May 31, 2007

Victory in Congress Will Help Protect Retiree Health Care

For retirees and future retirees, CWA and the IBEW, in a coordinated campaign with Alcatel Lucent, won a key tax code change that will help preserve retiree health care at that company and others. 

An amendment to the supplemental war funding bill, adopted by Congress and signed into law, permits companies like Alcatel Lucent to transfer more than one year's worth of retiree health costs from excess pension assets. Federal tax law had allowed employers to transfer only the equivalent of one year's costs for health benefits for retirees and their dependents, if pension assets were overfunded by more than 120 percent.

The change allowing additional retiree health care funding – if pension assets are sufficiently overfunded – will enable CWA and Alcatel Lucent to build up a VEBA trust fund (Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association) with CWA's goal to see that fund grow to cover future retiree health costs and limit the company from trying to shift more health care costs to retirees.

Ralph Maly, CWA vice president for communications and technologies, said CWA and IBEW locals, especially those with Alcatel Lucent members, spent a great deal of time and effort urging their members of Congress to make this change.

He thanked Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) for their efforts throughout the two-year fight to get the change adopted. 

"Especially for our Alcatel Lucent retirees, this will help preserve retiree health care going forward," Maly said.

CWA represents about 2,600 active workers at Alcatel Lucent and some 120,000 retirees and dependents.

Labor's Free Choice Push Spotlights Verizon Campaign

As they champion the Employee Free Choice Act in cities, counties and states across the country, union organizers are also helping CWA and the IBEW build a coalition of local and national political leaders who are pressuring Verizon to respect the right of its workers to organize and bargain collectively.

"We're sending a message that elected officials are going to side with Verizon's workers, not with the greedy bosses," CWA President Larry Cohen said in a conference call Wednesday with members of the AFL-CIO's central labor councils and state federations, who are enthusiastically embracing the Verizon campaign.

CWA at every level, along with unions and the AFL-CIO network, are working with city councils, county commissions and state legislatures to pass resolutions urging Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. State bodies in Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia, Hawaii and Michigan, as well as the Minnesota Senate, are among key victories so far, and resolutions are pending in at least eight other states.

At the same time, union organizers and leaders are asking public officials to write letters to Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg urging him to stop the company's relentless union-busting and let Wireless and Verizon Business workers organize and bargain contracts.

"Verizon had neutrality, had card check," Cohen said. "Now Verizon is a poster child for a company abandoning its commitment to workers."

AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff said: "There is no more important campaign than the Verizon campaign. It's a growing company, a wealthy company, a company that's only going to get wealthier, and traditionally it's been a union company. If we had the Employee Free Choice Act today, Verizon Wireless and Verizon Business employees would be organizing and forming unions across the country. We cannot save and restore the American middle class until we restore the right of every worker in this country to form a union."

The Employee Free Choice Act, which was passed overwhelming in the U.S. House in March and is pending in the Senate, would effectively end the battle at Verizon by allowing workers to organize when a majority signs cards indicating they want representation – which Verizon Business techs in the Northeast already have done. The bill also calls for first-contract arbitration if necessary to stop the stalling tactics companies use now to avoid bargaining.

The AFL-CIO and member unions are pushing the Senate to vote on the bill by the end of June. Cohen said he expects 52 senators will show their support by voting to end debate on the bill. While 52 is a majority, under Senate rules 60 votes are required to bring a bill to the floor.

But Cohen and Acuff said majority support in both chambers of Congress will build even more momentum and the Employee Free Choice Act will ultimately pass, likely as part of an appropriations or trade package in the way the long-awaited minimum wage hike was tied to last week's war funding bill.

The bill's final hurdle is President Bush, who has already promised to veto it. But union leaders say all the groundwork being laid now will pay off for workers once a new president takes office in 2009. Cohen said any candidate labor decides to support in the 2008 presidential election must be fully committed to signing the bill.

Under the Gun, Northwest Flight Attendants Ratify Pact

Pressured by the threat of losing their bankruptcy claim, AFA-CWA flight attendants at Northwest Airlines ratified a concessionary contract at the carrier this week by a 51 percent vote.

"By no means is this concessionary agreement acceptable to our members," said President Jay Hong of the AFA-CWA master executive council at Northwest.  "But considering the difficulties we've encountered with the National Mediation Board, the White House, the courts, and the impossible negotiations postures of Northwest Airlines, the majority of our members have said that this agreement represents the best we could do under the anti-worker conditions we found ourselves negotiating in. We will continue to rebuild and fight for a better contract in the future."

Northwest is scheduled to emerge from bankruptcy protection on May 31. The agreement calls for cuts in pay, benefits and working conditions of about 40 percent for the 8,100 flight attendants, along with a required 20 percent increase in productivity. By approving the contract, AFA-CWA members retained their right to file a $182 million bankruptcy claim against Northwest.  A federal judge ruled last month that flight attendants' right to make that claim would be void unless a new contract was ratified.

AFA-CWA continues to attack excessive executive compensation – particularly the $26.6 million package awarded to CEO Doug Steenland – as unjustified and unfair in a time of drastic cuts to employee wages and benefits.

On May 30, AFA-CWA President Pat Friend and Northwest flight attendants, joined by pilots and other airline workers, rallied outside the Minnesota State Capitol to protest excessive executive compensation and the growing pay disparity between company executives and employees.

 "Across America, families are working more, going home with less in their pockets and  paying out more while mediocre executives are rewarded for running companies into bankruptcy," said NWA MEC Vice President Andy Wisbacher, "But make no mistake; we may be fatigued, stressed and disillusioned, but we are the majority and will win this fight against injustice in the workplace."

CWA: Better Data a Key Step for High Speed Internet 

CWA applauded the Broadband Data Improvement Act, introduced last week by Senator Daniel K. Inouye (D-MI), as a significant and necessary step in bringing high speed Internet access to every American.

In order for our country to move forward to ensure that a 21st Century Internet is available for all, we need key information and better data to help us get there, CWA said in a statement, noting Senator Inouye's legislation will greatly improve the quality of that information.  Inouye is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.

The measure, S. 1492, incorporates key provisions supported by CWA as part of the union's "Speed Matters" campaign, which calls on Congress to establish a national Internet policy to improve the quality, availability and affordability of high speed broadband service to every community. 

Inouye's measure is a companion measure to the Broadband Census of America Act, introduced in the House of Representatives.

In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet on that measure, CWA President Larry Cohen said, "We desperately need a national Internet policy to reverse the fact that our nation, the country that invented the Internet, has fallen to 16th in the world in high-speed Internet penetration."

"Unfortunately, we don't know the full extent of our problem because our data is so poor. We don't know where high-speed networks are deployed, how many households and small businesses connect to the Internet, at what speed, and how much they pay. Without this information, we can't craft good policy solutions. So we continue to fall farther behind," he told the subcommittee.

The Senate bill, in addition to seeking to improve the quality of federal broadband data collection, also encourages state initiatives that promote broadband deployment.

New York Nurses Gain Support in Fight to Save Hospitals

CWA nurses in New York are building legislative support to stop the state from closing nine hospitals statewide, including three in Buffalo that employ nearly 4,000 members of Local 1168, Nurses United.

In the last week, four legislators announced plans to introduce bills to save St. Joseph Hospital in Buffalo. Local 1168 President John Klein said several other lawmakers are working to save DeGraff Hospital. Nearly 800 members work at the two hospitals. So far, no bills are pending to save Gates Hospital, where 1,500 members work, but Klein said the local is actively reaching out to lawmakers and the public for help.

A state commission made up of businesspeople, insurance companies, bankers and doctors – but no union representatives – recommended the closures last year. The panel's report was adopted by default at the end of 2006 when the legislature failed to act to stop it.

CWA and other health care unions fought hard before the report became law, and have fought even harder since. "We're not saying it lightly, but we believe people will die if the Berger Commission proposals are put in place – one of the closures will add a 25-minute ride to the nearest emergency room," Klein said.

CWA's news conferences, town hall meetings and other outreach are having an effect, he said. "The legislature is starting to pick up on the commission's flaws," he said. "One state senator, George Maziarz, has said that the fact that CWA's been out there bringing it to their attention is the key to why they're looking at it now."

Meanwhile, CWA nurses are waging other battles to ensure quality patient care. About 100 nurses from Local 1168 and Local 1126 in Utica joined hundreds of others in Albany last week for a rally at the state capitol to support pending bills that would cap mandatory overtime hours for nurses and increase the ratio of nurses to patients in hospitals.

“The statistics prove those better staffing saves patients’ lives,” said Diana Butsch, a Buffalo, N.Y., nurse and Local 1168 chief steward. She and other nurses said the ratio in critical care units should be no more than 1 nurse for 2 patients, and ideally one-to-one because each critically ill person needs constant monitoring. On regular patient floors, a nurse should have no more than four or five patients, but most have 10 to 15, or even more, and they “are incredibly sick people,” she said.

 

IN BRIEF:

  • CWA and IBEW members, community supporters and local elected officials will rally on June 2 in Burlington, VT., to show strong community opposition to the proposed sale of Verizon's telephone lines to North Carolina-based FairPoint Communications.  

    The Vermont rally, like the recent demonstration in New Hampshire, is focusing public attention on the harm this sale will cause the residents of northern New England.

    In testimony last week, CWA told the Vermont Public Service Board that consumers will suffer if the transaction is approved, "because FairPoint will have fewer resources to improve service quality than Verizon." 

    "Verizon, if it wanted to, has the resources to improve service quality. Even if FairPoint wanted to improve service quality, it would be very difficult to achieve given its limited and strained resources," Kenneth R. Peres, CWA Ph.D economist, told the board.

  • Wal-Mart executives are so pleased with themselves over the high-deductible health care plans they offer their workers – with deductibles up to $6,000 -- that they're actively pitching the idea to other employers. 

    "The greatest incentive for health and wellness is high deductibles," Wal-Mart Vice President Tom Emerick told the Dallas Morning News. "We'll tell anybody in America how we did it and how it works." 

    Emerick was in Dallas to present the plan to an audience of 300 local benefit providers and health care professionals. Most of Wal-Mart’s plans have deductibles of $350 to $1,000, but some go as staggeringly high as $6,000, the paper reported.