April 2, 2009

• West Wing Stars Help Shine Media Spotlight on Employee Free Choice
• Taking on the Union Busters
• AT&T Contracts Near Expiration
• Contract Down to Wire at AT&T East Yellow Pages
• AT&T Mobility Contract Ratified 
• Employee Free Choice Builds on Legacy of MLK, Civil Rights Leaders Say
• IBM Cuts 1,400 Jobs One Day After Promising To 'Invest in Our People'
• Blue Green Alliance Backs Job Creating Climate Change Legislation

West Wing Stars Help Shine Media Spotlight on Employee Free Choice

Actor Martin Sheen and two costars from TV's "The West Wing" joined with CWA members and other workers at a March 31 news conference on Capitol Hill to push for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

As giant banners of CWA members and other workers fighting for the Employee Free Choice Act were unveiled in Washington, D.C., and on mobile billboards throughout the country March 31, three dedicated activists who played fictional politicians on TV came to Capitol Hill to give the bill their strongest endorsement.

Martin Sheen, who played President Jeb Bartlett in The West Wing was accompanied by costars Richard Schiff and Bradley Whitford, a board member of American Rights at Work. The actors joined with embattled workers for a news conference hosted by ARAW and then met with lawmakers.

"This issue boils down to a simple fact: It is a fundamental right in this country for workers to be able to join unions and to bargain collectively," Whitford said. "Unfortunately, as these workers will tell you, this is often not the case. Without the protections provided by the Employee Free Choice Act, workers looking to join unions are subject to harassment, disinformation and dismissal because of a system that is exploited by and stacked in favor of management."

CWA members Joe Bordelon, a security company worker in Louisiana, and Sara Steffens, a California Bay Area newspaper reporter who was fired after organizing a TNG-CWA unit, told their stories at the news conference on Capitol Hill.

"The Employee Free Choice Act would make a real difference," Bordelon said in describing the struggle he and his coworkers went through to organize. "I am here today because I don't think it's fair for any other worker to have to suffer the kind of delays that we did."

Bordelon, of Local 3403, is featured on one of the 50-foot-high banners hanging from union and allies' buildings in Washington, D.C. Chinazo Okolo, also of Local 3403, is featured on the east side of the CWA building. Steffens' image is on the south side of the AFL-CIO building facing the White House.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) joined the workers and actors for the news conference, saying Employee Free Choice is an essential part of helping America's working families recover from the recession and from years of stagnating wages. "We're losing the middle class and when we lose the middle class, we're losing America," Boxer said.

Taking on the Union Busters

In an Employee Free Choice debate, CWA Secretary-Treasurer Jeff Rechenbach will go head-to-head tonight with an attorney from a union-busting law firm.

The program will air on the CBS radio network in Philadelphia.

If you're in the Philadelphia area, tune in at 7 pm to WPHT 1210 am for the two-hour program. And call in to support Employee Free Choice, at 610-664-1210.

AT&T Contracts Near Expiration

AT&T locals across the country have been mobilizing for fair contracts. Pictured are District 7 locals marching in Denver and a young supporter from Local 2204.

Backed by an active mobilization campaign underway in every CWA district, CWA bargainers are working down to the wire to reach new agreements with AT&T prior to contract expiration at midnight on Saturday morning, April 4.

CWA members are calling on the company to bargain fair contracts with real employment security, including access for employees to the jobs of the future, and not cut benefits for workers and retirees.

The negotiations cover some 125,000 employees at AT&T East (formerly SNET), AT&T Southeast (formerly BellSouth), AT&T Midwest (formerly Ameritech), AT&T Southwest, AT&T West (formerly PacBell) and AT&T Legacy, a nationwide unit. The contracts, with the exception of AT&T Southeast, expire on April 4. The AT&T Southeast agreement expires Aug. 8. For the latest in mobilization actions, go to www.cwa-att.com.

Last week, 88 percent of voting CWA members at AT&T voted to authorize a strike if negotiations fail to produce quality contracts. Strike action could take place at any or all of the AT&T operations once the union's executive board authorizes the action and the CWA president sets a date.

CWA members at AT&T are coming with up with unique ways to support bargaining. Husband and wife Ray and Rachael Rodriquez, both AT&Ters and members of CWA Local 6222, Houston, Texas, wrote the lyrics for a great rap mobilization audio (a colleague added the voice) that's now posted on CWA's AT&T mobilization website www.cwa-union.org/att. Click here to listen.  "What inspired us was the workers we represent, especially AT&T's U-Verse techs," said Ray, a union steward and AT&T mobilization coordinator. "This is why it's One Union, One Fight, One Future."

Contract Down to Wire at AT&T East Yellow Pages 

Members of CWA Local 1298 at AT&T East Yellow Pages in Connecticut voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if a fair contract can't be reached.

The Yellow Pages contract, covering about 300 workers in Connecticut, is set to expire Apr. 4, the same day as five of the six AT&T core contracts.  

AT&T East Yellow Pages is a profitable company, generating $5.5 billion in revenue last year. Skilled, experienced and dedicated employees make those profits possible, said Pat Telesco, CWA staff representative and bargaining chair.

CWA is looking for salary increases and changes in the commission plan for sales reps, and a fair wage increase for other workers whose productivity gains have made AT&T East Yellow Pages successful. Other critical issues are health care and employment security.

AT&T Mobility Contract Ratified

CWA members covered by the AT&T Mobility "Orange" contract ratified a new four-year agreement. The contract broke new ground, especially in the areas of compensation for retail store workers and expanding career opportunity in customer service, two top priorities for Mobility members, said CWA Executive Vice President Annie Hill.

The proposed settlement provides for a compounded wage increase of 8.8 percent over the four-year contract term, along with a $500 bonus. More than 11,000 retail sales consultants now will earn a minimum monthly commission of $1,000 if targeted sales goals are met. In addition, some 500 consumer care workers will receive job upgrades and additional pay increases, as will 50-70 wireless technicians. Other important improvements addressed monitoring and quota relief.

Mobilization by Mobility workers throughout the Orange territory – Districts 1, 2, 4, 7, 9 and 13 – made a tremendous difference as did support from CWA Mobility members in the Southeast and Southwest covered by separate contracts and CWA members at the core AT&T company.

Employee Free Choice Builds on Legacy of MLK, Civil Rights Leaders Say

The Employee Free Choice Act builds on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights pioneers and has the strongest possible support from those still fighting for justice today, national civil rights leaders said Thursday.

"The Employee Free Choice Act has been largely written about as a labor bill but those of us in the civil rights community know it is so much more -- workers' rights are civil rights and that the right to organize is a civil and human rights issue of the first magnitude," said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which hosted a telephone news conference Thursday.

The call was held two days before the 41st anniversary of the death of King, who was assassinated April 4, 1968, while he was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers.

"He was fighting for working people and poor people when he was killed," said Benjamin Jealous, president of the NAACP. Today, he said, King's fight would be for Employee Free Choice.

Jealous said the bill is critical to the economy as a whole. "When we know that working people are spending every dollar they bring home and then some, more money in the pockets of working people is good for the entire country," he said. "We are throwing in our full support and we have asked (NAACP) members across the country to weigh in with their representatives. We feel confident that as the full depth of support for the Employee Free Choice Act becomes known, we will see it passed."

Henderson said statistics prove that African Americans who are union members are doing far better economically than those without unions.

"The fact is African American union members earn 28 percent more than their nonunion counterparts. The fact is African American union members are about 16 percent more likely to have health insurance than nonunion workers. And the fact is African American union members are about 19 percent more likely to have a pension than nonunion workers," Henderson said. "As A. Philip Randolph used to say, the two tickets for full equality for African Americans have been the voter registration card and the union card."

IBM Cuts 1,400 Jobs One Day After Promising To 'Invest in Our People'

If a contest were held to determine the most hypocritical behavior by a U.S. corporation, IBM and CEO Sam Palmisano would probably win top prize.   

In January, one day after Palmisano told employees that the company "would invest in our people" and not resort to job cuts, IBM terminated 1,400 employees from its U.S. based sales and distribution division. No official announcement of the layoffs was made, and over the past two months, IBM has been continuing its "stealth" job cut campaign.  

IBM has been quietly reducing the size of its U.S. workforce while increasing overseas hiring. Total global employment at IBM from 2007 to 2008 grew by 12,000 (to 398,000), but the company's U.S. workforce has shrunk by more than 11,000 during the same period, dropping to 115,000.

Yet IBM is hoping for a multi-billion dollar handout from the federal economic recovery program.

"We're outraged that IBM has its hand out for taxpayer-supplied stimulus money at same time that it's cutting U.S. jobs and shifting more of its workforce overseas," says Lee Conrad, national coordinator for Alliance@IBM/CWA Local 1701. The Alliance, which has been tracking the cutbacks based on reports from workers and other sources, estimates that the company will cut the jobs of as many as 10,000 workers this spring.

IBM has been careful not to terminate more than 499 workers at any one location, which would trigger a federally-mandated 60-day notice to employees under the WARN Act.

The company posted strong profits for the last quarter of 2008 and has hired some 51,000 workers worldwide this year alone, the Alliance said. Just 3,500 of those jobs were in the United States; more than 90 percent of the 48,000 workers that IBM has hired overseas are in the poorest, lowest-wage countries, led by India, with 19,000 workers.

In another display of hypocrisy, IBM sought to blunt criticism of outsourcing so many jobs by offering to pay expenses for displaced IBM workers in the United States who move to India and other developing countries where IBM is hiring. "In exchange for agreeing to work for the company in India," says Conrad, "they would have to work at the prevailing wage in India."

Laid off IBM employees are angry, Conrad said. "Many long-time employees are now telling us that their last job at the company is training their foreign-based replacement."

Alliance@IBM is the sole source for tracking the company's U.S. job cuts, relying on reports from IBMers around the country. CWA also is working with members of Congress on legislation requiring companies to be transparent about job cuts and offshoring. For more information on the campaign, go to www.allianceibm.org.

Blue Green Alliance Backs Job Creating Climate Change Legislation

CWA, with labor and environmental groups -- all members of the Blue Green Alliance – came together to support comprehensive "cap-and-trade" climate change legislation as an effective way to put millions of people back to work while bringing about a cleaner economy.

IUE-CWA President Jim Clark said the legislation would help steer the country in the right direction. "Meeting the challenge to tackle climate change will allow us to build a clean energy economy right here in the United States." Making parts for wind and solar power and fuel-efficient vehicles is just the beginning for quality, green jobs, he said. 

Other members of Blue Green Alliance are the United Steel Workers, Laborers' International Union, Service Employees International Union, the Sierra Group and the National Resources Defense Council.

The Alliance supports "cap and trade" pollution standards to reduce U.S. emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050 as well as other regulations, including standards for renewable, energy efficiency resources and fuel and appliance efficiency.

Any climate change legislation must address critical issues such as job losses from international competition and rising energy costs for low- and moderate-income families, the Alliance stressed.