May 10, 2007

Message to Senators:  Employee Free Choice Act Would Mean Health Care, Pensions for Millions

U.S. senators will get an earful from CWA members next week about the critical need for Employee Free Choice Act, including the fact that the organizing and bargaining rights bill would likely bring health benefits to more than 3.5 million uninsured Americans.

That estimate is based on figures showing that union workers – because of their ability to bargain collectively -- are 28 percent more likely to be covered by employer-paid health plans. The study, by the Institute for America's Future, also predicts that nearly 2.8 million workers would receive employer-paid pensions if the Employee Free Choice Act becomes law.

"It's no coincidence that as employers have trampled on the right of workers to bargain contracts, more Americans are without health care and retirement security," CWA President Larry Cohen said. "That's a vital point we need to make in our phone calls with senators and their staffs next week."

CWA and IBEW members are making the week of May 14 a "week of action" for passing the Employee Free Choice Act. The bill passed overwhelmingly in the House in March and is pending in the Senate.

Cohen and other CWA leaders are hoping that thousands of calls will pour into Capitol Hill from members and their families across the country. Locals have been given a list of 11 senators who are considered swing votes and another 47 senators who have signed on as the bill's co-sponsors.

"We need to persuade the 11 senators who are not yet committed and we want to thank those who have, and make sure that the shameless efforts of the Chamber of Commerce and other business lobbies haven't changed their minds," Cohen said.

The 11 are Democrats Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Ken Salazar of Colorado and Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, John Sununu of New Hampshire, John Voinovich of Ohio, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

With Verizon's union-busting behavior a focal point of the Employee Free Choice Act fight, CWA is also asking locals to urge state and community leaders to write letters to Verizon chief Ivan Seidenberg in support of workers' bargaining rights.

Members Now Posting Comments on Diversity Proposal

Members are now able to post comments on the CWA Diversity proposal at the Ready for the Future website (www.cwa-union.org/future -- click on Diversity Committee).

In addition to the members' bulletin board, the text of the Diversity proposal – to be submitted to the 2007 Convention -- is posted, along with notes from meetings of the Committee on Executive Board Diversity and a Q&A on the proposal.

The committee, created last year as part of the CWA Ready for the Future program, held sessions with local leaders around the country to gather input and also e-mailed a survey to all locals to solicit ideas for making the Board better reflect the ethnic and gender composition of the membership. 

The proposal calls for adding four at-large members to the Executive Board, with a goal of at least three being persons of color and at least two women.  The four seats would represent four geographic regions of CWA with similar membership size. 

The at-large diversity Board members would not be Vice Presidents but would attend all Board meetings, serve on Board committees and have a voice and vote on all matters before the Board.  They would be paid for lost wages and expenses for attending meetings and for Board-related responsibilities. 

The Diversity Committee estimates the cost for all four seats at $25,000 per year.  By contrast, a Vice President's position costs at least $400,000 considering that it includes at minimum an office, an assistant and a secretary.

In addition to addressing the Board's demographic balance, the proposal "adds four rank-and-file voices to our leadership deliberations," said Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling, chair of the Diversity Committee.  "The more our leaders reflect our members, the more responsive we will be to their needs and the better perspective we will have in making decisions on the critical issues facing CWA," she said.

President Larry Cohen said, "This committee worked very hard to find a formula for bringing better balance to our Board in keeping with our democratic traditions and our organizational needs."  He noted that other unions are also taking steps to increase leadership diversity in line with the AFL-CIO's resolution on diversity adopted in 2005.

Serving with Easterling on the Diversity Committee are Vice Presidents Annie Hill, Noah Savant and Brooks Sunkett, Women's Committee members Susan McCallister, Local 7704 secretary-treasurer, and Mary Lou Schaffer, Local 13550 president; and Committee on Equity members Keith Robinson, Local 6310 steward and Jetty Wells, Local 4009 executive vice president.

AFA-CWA Takes on Management at United, US Airways

AFA-CWA flight attendants picketed the UAL Corp. – United Airlines – annual meeting in Chicago May 10 to protest the excessive $40 million compensation package paid to CEO Glenn Tilton.

Flight attendants and other airline workers are picketing to alert shareholders that the "shared sacrifice" that management talked about throughout the airline's bankruptcy remains a sacrifice for workers who are not sharing in post-bankruptcy "rewards."

"Executives must follow through on their promise of shared rewards. No one does better unless everyone – employees, passengers and shareholders – does better," said AFA-CWA United spokesperson Sara Nelson.

Many United executives now are receiving equity incentive payments while airline workers have seen their pay and retirement security slashed. United emerged from bankruptcy protection in February 2006.

Flight attendants, pilots and other airline workers also picketed outside the International Aviation Symposium in Phoenix, Ariz., this week to focus attention on their frustration with Phoenix-based US Airways.

AFA-CWA members at US Airways and America West are angry over the lack of progress in contract negotiations for a merged agreement. "The failure of US Airways management to recognize the value and worth of flight attendants on the job and at the bargaining table is an 'age-old strategy for disaster,'" said Gary Richardson, president of AFA-CWA's Master Executive Council for America West.

Mike Flores, president of AFA-CWA's Master Executive Council for US Airways, reminded management that "there is no such thing as a 'full-service, low-cost airline."That only works if you find employees willing to work for nothing and customers willing to pay for nothing," and isn't happening.

CWA, UNI Aid Struggle by South African Workers To Win Bargaining Rights at Vodafone Subsidiary

CWA has joined with UNI Telecom and other unions around the globe in condemning Vodafone's South African subsidiary, Vodacom, for refusing to recognize its workers' union in violation of the law. In South Africa, employers are required to grant automatic recognition when 30 percent of the workforce supports unionization. That threshold was surpassed this spring when more than 1,300 of Vodacom's 4,000 workers had joined the Communications Workers Union.

Instead, Vodacom chose to wage war against its employees, mainly women employed in call centers, by firing union activists and threatening supporters. In other tactics designed to dilute union support, the company promised promotions to workers if they agree to leave the union and padded its employee list with the names of contractors and supervisors.

Vodafone owns 45 percent of Verizon Wireless and its South African subsidiary shows much of the same animus towards unions and workers' rights as its American cousin. In 1999, Vodacom, the largest mobile carrier in South Africa with over 20 million customers, agreed to allow the CWU to recruit on company facilities, but has since broken every part of that agreement.

The workers were set to strike this spring, but Vodacom was able to persuade a court to issue a temporary injunction against the action on March 12. A final ruling on the case is expected by May 14. 

Despite the company's actions, union support among the workers continues to grow. "These workers will prevail. Their struggle serves as a reminder of what we can achieve despite history and the odds," said CWA President Larry Cohen.  "A little more than a dozen years ago, these workers would have been jailed under South Africa's brutal anti-worker apartheid regime," he said. "Yet today, apartheid is gone and South Africa's labor laws are more progressive than our own in the United States."  Cohen recently stepped down after five years as president of UNI Telecom, the world's largest voice for telecommunications workers worldwide.

CWA, UNI, and the U.S-based Solidarity Center have been assisting the Vodacom workers' campaign for union representation. Read more about the worker's campaign at www.cwuvodacom.blogspot.com.

Help Urged for Locked-Out Ohio Newspaper Workers

In the wake of a nine-month lockout at the Toledo Blade newspaper in Ohio, CWA leaders are asking locals to adopt a family to help 215 workers who have lost their health insurance.

The locked-out workers include 13 members of the CWA Printing Sector and more than 200 other full-time and part-time mailers, drivers, engravers and paper handlers who belong to other unions.

The Toledo Council of Newspaper Unions, which includes The Newspaper Guild-CWA, has been negotiating with the company for more than a year. CWA President Larry Cohen said the lockout that began last August was not only an attempt to get the affected workers to give up their union and First Amendment rights, it "also was a cynical attempt to coerce the two unions with agreements, the Guild-CWA and the pressmen, to strike so that workers in those units could be permanently replaced."

But the unions fought back, launching a boycott against the paper that cut circulation and slashed ad revenues. The National Labor Relations Board has issued sweeping complaints against The Blade, finding that the lockouts are illegal and the company engaged in bad-faith bargaining.

In spite of the findings and broad community support for the workers, the newspaper hasn't backed down. The lockout continues. Unemployment compensation for the workers expired March 1, leaving them to survive on union benefits alone.  And on April 1, all 215 locked-out workers lost their health insurance.

The cost for a month of coverage for each family is $823.67, with each single coverage policy running $317.72.  "These staggering amounts are well outside what these locked-out workers can afford and, as you well know, just one unplanned medical emergency without insurance can mean economic devastation for these workers and their families," Cohen said.

He said CWA is asking for donations from locals in increments of $500, which will be sent to a central fund and used to pay COBRA costs for as many locked-out workers as possible. Individual workers will be paired with donating locals to keep those locals updated on the situation.

Members can make individual donations online via PayPal from the Toledo TNG local's website - www.toledoguild.org. Locals wishing to adopt a worker can get information by sending an e-mail to: lockedoutrelief06@sbcglobal.net. 

 

IN BRIEF:

  • Nurses stormed Capitol Hill this week to push Congress to overturn the decision by the National Labor Relations Board to allow employers to reclassify many nurses – and potentially millions of other workers – as supervisors, denying them their union rights.

    Thousands of "charge nurses" such as Lori Gay of Salt Lake City could lose their right to representation even though their supervisory role amounts to minutes a week. "As a charge nurse, I'm in charge of the pencil," Gay told the U.S. House Education and Labor Subcommittee On May 8. "Typically, I spend 10 minutes at the end of my shift filling out an assignment sheet for the oncoming shift, making sure every patient has a bed and a nurse.  I record the traffic in and out.  It's as simple as that.  I don't have the authority to hire, fire, evaluate or promote other nurses."

    Subcommittee chairman Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) has introduced legislation, drafted with input from the AFL-CIO, saying that only someone who engages in supervisory duties more than half the time is a supervisor.

  • With Gov. Martin O'Malley's signature on the bill, Maryland this week became the first state to require government contractors to pay their employees a living wage -- $8.50 an hour in rural counties and $11.30 an hour in urban areas.

    Unions and other advocates have pushed for a living wage in Maryland for the last decade. O'Malley said the bill says to state contract workers that "we are going to treat you in a fair and just and decent way."

    The state legislature passed a similar measure in 2004 but the Republican governor, Robert Ehrlich Jr. vetoed it. Supporters estimate that the new law could help 50,000 workers.

  • The long list of social service and regulatory agency victims of Bush budget cuts now includes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that investigates claims of racial and gender bias on the job.

    Although she said she's under a White House gag order and isn't supposed to ask for any more funding, EEOC Chairwoman Naomi Earp told a Senate subcommittee this month that her agency has lost 543 employees – 500 of them in enforcement -- since Bush took office in 2001.

    The EEOC has a backlog of 36,000 unfinished cases, a number that is projected to grow to 55,000 next year. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), chair of the appropriations subcommittee holding the hearing, said the EEOC was in "disarray" and said she will request an independent audit by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the effects of recent restructuring efforts.