| October
20, 2006
A definition of Strategic Industry Fund campaigns along
with rules for development, budgeting and oversight of SIF
campaigns has been posted on the Ready for the Future website,
www.cwa-union.org/future.
Also posted on the site, under "CWA Goals: Fighting for
CWA Families," is a listing of goals addressing a range of
challenges and issues affecting every union sector.
The Executive Board currently is discussing several ideas
for possible SIF campaigns. One of these is a plan of "Total
Engagement with Verizon," which was the subject of a recent
conference call led by CWA top officers with Verizon local
leaders.
Locals are being asked to review a draft mobilization plan
at Verizon and to submit their suggestions for a sustained
campaign to change Verizon's anti-union attitude at Wireless,
Verizon Business and Verizon Information Systems and build CWA
bargaining power leading up to 2008 negotiations.
A Verizon technician in Maryland died Monday, Oct. 16, when
he made contact with electrical wires on a shared utility
pole, the company's third electrocution death in five
months.
Marvin Benson, a member of CWA Local 2100, was electrocuted
while working in an aerial bucket attempting to place fiber
optic cable near Baltimore-Washington International Airport.
The accident sent electricity through the bucket and to the
truck, where the tires caught fire and fuses blew with a
second technician trapped inside.
Dave LeGrande, CWA safety and health director, said a third
technician outside the truck yelled at the trapped man not to
touch anything, and he managed to escape without injury once
the electricity burned itself out.
District 2 Vice President Pete Catucci said Benson's death
"is a terrible tragedy which must not be repeated. While we
don't know precisely what caused it, we will be sitting down
with the company to discuss a variety of safety and training
issues."
Benson, 36, had worked for Verizon for about two years. In
June, an IBEW member working for Verizon was killed in a
similar accident in Rhode Island. In May, a CWA member in
Elkhart, Ind., 35-year-old Brent Cheney, was electrocuted
while working on the office mainframe trying to detect a
customer's cable problem.
The Maryland incident is being investigated by the state's
Occupational Safety and Health department, as well as by
Verizon. Local 2100 Executive Vice President Mark Balsamo went
to the site with company investigators and is monitoring their
probe.
LeGrande's office recently surveyed locals about injury,
fatality and near-miss incidents and is continuing to ask
locals to report accidents and close calls to headquarters. A
fact sheet is being prepared for all CWA technicians detailing
the accidents and how to avoid safety hazards.
Bylines have returned to York, Pennsylvania's, newspapers,
workers can wear union shirts and buttons again and the
company has sworn to bargain in good faith from now on under a
sweeping agreement settling a long list of National Labor
Relations Board charges against MediaNews Group.
The settlement averted a trial scheduled for Oct. 31 on two
NLRB complaints that consolidated the many charges filed by
The Newspaper Guild-CWA Local 38218. The Guild, which
represents about 55 workers at the York Daily Record and
another nine at the York Sunday News, has been fighting for a
fair contract for more than a year. Their last contract
expired Sept. 30, 2005.
Wayne Gold, the NLRB regional director handling the case,
told the Daily Record in its own story covering the settlement
that, "The union got everything they would have gotten if they
would have won in a trial."
Tactics employed by Denver-based MediaNews and its
anti-union lawyers included withholding bylines and photo
credits of union members to try to force them to accept the
company's terms. Management also barred workers from wearing
or displaying any union insignias and declared that employees
couldn't talk about the union at work.
Under the settlement, the company didn't admit guilt but
agreed to change its behavior with regard to every charge
filed. For instance, MediaNews said it "will not refuse to
bargain in good faith," "will not fail to arbitrate
grievances," and "will rescind all rules and policies that
prohibit employees from discussing matters related to the
union" during work hours.
Additionally, the company had tried to make contract talks
especially difficult by scheduling them during work hours,
then refusing to allow union members on the bargaining team to
take unpaid leave to attend. The company has agreed to unpaid
leave or more convenient scheduling for the ongoing talks and
will restore all of the vacation or personal days that union
members were forced to take to participate in earlier
bargaining sessions.
"In this settlement, the NLRB came down squarely on the
side of working people and collective bargaining, TNG-CWA
President Linda Foley said. "The NLRB regional office in
Baltimore issued two strong complaints and then got MediaNews
to understand it needed to reach a settlement. Now it's time
for MediaNews to bargain in good faith and reach a
contract."
As part of CWA's Speed Matters campaign, the union is
promoting the Internet speed test feature on its
http://www.speedmatters.org/
site, which will collect nationwide data on actual download
and upload speeds in each region by zip code.
You can check your own Internet service speed at the site
and then click on the "Tell Your Friends" button to spread the
word about SpeedMatters.org. The data we gather from the
speed test will be used with elected officials and regulators
in promoting the need for public policy to spur the rollout of
truly high speed network services.
The site also features a regularly updated blog with news
about broadband applications such as the growing practice of
tele-psychiatry, and issues like "rural red-lining." A
posting this week by Mike Day of CWA Local 1400 describes
CWA's participation in a public hearing in Vermont on
Verizon's plan to sell its local phone business in upper New
England. CWA members and others stressed that economic growth
and job creation depend on modern communications, and rural
states will be left behind unless politicians take action.
Also new at SpeedMatters.org are a new brochure summarizing
CWA's key principles and policy recommendations for high speed
services as well as a lengthier policy paper. These and
other materials can be downloaded for local leaders and
activists to use in promoting Speed Matters with policy
makers.
With less than three weeks until Election Day, CWA locals
across the country are stepping up efforts to elect a
worker-friendly Congress as well as state and local leaders
that put working families first.
"Collectively, we are reaching tens of thousands of voters,
and those are the kind of numbers that can make all the
difference come Election Day," CWA President Larry Cohen said.
"The work our members are doing on their weekends and evenings
is literally of historic importance."
Here's a sampling of CWA activities leading to the Nov. 7
election:
- Local 6320 members in St. Louis, Mo., spent eight nights
this month calling more than 7,300 phone numbers for CWA
households, leaving messages at many but making direct
contact with hundreds of members and retirees. The local is
also participating in the AFL-CIO's labor walks and will
make another round of phones calls the week before the
election.
- District 4 members from six locals leafleted downtown
Cleveland on Oct. 16 for U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod Brown
and governor's candidate Ted Strickland. Scores of CWA
members are taking part in labor walks and phone banks for
Ohio's candidates and worker-friendly governors and U.S.
House members in states throughout the district. Michigan
Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat running for reelection,
visited CWA members at a phone bank Monday night, thanking
them for their hard work.
- In Nevada, CWA locals are eagerly supporting Jack
Carter, son of President Jimmy Carter, for the U.S. Senate.
Locals are taking part in regular phone banks and precinct
walks.
- District 7 locals in Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado, New
Mexico, Arizona, Oregon and Washington have loaned staff to
the AFL-CIO for fulltime political work. In addition to
federal races, the district is hugely focused on the state
houses in Arizona and Colorado, hoping to match Democratic
governors with a veto-proof majority in each chamber in
order to pursue collective bargaining bills for public
workers in both states. District 7 boasts that CWA has more
people taking part in labor walks in Colorado than any other
union in the state.
- CWA Headquarters employees are joining local union
activists in the Washington, D.C. area in staffing phone
banks and knocking on doors for candidates in key Senate
races in Virginia and Maryland.
- In New York, between seven competitive races for
Congress and Democrat Eliot Spitzer's campaign for governor,
union members are especially busy. Thirteen phone banks are
set up throughout the state, literature about issues and
candidates is being distributed at CWA worksites and members
are going door to door at union households.
- A half-dozen New Jersey locals have turned out more than
100 members for labor walks in their state.
In addition to the enormous amount of volunteer work,
locals have provided COPE funding for candidates and some made
officers and staff available to work part-time on
campaigns.
The CWA News staff reminds locals that photographs are an
essential part of election coverage. Please make sure to
assign someone to take pictures of your members as they work
phone banks, knock on doors, participate in rallies or take
part in other campaign activities.
- U.S. and Indian call center workers share
concerns over job pressures, work standards, organizing
rights and other issues, according to the first-ever study
of call center conditions in the two countries, released
this week by CWA, Jobs with Justice and two labor groups in
India.
In a teleconference with reporters to
announce the joint report, District 7 Vice President Annie
Hill highlighted CWA's work with organizations in India and
unions around the world through UNI Telecom to improve
conditions for call center workers, stressing that "low
road" employers everywhere undermine both job standards and
workers' ability to help customers.
"The trend by
some companies to contract out customer service work,
whether to a U.S.-based contractor or an offshore
contractor, is not the answer. It leaves a shell
company with principal functions done elsewhere, and can
leave customer service without accountability," she
said.
The full report, "A Bi-National Perspective on
Offshore Outsourcing," is online at
http://www.cwa-union.org/
under What's Hot.
- If you've received a
solicitation from Texas-based Union Workers Credit Services,
tear it up. There's no union involved, Union Privilege is
warning people.
At least 5 million
people have been solicited by the company, which gives the
impression that it is offering them a credit card. Despite
its name, the company has no ties to any union or the
AFL-CIO.
Unions have received many complaints from
members about the solicitations and the Fort Worth Better
Business Bureau has logged 166 complaints. The bureau's
president said it appears the firm is targeting people with
a history of credit problems, luring them with the
appearance of a credit card offer.
Instead, people
who sign up pay $37 for a catalog of products and a paper
card that can only be used to buy items from the
catalog.
- Want to know how often your senator or
representative has voted with President Bush and against the
interests of working Americans? A nonpartisan website can
tell you in a matter of seconds.
The site,
Hillmonitor.com, ranks Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) as voting
with Bush more than any other senator — 73 times, rejecting
only one Bush bill. But the usual suspects, including George
Allen (R-Va.) and Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), are right on his
heels.
In the U.S. House, Speaker Dennis Hastert
(R-Ill.) and Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), lead the packing,
voting with Bush 100 percent of the time.
The site
has a wide rage of information about how members of Congress
voted and their attendance records. To go straight to the
list ranking the votes with Bush, go to
http://www.hillmonitor.com/, click
on either the House or Senate seal, click on "See rankings
at a glance" on the list that appears, then click "Frequency
of voting with the president." |
