| December
1, 2006
CWAers packed a news conference at the New Jersey
Statehouse on Nov. 27, calling on the state legislature to let
the collective bargaining process work and not to impose cuts
in pensions, health care and other benefits for public
workers.
CWA President Larry Cohen, CWA District 1 Vice President
Chris Shelton and other union leaders there were joined by 13
state legislators who agreed that collective bargaining should
be allowed to work.
"We will bargain our future, we will negotiate our future,
but we will not have the legislature or this governor dictate
the future to hundreds of thousands of state workers," Cohen
said.
Shelton stressed that CWA members were "fighting to protect
a middle-class standard of living, with a measure of health
care and retirement security."
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, International Federation of
Professional and Technical Engineers President Greg Junemann
and American Federation of Teachers President Ed McElroy
joined Cohen in publicly calling on state legislators to
respect public workers and collective bargaining rights.
"For nearly 30 years, during Democratic and Republican
administrations, changes in pensions, health care and other
benefits have been negotiated along with pay raises, pay
freezes and employment security issues. Collective bargaining
simply cannot work if issues can be removed from bargaining at
any time," they said in a joint statement.
"In New Jersey, as in every state and community today,
public services, budget and taxes are key concerns. But we —
the leading voices for workers and workers' rights — will not
sit by and watch New Jersey public workers be scapegoated. New
Jersey is the richest state in the country. That means we all
should aim higher, not lower, in terms of providing the
quality services that residents deserve, resolving issues of
tax fairness and ensuring that workers' rights are honored for
public and private sector workers."
CWA public workers spent their lunch hours on Nov. 30
leafleting outside public offices. A giant solidarity rally is
planned for Dec. 11 in Trenton, with public worker union
members throughout the state planning to attend.
A state legislative committee has recommended cutbacks and
changes to public worker benefits.
Nearly 400 CWA members rallied in front of St. Joseph's
Hospital in Cheektowaga, N.Y., on Nov. 30 to fight a state
commission's recommendation to close at least three major
hospitals in the Buffalo area.
"There are almost 4,000 CWA members at risk," said Local
1168 President John Klein. If the commission's recommendations
go forward, "they will create a situation of chaos for health
care in Western New York."
Though their members are not directly affected by the
closings, CWA Locals 1133 and 1122, which also represent
health care workers, lent support to the rally along with
other CWA locals in the region.
"The turnout was really fantastic for only two days of
work; it was less than 48 hours after the announcement," Klein
said.
He was referring to the release on Nov. 28 of a
long-awaited report by the state Commission on Health Care
Facilities in the 21st Century. The commission recommended
closing nine hospitals across the state, including at least
three in the Buffalo area: St. Joseph's, operated by the
Catholic Health System, and Millard Fillmore and DeGraff, both
Kaleida facilities. Two other facilities employing CWA members
may be merged in some fashion, Klein said.
The Legislature has until Dec. 31 to reject the
commission's recommendations. If no vote is taken, Klein said,
the report will automatically be adopted. Catholic Health has
already sued the commission and Kaleida also has promised to
fight the closings.
Other CWA rallies are scheduled at Millard Fillmore and
DeGraff. The local is circulating petitions and
encouraging people to write their legislators and, Klein said,
next week the union will provide cell phones or laptops for
hospital employees to contact legislators on their way to and
from work.
CWA's message to the community is that the closings will
jeopardize health care in the region and be a special burden
for elderly patients who would have to travel greater
distances to receive treatment.
"I have a love for this facility and for this community
because I grew up" here, Sharon Lopacki, an RN at DeGraff,
told the Buffalo News. Lopacki was born at DeGraff, gave birth
there and has worked at the facility for 32 years. "I
have patients who look forward to seeing me. They keep coming
back," she said.
Negotiations focused on job security and benefits continued
this week at Philadelphia's two daily newspapers for contracts
covering TNG-CWA and CWA Printing Sector members and other
union workers. The papers' new owner has demanded drastic
concessions and has threatened major job cuts.
Meanwhile, TNG-CWAers and other union members continued
their preparation for the nationwide Dec. 11 "Day of Action,"
when news industry employees will spotlight the growing
corporate attack on jobs and resources needed to ensure
quality journalism.
The goal is to enlist public support to safeguard the
quality and diversity of news coverage that readers now depend
on, and turn around a corporate focus on building profits at
the expense of community news coverage.
TNG-CWA has launched a new web site,
http://www.savejournalism.org/ with
information about the jobs that have been lost and the effects
these cutbacks have on quality news. The site also will
include updates about actions planned for Dec. 11 and other
developments in the news industry.
Also on Dec. 11, the Federal Communications Commission will
hold its second public hearing on media ownership issues in
Nashville, Tenn., and TNG-CWA members from several locals will
be out in force, speaking out against allowing corporations to
own more media outlets, a change the FCC is considering. At
the first FCC hearing in Los Angeles, more than 1,000 people
turned out to express overwhelming opposition to the changes
that would harm journalism, readers and communities.
CWA members at Cincinnati Bell are protesting layoffs that
have eliminated entire departments as the company turns to
outsourced labor (click
here to view photo story).
The company, which serves Cincinnati and parts of Kentucky
and Indiana, offered to spare the jobs only if Locals 4400 and
4401 would accept drastic concessions in virtually every area
of their contract. The two locals represent 1,400 Cincinnati
Bell employees.
"We negotiated for several months in trying to keep these
jobs rather than the company outsourcing them, but what they
wanted was concessions far more extreme than we were willing
to accept," CWA Representative Henley Johns said. "They wanted
cuts in health care, hourly wages, pensions, overtime — you
name it."
Departments being outsourced include fleet, mail room,
purchasing, business collections and the data center. So far,
45 people have lost their jobs, about a third of the total to
be laid off.
About 200 CWA members protested recently outside Cincinnati
Bell headquarters the day of the first round of layoffs. Some
noted the irony of their situation in interviews with the
Cincinnati Enquirer, citing the Bell company's $22 million
profit in the third quarter and the $1.6 million it paid in
bonuses to its five top officers.
Johns said the company's action doesn't violate the letter
of the union contract. But he said CWA members aren't
letting the company off the hook. The locals plan ongoing
protests continuing right into 2008 as CWA gets ready for
bargaining.
A past chairman of the National Labor Relations Board is
urging the newly empowered Democratic leaders in Congress to
make labor law reform a priority, saying the badly broken
system demands sweeping changes to protect workers.
"The denial of collective bargaining to the overwhelming
majority of the American workforce is one of our democracy's
great failings," William Gould IV wrote in an op-ed column,
published last week in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Gould, a law professor emeritus at Stanford and chairman of
the NLRB during the Clinton administration, said the board has
been plagued by delays and inadequate remedies for 35 years.
But he said the change in attitudes toward workers during the
Bush administration "takes it up more than a notch."
He said that's most recently illustrated by the Sept. 30
ruling that excludes many nurses from union representation —
and potentially millions of other employees — by allowing
employers to classify them as supervisors. Already, "prominent
management labor law firms are quickly providing web postings
about how to change the duties of employees so that they
qualify for statutory exclusion," Gould wrote. Yet, "well
before this decision, the appointees of President Bush busily
reinterpreted the law so as to deny many workers the
opportunity for representation at the workplace."
Other rollbacks he cited in recent years include an NLRB
ruling excluding union rights for graduate teaching assistants
and another that could allow employers to bar social contact
among employees in off-duty hours.
Long delays in case resolution have hurt workers and the
effectiveness of the NLRB, he said. He noted ironically that
the board has grown less productive even though the number of
cases filed has dropped as unions have lost confidence in the
system.
- Thanks to the persistence of Local 1037, about
80 paralegals whose work had been privatized now come under
CWA's contract with the state of New
Jersey.
Two years ago, said local Organizer
Anne Luck, Local 1037 helped the paralegals organize while
they were employed by Childrens Aid and Family Services, a
private agency contracted by the state. Previously their
work had been handled by state employees.
Local 1037
pressed the state for an overhaul of the Division of Youth
and Family Services in order to improve services, which
resulted in returning the privatized paralegal work recently
along with other changes.
"Some of these workers will
end up with $12,000 wage increases — almost 50 percent — in
the two years they have been with CWA," said local President
Hetty Rosenstein. "That is the difference between non-union
paralegal work and union paralegal work." The workers will
also see a marked improvement in health benefits under the
state contract.
- Through cardcheck organizing, 150 workers at 22
Cambridge Eye Care and Vision World stores in New England
have secured representation by IUE-CWA Local 81408.
Steve Early, administrative assistant to District 1 Vice
President Chris Shelton, said the campaign was planned
during a recent District 1 leadership school organizing
program.
He credited hard work by local organizers Sheila
McGillicuddy and Cindy Vines, and new local officers Dave
Armer, president, Mary Dado, vice president and Zanetta
Rogers, secretary, along with assistance from Locals 1298
and 1400.
- Employers' health benefit costs aren't rising as
fast as they were several years ago, but a new survey shows
that they're still growing at more than twice the rate of
inflation.
Employer costs for workers'
health care rose by 6.1 percent this year, the same as in
2005, according to the survey by Mercer Health &
Benefits. In 2002, the rate of increase hit 14.7 percent, a
12-year high.
In the survey of nearly 3,000 private
and public employers, all with at least 10 workers,
employers with fewer than 500 workers reported the biggest
jump, about 7 percent.
In what could be good news for
workers, the survey indicated that some employers are moving
away from cost-shifting, "with only 31 percent saying that
shifting costs to employees or scaling back benefits will
play an important role in their near-term cost-control
efforts," the Bureau of National Affairs reported.
| 
