April 26, 2007

• Oakland Comcast Workers Beat Back Intense Decert Attack
• Senior Verizon Exec Goes "Cubicle to Cubicle" to Coerce DSL Techs
• World's Telecom Unions Protest Deutsche Telecom Cuts, Threaten to Pull Investments from Key U.S. Equity Firm
• CWA Urges Virginia Regulators to Keep Oversight of Verizon
• Retired District 1 Staffer Jim Dennis Dies
• IN BRIEF:
• AFA-CWA Joins in Organizing Airline 'Day of Action'
• CWA Backs Reforms of 'Medicare for All'
• CWAers Join in Blitz of Health and Safety Activisim

Oakland Comcast Workers Beat Back Intense Decert Attack

Comcast pulled out all the stops to try to throw the union out in Oakland, Calif., but a determined inside committee mobilized workers to beat back a management-instigated union decertification campaign.

The cable workers voted 50 to 40 for continued representation by Local 9415 in an election on Wednesday.

Comcast fielded five levels of management personnel, including a regional vice president, to work the employees over in a textbook intimidation effort, reported Local Organizer Yonah Diamond.  "They took crews out for breakfast and lunch every week and held captive audience meetings to bash the union nearly every day," he said.

About 20 percent of the unit had been hired within the last year, and Comcast carefully indoctrinated them with its anti-union line from day one, according to Diamond.

"I can't say enough about the inside committee.  They worked hard and were extremely effective in communicating with each member and countering the lies and pressure tactics" from the managers, he said.

Had the vote gone the other way, CWA would have had many unfair labor practice charges to file against the company.  The local had evidence that Comcast was directly behind the decertification filing – a violation of labor law.  And among Comcast's dirty tricks, managers falsely told workers that to be eligible to vote, they would need a California driver's license.

Said District 9 Vice President Tony Bixler: "We are inspired by the determination of these members to defend their bargaining rights in the face of daily management coercion and a professional union-breaking strategy.  The campaigns we've seen here in California by anti-union corporations like Comcast and Verizon are case studies in what American workers confront these days," he said, referring also to the struggle by Verizon DSL workers to unionize in Long Beach (see following story).

Senior Verizon Exec Goes "Cubicle to Cubicle"
To Coerce DSL Techs Before Election in Long Beach

At the apparent instruction of Denny Strigl, Verizon's president and chief operating officer, the corporation dispatched a senior vice president to the West Coast to personally carry the company's anti-union message to a unit of 170 DSL technicians who were trying to organize Verizon's Maintenance Control Office (MCO-West) in Long Beach, Calif.

The day before the April 20 election, Michael Poling, Verizon's senior vice president for network operations, walked "cubicle to cubicle" urging the workers to rethink their support for a union, and telling them, according to witnesses, "You will not get raises. You will not get under the union contract." He also reminded the workers that, although they are core Verizon employees, "we are under wireless now," a reference to Strigl's harsh anti-union stance when he headed Verizon Wireless.

Verizon's tactics, a violation of the company's "neutrality and expedited election" agreement with CWA, worked, scaring off enough union support to defeat the workers' campaign for bargaining rights. The vote was 79-72. Three weeks earlier, 105 of the 170 workers signed authorization cards supporting union representation.

CWA has accused Verizon of violating the contract by coercing and intimidating the workers in charges filed with the arbitrator who oversaw the election.

"Management disregard for the contractual provisions on neutrality and organizing rights is exactly why workers need the greater protections offered by the Employee Free Choice Act," said CWA President Larry Cohen. "Getting a personal visit the day before a union election from a company senior vice president carrying an anti-union message is intimidating and coercive as well as a clear violation of the neutrality provisions of the contract.  Current labor laws are not adequate when major corporations like Verizon readily proclaim their respect for workers' rights while feeling free to engage in this kind of abusive behavior toward employees," Cohen said.

According to a mid-level manager, Verizon COO Strigl stressed the importance of defeating the DSL workers' union drive during a conference call held for Verizon managers in California at the beginning of April. From then until the election, workers were deluged almost daily with e-mails attacking the union and collective bargaining. Two days before the election, Poling and two managers sent in from Verizon's union-represented MCO unit in Silver Spring, Md., urged supervisors to do all they could to convince their coworkers to vote no.

World's Telecom Unions Protest Deutsche Telecom Cuts,
Threaten to Pull Investments from Key U.S. Equity Firm

The global union federation Union Network International (UNI) and member unions, including CWA, are threatening to pull all investment from the U.S. private equity group Blackstone, in protest over the outsourcing of thousands of jobs at Deutsche Telecom.

"Many of our organizations are managers of pension schemes and other investments," CWA President Larry Cohen, outgoing UNI Telecom president, and UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings wrote to Blackstone chief executive Stephen Schwarzman. "When we are deciding investment options in funds where we are involved, we may well recommend that Blackstone no longer be considered."

Calling current DT plans "drastic and unacceptable," the letter, also signed by 300 delegates attending the second UNI Telecom Global Union World Conference, April 20-21, in Athens, Greece, asked Blackstone to urge DT to enter into meaningful negotiations with the German telecom union, ver.di, to find an alternative.

Since Blackstone purchased 4.5 percent of Deutsche Telekom from the German government a year ago, it has used its influence to persuade the company to replace former CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke with René Oberman as part of a strategy to pump up DT's sagging share price.

Two years ago, Ricke pledged to negotiate a global framework agreement with UNI to ensure labor rights for workers throughout DT companies worldwide, including T-Mobile in the United States. Instead, DT has announced that it is in talks to move a quarter of its 180,000 German employees to subsidiaries that pay about 40 percent less.

The letter pointed out that Lawrence Guffey, head of communications and media for Blackstone, "has been a director or otherwise involved in several restructurings viewed by us as deliberate attempts by Blackstone to profit at direct cost to our members."

In the United States, CWA is working to help 25,000 T-Mobile employees win collective bargaining.

UNI Telecom conference delegates passed additional resolutions to support collective bargaining in Australia, to censure Portugal Telecom for refusing to pay membership fees for employees who signed a collective bargaining contract, and to oppose the Greek government's plan to privatize former publicly owned telephone companies. 

Cohen, who has served as UNI Telecom president for the past six years, stepped down from the post and with his support, delegates elected Shoji Morishima, head of Japan's telecommunications union, NWJ, to succeed him.

CWA Urges Virginia Regulators to Keep Oversight of Verizon

CWA has called on the Virginia State Corporation Commission to continue to fulfill its obligations to Virginia telephone customers by rejecting Verizon's request for total deregulation of basic voice and other services.

In a filing submitted to the SCC, the union pointed out that in its petition, Verizon exaggerated the current level of competition for basic voice services to residential and small business customers in the state, particularly for those in rural areas and lower-income markets.

The filing reported findings of a panel of CWA technicians who work at Verizon locations in Richmond, Virginia Beach, Lynchburg, Falls Church and Roanoke who cited Verizon's failure to maintain the existing copper network and the service problems resulting from the lack of preventive maintenance.  Customers are experiencing deteriorating service because of the company's focus on fiber optic service, CWA said.  At the same time, Verizon is not building its next-generation fiber networks in most communities in the state, the filing noted.

"There is a continuing need, especially in this transitional environment, for regulatory oversight" that ensures that all Virginians have access to affordable, quality voice telephone service and not be left stranded on a deteriorating copper network, CWA said.
 
Earlier, CWA locals successfully mobilized support to uphold the governor's veto of a bill Verizon pushed to eliminate regulatory oversight of the sale of telephone access lines.

Retired District 1 Staffer Jim Dennis Dies

Retired CWA Representative James Dennis Jr. died April 23 of cancer at age 60.

He became a steward, vice president and president of Local 1102, Staten Island, N.Y., after going to work at New York Telephone as a cable splicer in 1970, and he was a veteran of the 1971 strike at New York Tel. He joined the staff in 1982 as a CWA representative in New York City, worked five years in the District 1 office, then transferred to the Avenel, N.J., office, where he serviced public sector locals.

"Jim worked long and hard in District 1, and his work was appreciated by all the locals he came in contact with," said District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton.

Dennis retired in January 2003 and lived in Tobyhanna, Pa. He is survived by his wife, Ann Dennis and two sons, Christopher and Matthew.

IN BRIEF:

• CWA flight attendants are co-sponsoring a Transportation Day of Action on May 17 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to send elected leaders the message that, "We've had enough – enough of pension terminations, working without health care, and enough American jobs being sent overseas," said AFA-CWA President Pat Friend.

Tens of thousands of union members and supporters are expected. Other co-sponsors include the Machinists, Transportation Trades Dept. of the AFL-CIO, the International Transport Workers Federation and progressive groups.

Go to AFA-CWA's website, www.afanet.org, for more information.

• The CWA-supported Medicare for All Act was re-introduced in Congress on April 25 by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Representative John Dingell (D-Mich.).  In a statement this week, the union called it an important step toward comprehensive reform of our health care system.

"Our nation must have comprehensive health care reform that provides universal coverage and levels the playing field among employers," said CWA President Larry Cohen. "Our current system puts a huge strain on negotiated health plans and has made health care the most contentious issue in collective bargaining today.

"The Medicare for All Act sets the stage for a health care system that not only expands coverage outside the traditional employment relationship but assures working families that they won't lose their health care coverage if they change or lose their jobs. It addresses the health security concerns of retirees. And it will end our national shame of allowing 45 million Americans to go without health insurance coverage," Cohen said.

• To mark Workers Memorial Day on Saturday, April 28, CWA and other unions have spent the week honoring fallen workers and raising awareness about the startling toll of deaths and injuries on the job. Nationwide, 5,734 workers died in 2005, according to the latest AFL-CIO workplace fatality report.

Among the CWA locals that organized activities and vigils, Local 6301 in Springfield, Mo., continued its 10-year tradition of distributing trees to members at the Wentzville Verizon center to plant in honor of workers killed and injured on the job.

At a Capitol Hill hearing, workers, labor leaders and health and safety experts blasted the Bush administration for wiping out many Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, including killing the ergonomics rule as its first order of business in 2001.

"The people at OSHA have no interest in running a regulatory agency," Dr. David Michaels, an occupational health and safety expert at George Washington University in Washington, D.C, said, quoted in the New York Times. "If they ever knew how to issue regulations, they've forgotten. The concern about protecting workers has gone out the window."