The Capitol Hill rally was one of more than 100 rallies across the country this week supporting the bill. Meanwhile, working Americans so far have generated 50,000 telephone calls to the Senate, 156,000 faxes and e-mails, and 220,000 postcards, including 120,000 delivered to the Senate on rally day, the AFL-CIO said. .

Despite all of labor's energy and support from a majority of senators, Republican leaders are determined to block the Employee Free Choice Act with a filibuster. This tactic would prevent an actual vote on EFCA by requiring at least 60 senators first to vote to stop the filibuster before the actual bill could be taken up.

But Cohen and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said the massive and ongoing campaign by labor will ensure that the bill is a top priority for the next Congress in January 2009 – when a new president will also take office. Should the Employee Free Choice Act beat the odds in the Senate now, President Bush has promised to veto it.

Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told the Washington crowd that that bill is badly needed because, "The middle class is under attack in this country and the wrong side is winning."

Other political leaders who spoke at the rally included Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who introduced the bill in the Senate, presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who sponsored the bill in the House, along with many labor leaders.

Three workers who have struggled for union representation told their stories of employers' fear and intimidation tactics to keep unions out of the workplace.

"Obviously, the system is broken," said injured food factory worker Lee Mabry, who has fought for a union for seven years to improve worker safety. "Now more than ever, we need Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to protect our rights to form a union so that we can improve our working conditions."

AT&T to Return 650 More Outsourced Jobs

AT&T announced this week that it will be bringing back from overseas nearly 650 Tier I DSL technical support jobs and locating them in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, later this year. The jobs are coming back to the United States as part of the agreement CWA reached with AT&T last fall to return the tech support work that had been contracted overseas.

It was the third announcement this year of the return of AT&T Tier I customer support jobs. In El Paso, Texas, a new center is now up and running with more than 400 CWA-represented workers, and another 400 are expected to be on the job at a new call center scheduled to open in Indianapolis, Indiana, this July.

Overall, more than 2,000 new jobs are expected to be created as a result of CWA's 2005 National Internet agreement with AT&T, reported Executive Vice President Jeff Rechenbach, who heads the Telecom Office.

Retired Rep Crystal Roberts Led GOTV Efforts in Ohio

Retired CWA Representative Crystal Roberts, well respected for political mobilization work in Ohio, died on June 15 at age 54.

"Crystal was an outstanding example of a CWA union leader," said District 4 Vice President Seth Rosen. "She always worked hard for our union and its members throughout her career."

Roberts joined CWA Local 4302 after going to work as a maintenance administrator for Ameritech in August 1971. Over the course of 27 years, she served as a steward, secretary-treasurer and vice president of the local.

She joined the staff in November 1999 as a CWA representative in Cleveland, where she bargained on behalf of members at Verizon, Century Tel and other employers and had a major role in CWA's get-out-the-vote efforts on behalf of friends of working families during the 2004 and 2006 elections. She retired in January.

Roberts is survived by her husband, Paul Roberts; mother, Olga Kinsey; brother, John; sons Jason and Jeremy, stepchildren Kelly Santiago and Paul Jr., and eight grandchildren.

IN BRIEF:

• WashTech-CWA representatives testified before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee last week to urge lawmakers to extend and expand the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act to include tech workers.
  
  TAA benefits help train workers who have lost their jobs because of foreign competition. Legislation proposed a year ago would expand the benefits to such workers as computer programmers, testers, technical writers, system administrators, call center workers, and others. But now Congress is debating whether to continue the TAA program at all.
  
  James Fusco, a New Jersey WashTech member who testified along with President Marcus Courtney, lost his 13-year job as a mainframe applications developer with AT&T in 1999 when it was outsourced to Canada. He became part of a class-action lawsuit that forced the U.S. Department of Labor to certify the workers as eligible for benefits. However, a government study shows that 40 percent of workers applying for benefits are denied because the DOL doesn't regard their work product (such as software) as covered under the Trade Act, Courtney said.
  
  Pending bills to improve TAA are S.122, sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), and H.R. 4156, sponsored by Rep. Adam Smith (D-Neb.)
  
   
•  Those who argue that workers in unions are less productive than other workers are flat-out wrong according to studies in both the United States and Europe, where up to 90 percent of workers in some countries are covered by a union contract.
  
  The Economic Policy Institute's weekly snapshot, titled "Strong unions, strong productivity," says it is a "myth that unions hurt productivity." In Europe, "Output per hour worked is higher in the Netherlands, France, and Belgium, where more than 80 percent of employees have union contracts," EPI said.
  
  In the United States, EPI said "a positive association (of unions and high productivity) is established for the United States in general and for U.S. manufacturing."
  
  "If Congress is concerned about protecting middle-class incomes, it should pass measures to facilitate union organizing and collective bargaining coverage, including the Employee Free Choice Act," EPI said. "There is no reason to fear that higher rates of unionization will impede efficiency or labor productivity." The full snapshot, with graphs, is available at www.epinet.org.