June 30, 2006

Message to Verizon: 'Tear Down The Wall'

Hundreds of CWA shop stewards across the country leafleted employees at Verizon locations on June 29, kicking off an education and membership mobilization campaign to prevent the company from sending bargaining unit work to non-union technicians and service reps acquired in Verizon's recent purchase of MCI.

"Tear Down the Wall," screams the headline on the leaflet distributed by stewards to about 66,000 CWA-represented employees at Verizon.

"We want to welcome former MCI employees into our union," said District 2 Vice President Pete Catucci, "but instead of allowing that to happen, Verizon has used them to set up Verizon Business (VZB) and is sending work out of our bargaining units. We want to be partners with the company, but we cannot allow this to continue."

The flier points out that:

  • Tech work and service orders for pre-merger customers like the University of Maryland, Con Edison and Washington Mutual Bank have been shifted to VZB.
     
  • In buildings with both Verizon and MCI MUXes (multiplexers), new circuits are all going onto the MCI/VZB MUX.
     
  • New work that would have flowed to the bargaining unit never materializes. New buildings for the New York Times and Bank of America require multiple voice and data lines, but not a single service order for either has come to union service reps.
     
  • Even though Verizon claims core and VZB computer systems are separate — and core employees have no access to VZB's systems — a union tech has had calls from VZB to check up on trouble tickets.

In District 9, Jim Weitkamp, assistant to Vice President Tony Bixler, said members handbilled throughout the entire California bargaining unit, at all work locations and stores. Among East Coast locations, CWA Representative Jimmy Tarlau reported strong participation by District 2 locals.

Said Les Evans, Maryland Local 2108 president, "Service reps that used to handle Bank of America work have seen their work disappear. They've been told by managers that it has gone over to Verizon Business. If our people are not taking those orders, doing the design work or the installs, it's pretty plain that work our folks were doing has gone over to VZB." 

"Our people are seeing their work disappear," said District 13 CWA Representative Pam Tronsor. "They're receiving calls from the MCI reps asking how to write up service orders, asking them how to do their work." She said statewide locals 13000 and 13500 had chief stewards and stewards speak with members one-on-one and pass out fliers, and she said that Locals 13100 and 13101 in Delaware did the same.

District 1 locals throughout New Jersey, New York and New England also leafleted. Said Xavier Spencer, a Local 1109 shop steward in Brooklyn, "We need to do whatever is necessary to protect our jobs. We cannot allow the company to ignore our contract. We cannot allow the company to build a wall around us and take our work."

The flier graphically shows that, while about two-thirds of the company's revenue currently derives from bargaining unit work, if the current trend of shifting business customers to VZB continues, by 2007 that ratio will have been reversed.

CWA is pursuing discussions with the company as well as grievances and legal options, but said Catucci, "We also need to let the company know we will not sit quietly by and watch our work disappear."

Panel: Push for Profits Hurting Newspapers, Journalists and Readers

As long as profit-hungry media owners and shareholders continue to treat journalism like any other Wall Street investment, newspapers will continue to see their readership and quality decline, panelists agreed Thursday at a Washington, D.C., event co-sponsored by CWA's Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild.

"With the rise of mass-media corporate ownership, we have seen the decline of newspapers," TNG-CWA President Linda Foley said, citing statistics showing that daily newspaper circulation has dropped by 8 million over the past 20 years.

Over roughly the same period, nearly 300 daily newspapers have disappeared and many of the surviving newspapers once owned by families or small chains have been gobbled up by giant mass media companies.

Moderated by syndicated columnist Harold Meyerson, the panel discussion looked at the upheaval in the newspaper industry and how economic and political pressures are affecting journalism — including the Federal Communications Commission's latest attempt to relax media ownership rules. Three years ago, the FCC's pro-corporate, anti-consumer scheme backfired when TNG-CWA and NABET-CWA helped stir a public outcry.

Panelists said consolidated and corporate ownership have led newspapers to cut staff, reduce local news coverage and slash investment in research and investigative reporting while increasing canned entertainment and light features.

Vanessa Williams, a Washington Post editor, said that in the quest for profit too many newspapers have abandoned their core values, which once meant covering communities, local issues and local people. "Too often we're trying to entertain instead of inform," she said.

Media owners may think they're giving the public what it wants, but panelists said the anger against changes in FCC media ownership rules shows that people still care about quality journalism and a diversity of voices in newspapers, TV, radio and now the Internet.

In 2003, several million Americans — from peace activists to the National Rifle Association — wrote letters, took part in town meetings and otherwise helped battle against the last round of FCC rule changes.

Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, which seeks to involve the public in media policy decisions, said people are still fired up. A town hall meeting his organization sponsored this week in the small city of Asheville, N.C., drew 400 people, he said, a standing-room-only crowd that stayed until midnight through five hours of testimony before two FCC commissioners.

"That's a profound statement about the importance of the media to the public," Scott said, noting similar forums Free Press (online at www.freepress.net) has held across the country. "Every place we go, it's the same results."

The panel discussion also featured Joseph Torres, deputy director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Rem Rieder, editor of American Journalism Review and Carl Sessions Stepp, a University of Maryland journalism professor. The school co-sponsored the event with TNG-CWA Local 32035.

Opening the forum, Local 32035 President Bill Salganik said it's vital for a union of journalists to "speak not just about wages and benefits but about the condition of the industry."

IN BRIEF:

  • There are lousy, mean, incompetent bosses, and then there's the truly bad: Guys like the dentist who cut $100 from his workers' paychecks the week of September 11 because upset patients cancelled appointments, cutting into his revenue.

    Can you top that? The Working America website is sponsoring a "Bad Boss" contest and will reward the winner — if you can call a person with the worst boss a "winner" — with a free week's vacation. Semi-finalists, being chosen each week, and the ultimate winner, will be selected by website visitors.

    All the rules are posted at www.workingamerica.org/badboss. You can write about a current or former boss, but don't name names or companies. Even if you don't have a story to submit, check out other people's nightmarish tales and cast your vote for the worst.

     
  • Worried about your pay keeping up with rising costs? Wonder if you'll be able to get time off work the next time your child gets sick? Ever feel you're treated differently because you're a woman?

    Those are some of issues covered in the AFL-CIO's "Ask a Working Woman" survey, which the federation is urging all working women to take. The results will be tallied and presented to every member of Congress, as well as state and local officials across the country, in advance of the fall elections.

    After taking the survey, complete the "Tell a Friend" section and share it with others. The person who gets the most friends to take part will win a trip to Chicago and runners-up will participate in a national conference call with women leaders of unions and other national organizations.

    For details and the survey itself, go to http://www.aflcio.org/issues/jobseconomy/women/wwsurvey2006.cfm or simply go to http://www.aflcio.org/ and follow the links.

     
  • If you think the disparity between your earnings and those of your company's CEO are huge — and they are — consider the difference between the big boss's pay and a minimum wage earner: In 2005, the average CEO was paid 821 times as much as a worker earning the federal minimum of $5.15 an hour.

    Or as the Economic Policy Institute puts it, "An average CEO earns more before lunchtime on the very first day of work in the year than a minimum wage worker earns all year."

    EPI has the disparity charted in its weekly snapshot on its website, http://www.epinet.org/. This extreme compensation ratio reflects both the extraordinary growth of CEO pay and also the diminishing value of the federal minimum wage that has not been raised since 1997: adjusting for inflation, the purchasing power of the minimum wage is now at its lowest since 1955," EPI President Lawrence Mishel said.

    But he noted that the ratio wasn't always so extreme: As recently as 1978, CEOs were paid only 78 times as much as minimum wage earners.