December 13, 2007

NABET-CWA Reaches Tentative Pact with ABC that Saves Workers' Pensions 

After nine months at the bargaining table, NABET-CWA has reached a tentative four-year contract with ABC-Disney that preserves members' pensions and blocks many other givebacks the network was demanding.

The contract, if ratified, provides for wage increases to be retroactive to Dec. 15, 2007.  Most members will see raises of 3.5 percent immediately, followed by 3 percent in April 2008, 3 percent in April 2009 and 3.5 percent in the contract's final year.

The contract also includes improvements for daily hires, including making some frequent daily hires eligible for health care coverage and other benefits through Disney's Signature Benefit Plans.

"These were extremely difficult negotiations," NABET-CWA President John Clark said. "However, we were able to eliminate or blunt many of the company proposals, especially around pensions and job security. The committee is convinced that the dozens of improvements negotiated constitute the best deal we are able to make." Ballots will be mailed to members next week and must be returned by Jan. 10, 2008, with results announced Jan. 11. The union represents 2,500 technicians, camera operators, news writers and other employees New York City, Washington, D.C. Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Maine Regulators Refuse to Be Rushed into FairPoint Sale

A last minute scramble by Verizon Communications – and nearly half a billion dollars in concessions from Verizon and FairPoint Commuications – couldn’t stampede Maine regulators into accepting a settlement without additional review.

The Maine Public Utilities Commission has set a December 20 hearing date to determine whether and how to address the “partial, contested” settlement in the sale of Verizon Communications operations to FairPoint Communications.

CWA and the IBEW continue to oppose the sale and commended regulators for not participating in a rush to judgment.  

The unions maintain that the proposed deal does not even come close to the recommendations made by the PUC’s Hearing Examiner. Despite the concessions, Maine residents still will be left with a financially risky company without sufficient resources to improve service quality and expand high speed broadband.  The amount of the concessions, though insufficient, shows that even the companies have been forced to recognize FairPoint’s financial weakness and proves that they have been caught in their attempt to pull a fast one on the regulators in the three states, the unions said.

Verizon is seeking to sell its operations in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire to
financially strapped FairPoint Communications in order to take advantage of an arcane tax loophole that would give Verizon with a $600 million tax break. Decisions in New Hampshire and Vermont also are expected by the end of the year.

World Unions Meet to Develop Global Fight for Bargaining Rights

An unprecedented global forum brought 200 union leaders from around the world to Washington, D.C., for strategy sessions on how to strengthen global bargaining and organizing rights. Over the two-day conference, union leaders shared information on the status of labor in their countries and agreed to chart improved and declining collective bargaining density, especially as it is linked to political action.

CWA President Larry Cohen was the driving force behind the forum, stressing the need to focus worldwide attention on the loss of collective bargaining rights in the U.S. Union leaders from 63 countries and 10 international labor federations joined the event.  

The meeting was held to coincide with International Human Rights Day, December 10, when 59 years ago, the United Nations and Eleanor Roosevelt declared that workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively are human rights.

At the news briefing, Cohen pointed out that in 1948, the United States led the world in democratic rights – both political and workplace – and 35 percent of U.S. workers in the private sector were covered by collective bargaining, the highest rate in the world at that time.

"Today, with less than 8 percent of private sector workers organized, the United States is nearly at the bottom of the nations of the world," he said. This drop to the bottom has resulted from "a concentrated and lengthy attack on workers' rights by corporate and political interests that want to consolidate their own power at the expense of U.S. working and middle class families," he said.  See charts at www.cwa-union.org/source.

The gathering made clear that the rate of collective bargaining coverage in every industrial nation is substantially higher than that in the U.S., from 35 percent in Britain to more than 95 percent in France. But even developing nations are leaving the United States behind, said John Logan, who teaches at the London School of Economics. He cited collective bargaining coverage in such countries as Brazil, with 30 percent, South Africa with 40 percent, and even Indonesia, where 20 percent of workers now have collective bargaining, as evidence that the United States is going in the wrong direction.   

Sharan Burrow, head of the International Trade Union Confederation and president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, said working people can successfully take back their rights and their government, as Australian workers did in the recent national elections there. "Respect, dignity, economic rights, these are the issues that resonate with working people," she said.

John Lindner, a Verizon Business technician in New York, told lawmakers and labor leaders about the on-going struggle of his colleagues to gain their union. "In most other democracies around the world, majority support for the union would be enough. We'd have our union. But not in the United States and not at Verizon," he said. Lindner served two tours of duty -- in Iraq and Afghanistan – answering his country's call to protect our freedom, he said. "But when I returned home, I found that my freedom to join a union is being denied."   

At the forum, CWA announced the formation of the T-Workers Union, a joint organization with Ver.di, which represents workers at Deutsche Telekom, to fight for bargaining and organizing rights for workers at T-Mobile on both sides of the Atlantic.

T-Mobile, a Deutche Telekom subsidiary in the United States, has repeatedly fought workers' efforts to gain a union voice. CWA will help T-Mobile employees join the T-Workers Union; they will become members of both CWA and Ver.di which will bargain on their behalf with the parent company.

On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.); Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio); Paul Sarbanes (D-Maryland); Representatives George Miller (D-Calif.); Rob Andrews (D-N.J.); Lynn Woolsey, (D-Calif.) and others joined the congressional forum and talked about efforts to make the Employee Free Choice Act the law of the land. The measure passed the House by a strong margin and won majority support in the Senate, though not enough to cut off the debate and move to final passage.

In Historic Meeting, AT&T Units Strategize for Bargaining

Voice, data, video and wireless – it's a far different AT&T than in 1984, when a court-ordered divestiture broke up the telephone system. Now AT&T is the largest unionized private sector employer in the country.

In a historic, first-ever bargaining unit meeting 16 months in advance of 2009 negotiations, some 350 CWA local leaders, staff and Retired Members Council representatives met in St. Louis from Dec. 9-11 to discuss the challenges of the restructured industry and get a jump on bargaining strategy.

"One of the most positive steps we can take is to get health care off the bargaining table," said CWA President Larry Cohen, "and we do that by electing a president, representatives and senators who are committed to affordable, quality health care for all Americans."

District 7 Vice President Annie Hill outlined CWA's strategic health care campaign which also will become the foundation of CWA's political action effort for 2008.  

CWA Executive Vice President Jeff Rechenbach, who head's CWA's telecom office, noted that, "For the first time in a generation we are looking at the overall scope of the work we have to do, trying to put ourselves in the position of acting strategically instead of always reacting to what our employers do, in this case, AT&T."

He reported on a recent meeting of CWA vice presidents with telecom responsibilities and outlined plans for a Strategic Industry Fund proposal to help build a powerful stewards army within the AT&T ranks "that will be ready to take advantage of the very best weapon we have in our arsenal, the ability to do the unexpected."

Vice Presidents Chris Shelton, District 1; Noah Savant, District 3; Seth Rosen, District 4; Andy Milburn, District 6; Tony Bixler, District 9; Ralph Maly, C&T and Pete Catucci's Administrative Director Ron Collins, District 2, also attended the St. Louis meeting.

In addition to discussing local issues in bargaining unit sessions, CWA leaders got an overview of the overall bargaining climate and AT&T's position in a changing industry.

The AT&T Mobility (formerly Cingular Wireless) contract in District 6 expires in February 2008. The agreements for AT&T Mobility "Orange Contract" (Districts 1, 2, 4, 7, 9 and 13) expire in February 2009, Southern New England Telephone, Midwest, Southwest, Pacific and Legacy "T" expire in April 2009 and the (former) Bell South agreement expires in August 2009.

Early Verizon Talks Break Off Over Onerous Medical Proposal

On December 12, CWA Vice President Chris Shelton, District 1, officially notified Verizon Communications that CWA was breaking off early negotiations on behalf of all CWA and IBEW teams.

The company had sought early talks for the contract covering some 55,000 CWA members at Verizon "East" that expires next August.

Vice Presidents Shelton, Pete Catucci, District 2, and Jim Short, District 13, who are leading the negotiations for CWA, indicated that Verizon's demands for changes in medical benefits simply were too onerous.

The CWA bargaining teams want to negotiate a fair and equitable contract and are available to listen to and discuss reasonable proposals, but would be unable to agree to the retrogressive and extreme demands Verizon has put forward.

Senate Races in 2008 Key to Winning Employee Free Choice Act

With a number of strong pro-worker candidates running for the U.S. Senate next year, a breakthrough in labor's efforts to make the Employee Free Choice Act the law of the land is in reach.

"We passed the Employee Free Choice Act in the House of Representatives and won 51 votes in the Senate, but we fell short because a majority vote in the Senate isn't enough in our democracy," said CWA President Larry Cohen.

"In the 2006 elections, CWA and other unions laid the groundwork to gain a pro-working family majority in both houses of Congress. In Election 2008, the stakes are higher than ever. We know that our work can make a real difference, it's up to us to make it happen," Cohen said.

There currently are 52 votes in the Senate of the 60 votes that are needed to cut off extended debate and move to a final vote on the measure. There is a good chance that Democrats who support the Employee Free Choice Act can be elected in seven or more states.

In New Hampshire, former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen is considered a strong candidate to beat Republican Sen. John Sununu, who won the seat in 2002. Shaheen has pledged her support for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would help rebuild America's middle class by restoring workers' badly eroded rights to organize unions and bargain contracts.

The work that CWAers did this year to help elect Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear has put the Senate seat of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in reach as well. Other states where labor can make a real difference are Alaska, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, Alaska and Virginia.

Cohen said any congressional candidate who wants support from CWA members must pledge to support the Employee Free Choice Act. "We want legislators to make the connection between what's happening to workers' bargaining rights and the need to rebuild the middle class," he said.

The Democratic National Committee, at the urging of Cohen and CWA Secretary-Treasurer Barbara J. Easterling, passed a resolution calling on Congress and any new Democratic administration to make the Employee Free Choice Act a top priority in 2009. Easterling is a member of the resolution committee.

With 60 votes in the Senate, a continuing pro-worker majority in the U.S. House – where the bill passed by a wide margin last spring -- and a Democratic president, the Employee Free Choice Act could become law as early as 2009, Cohen said.

IN BRIEF:

  • General Motors is playing Scrooge in a big way this holiday season, at least in the eyes of its 25,000 GM/Delphi IUE-CWA retirees, by refusing to provide their "Christmas Bonus"  The bonus actually is a lump sum payment provided in December and is used by many IUE-CWA retirees to buy Christmas and holiday gifts for their families. 

    IUE-CWA has been negotiating with GM since early October for a new contract covering 2,500 workers at the Moraine,     Ohio, SUV assembly plant. GM has told IUE-CWA that it will not pay the lump sum payment to retirees until an agreement has been reached. 

    President Jim Clark of IUE-CWA said GM's decision was shameful, especially coming in the weeks just before Christmas.  "I am very disappointed in GM's decision to withhold the Christmas lump sum payment to thousands of retirees. These retired workers, who live on a fixed income, count every dollar, especially in today's economy with gasoline, oil and food prices skyrocketing. To deprive them of the ability to purchase Christmas and holiday gifts for their families is unconscionable and GM must answer for this shameful act."

    "Unfortunately, our retirees won't be receiving their regular bonus in time for Christmas this year and we want to be very clear: The union negotiators are not the Grinch Who Stole Christmas," he added. 

    A key bargaining issue is GM's refusal so far to indicate a new product for the production plant, despite the commitment made last year by the automaker to do so.

  • You're a mean one, Verizon Business. But are you the meanest?

    CWA members can help decide by voting in Jobs with Justice's annual "Grinch of the Year" contest, which pits five of the meanest, greediest employers – as nominated by visitors to the JwJ website -- against each other.

    The four other candidates are American Airlines, Burger King, the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers and pork slaughterhouse     Smithfield. You can read the reasons why they're nominated, and cast your vote, at www.jwj.org.

    As for Verizon Business, JwJ says in recent years parent company Verizon "has distinguished itself as one of the Grinchiest companies on earth." But JwJ says the behavior of Verizon Business is adding insult to injury with its refusal to honor its workers' right to form a union after a majority signed cards in favor. The company's nasty campaign has led to NLRB complaints for spying on workers and suppressing free speech, among other violations.

  • NABET-CWA technicians at CNN are finally getting their day in court some three years after the network tore up the workers' union contracts. 

    About 350 field camera crew and technical workers in CNN's     New York and Washington, D.C. news bureaus are making their case in an NLRB-ordered trial before an administrative law judge in Washington, D.C. The trial began in late November and will move to New York early next year to gather testimony from NABET-CWA techs there. NABET-CWA is asking the court to order CNN to restore the workers' previous contracts, recognize and bargain with their union, and reinstate techs – with back pay -- who had been terminated at the two news bureaus in 2003 and 2004.

    CNN's union-busting began when the cable network dropped its long-standing contractual relationship with Team Video Services, whose NABET-CWA represented workers provided technical work for CNN. After moving the operation in house, CNN rehired some TVS workers, but to get rid of the union and its responsibility to bargain with NABET-CWA, CNN mainly packed its D.C. and N.Y. bureau with non-union technicians.

    Declaring that the workers no longer had union representation, CNN immediately slashed wages, benefits and working conditions and protections. In ordering the trial, the NLRB said the network's actions violated its obligation to recognize and bargain with NABET-CWA.

    "We've waited more than three years," but "these workers finally have their day in court," said NABET-CWA President John Clark. "With our nation's broken labor laws, justice can take a long time, but we're standing firmly behind the CNN technicians," he said.