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May
5, 2006
Telephone,
high-speed Internet and TV all from the same provider? It
sounds like a dream come true. But bills pending in the New
Jersey State Assembly would allow Verizon to avoid providing
the new technology to some 4.5 million residents in small
towns and rural areas while granting the company a statewide
cable franchise.
CWA
has written to the mayors of 417 municipalities, warning that
they might be excluded from S. 192, the Senate bill, just
passed by the New Jersey Senate Economic Growth and
Development Committee and a companion bill in the Assembly.
The legislation would open up direct competition for Verizon
with the cable industry statewide, but it specifically targets
service for only 25 percent of the state's
municipalities.
The
legislation also would let the incumbent cable operators
seek early renewal of franchise agreements and then opt for a
statewide franchise, allowing them to bypass negotiations with
towns and cities over service issues.
"The
emergence of a new telecommunications system based on
high-speed broadband networks should provide all Americans the
opportunity to improve the quality of their lives. But the New
Jersey legislation falls far short of the universal service
standards that are critical for our economy and our
democracy," said CWA President Larry Cohen.
CWA
District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton wrote to the 417
mayors, warning that the pending state franchising bills — S.
192 and A. 804 — may give their communities short
shrift.
"(Verizon)
has made promises or expressed its 'hope' to provide cable TV
service to a number of municipalities around the state.
However, the legislation does not include your municipality
and does not require Verizon to follow through on any promises
it may have made to your community," Shelton
wrote.
The
letter urges mayors to contact their state Assembly person,
senator and Gov. John Corzine to express concerns about being
left out of the potential benefits flowing from increased
competition and the rollout of advanced broadband
services.
The
union also e-mailed some 10,000 CWA activists urging them to
contact their legislators to block or amend the
bills.
Verizon,
in 1992, made commitments to invest an additional $1.5 billion
by 1999 and complete a statewide broadband network by 2010 in
exchange for a rate hike. In 2004, Verizon promised to build a
$250 million fiber optic network in exchange for a 14 percent
rate increase. The company has failed to deliver on both these
promises.
"CWA
fully supports efforts to facilitate private sector investment
in high speed broadband networks and services so critical to
our future. At the same time, in moving licensing authority
from local to state government, we cannot sacrifice the
longstanding social compact that requires video providers to
build universal networks in the communities they serve,"
Shelton wrote.
CWA
is also running radio spots in key New Jersey markets and
leafleting at 13 Verizon locations to inform customers that
the bills only require Verizon to start providing cable TV
service in the 60 most densely populated municipalities in the
state and county seats within three years and give the company
nine years to complete implementing service to even these
wealthiest areas.
CWA
members rallied, leafleted and held a wave of mobilization
actions at Avaya locations to mark the start of bargaining,
with more activities underway as CWA fights to keep quality
jobs and for a fair contract, reported CWA Vice President
Ralph Maly, communications and technologies. CWA represents
about 2,900 Avaya workers nationwide.
In
Oklahoma City, members of Local 6016 were joined by Cingular
Wireless members in an informational picket, and in the Denver
area, members of Local 7777 held a week's worth of activities,
including a rally, car caravan and a "Walk for Jobs"
procession.
In
Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and California, members are
wearing red, leafleting, holding coordinated actions like
waving mini picket signs and using clickers. T-shirts with the
"It's About Jobs" message are everywhere, mobilizers reported.
The
bargaining team reported that negotiations are tough and they
challenged Avaya on its report that the pension plan covering
represented employees — funded at 108 percent of liabilities
in 2003 — now is at 83.6 percent, representing a $114 million
drop in pension fund assets from January 2004 to January
2006.
Management
also has made extreme demands for increased health care costs
for both retirees and active members. "This from a company
that still pays its executives millions of dollars a year to
basically destroy the business," the bargaining team
said.
At
the bargaining table, Maly reiterated CWA's main goal "to
protect our member's jobs today and in the future. Without it,
there will be no agreement," he said.
Over
the past year, more than 150 journalists have been killed
around the world. An American reporter was jailed for refusing
to reveal a source. Recent Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters
are being called traitors by right-wing pundits for exposing
government wiretapping and secret prisons. And newspaper
chains across the country are slashing budgets and
staffs.
During
such tough times for journalism, speakers at The Newspaper
Guild-CWA's annual Freedom Award Fund banquet said it was
especially heartening to be able to honor reporters and
organizations that are doing outstanding work no matter the
obstacles.
Honorees
included two Los Angeles Times reporters, two Knight-Ridder
journalists, two Minnesota radio reporters, two student
journalists and the International Federation of Journalists
Safety Fund, which aids and protects journalists around the
world.
The
May 3 banquet in Washington, D.C., fell on World Press Freedom
Day, a day that recognizes the grave risks many journalists
take to cover the news and honors and supports those fighting
oppressive regimes that are censoring the media and
imprisoning reporters.
"A
free press is not only an essential human right, it's the
foundation of Democratic and tolerant societies everywhere,"
said Shashi Tharoor, head of communications and public
relations at the United Nations.
Tharoor
and Harold Meyerson, a nationally syndicated columnist and
editor-at-large of The American Prospect magazine, were the
evening's keynote speakers. Meyerson, a champion of labor
rights and a sharp critic of the backlash against the press
today, noted a recent column attacking reporters' patriotism
for exposing government wrongdoing.
Meyerson
said that columnist Max Boot "assumes that the government —
this government — has an inherently greater commitment to our
nation, to its well-being and its good name, than we in the
press do."
"Is
it more helpful to America and its standing in the world to
sanction torture than it is to expose it?" he asked. "More in
the national interest to break laws protecting Amercans'
privacy from intelligence agencies operating without judicial
review than it is to alert Americans to that policy?... My
sense is that when history judges who were the truer patriots,
it will give higher marks to (Pulitzer Prize-winning
reporters) Dana Priest and James Risen and Eric Lichtblau than
it will to George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld."
The
IFJ Safety Fund was honored with the fifth annual Herbert
Block Freedom Award, named for the late, renowned Washington
Post editorial cartoonist who was a lifelong defender of press
freedom. Known professionally as Herblock, he was a member of
the Guild for 67 years and left $50,000 to the international
when he died in 2001. The gift provides a $5,000 award for
Freedom Fund award winners.
This
year the money will be used to continue the critical work of
the safety fund, which helps protect journalists around the
world and aids victims' families. The past year's recipients
have included families of journalists killed in Iraq, others
targeted for assassination and others still who died in
natural disasters. In 2005, the worst year on record for
job-related deaths of journalists and their staffs, 89 were
killed while on assignment and another 61 were killed in
earthquakes and accidents.
"Each
of these deaths was a personal tragedy, but together they
provide a moving testament to the sacrifice that many of our
colleagues and their families make in the service of
journalism and press freedom," said Aidan White, IFJ General
Secretary, who accepted the award.
The
IFJ is the world's largest federation of journalists. Its vice
presidents include Linda Foley, president of TNG-CWA.
The
winners of the annual Heywood Broun Award, named for the famed
columnist who always fought for the underdog and helped found
the Guild in the 1930s, were Los Angeles Times reporters Matt
Lait and Scott Glover. The judges said their exhaustive
reporting shed new light on a 20-year-old murder case,
revealing both new evidence and errors in the prosecution.
Hearings are underway to determine whether the convicted man
will be released from jail, and even the prosecuting attorney
has testified to his doubts about the man's guilt, based on
the journalists' work.
Two
"Awards of Substantial Distinction" were also given in the
Broun contest. Knight Ridder reporters Chris Adams and Alison
Young were honored for their series about the poor treatment
of American veterans by both the government and non-profit
veterans groups. The Veterans Administration stonewalled the
reporters but since the series was published, a VA official
has ordered staff to read and learn from it.
The
other award went to Sasha Aslanian of American RadioWorks and
Mike Edgerly of Minnesota Public Radio for "Toxic Traces"
about the state pollution control agency and its failure to
deal properly with chemical hazards created by Minnesota-based
3M's Scotchguard products.
The
Broun awards, selected by a panel of acclaimed journalists,
come with a $5,000 check for the top award and $1,000 for the
awards of distinction.
Two
student journalists were honored with scholarships named for
David S. Barr, a passionate champion of justice and fairness
as the Guild's longtime attorney. He died in
1997.
Sarah
Halper, 18, of the A.W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West
Palm Beach, Fla., won a $500 scholarship in the high school
contest for "Censorship and Sensibility," an investigation of
Internet filtering in her school district and the often
arbitrary rationale for it. While students had access to
websites selling guns and cigarettes, they were barred from
such sites as the Human Rights Campaign, the Gay-Straight
Alliance and Planned Parenthood.
Shahar
Smooha, a student at the Columbia University Graduate School
of Journalism, won a $1,500 scholarship for his work
documenting his experience as a Jewish-Israeli journalist
traveling to Jordan to vote in the first democratic Iraqi
parliamentary elections last year. His grandparents were among
tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews deported from Iraq in the
early 1950s and Smooha, as their descendant, had the right to
vote. His entry was published in the Israeli newspaper,
Haaretz.
- CWA and IBEW
members delivered a strong message to Verizon at the
company's annual meeting and at actions at worksites and
Verizon locations.
A CWA proposal
to prohibit two or more directors from serving on common
boards gained 19 percent of shareholder votes. CWA also
supported the IBEW resolution to separate the position of
chairman and chief executive officer — that gained 48
percent of shareholder votes.
In Boston, union
members staged a street theater event outside a Verizon
office and let the company know that its plans to keep
Verizon Business (formed by the acquisition of MCI), a
non-union entity won't fly. Throughout District 2,
activists leafleted and mobilized at worksites.
- CWA members
from New York and surrounding states were among thousands of
labor union members — and an estimated 300,000 activists
overall — who took part in an two-mile "March for Peace"
down Broadway in New York City last
Saturday.
Locals 1180,
1086, 1037 and IUE-CWA Local 81201 were among the locals
represented, with members carrying banners, waving signs and
wearing shirts calling for an end to the war in Iraq
and the billions being diverted from health care, education,
worker safety, Social Security and other pressing needs of
working families.
The labor contingent — which
organizers called the largest at any anti-war event in U.S.
history — was organized by U.S. Labor Against War. Labor
activists, who marched behind Iraqi war veterans and
military families opposed to the war, came from as far away
as Los Angeles to participate.
- H.R. 5159
would award Congressional Medals of Honor to the flight crew
of United Flight 93, brutally murdered by hijackers in their
attempt to take over the plane on September 11 and fly it
into the White House or U.S.
Capitol.
AFA-CWA is
asking all CWA members and staff to write their member of
Congress, asking that they co-sponsor the measure, which
would honor their fallen union sisters and
brothers.
Already, a bipartisan group of 60
representatives has signed on as cosponsors of the bill,
introduced by Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.).
To send an
e-mail to your representative, visit
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/flt93.
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