July 12, 2007

Cohen Joins Congressional Panel on Jobs, Outsourcing

CWA President Larry Cohen joined top political leaders and economists for a congressional roundtable Thursday on Capitol Hill to discuss the effects of globalization and outsourcing on American workers, and the role the government should play.

Cohen stressed the importance of passing the Employee Free Choice Act to give workers a collective voice and more job protection in the today's turbulent economy. He also discussed the impact of the United State's $60 billion trade deficit – at the same time China has a record $27 billion surplus. And he called for overhauling the broken American health care system, which is so grossly expensive to employers that it encourages them to take jobs overseas.

"When companies make investment decisions – in this country they have to provide workers with health care and that costs about $15,000 a year, almost as much as a minimum-wage annual income," Cohen said. "In other countries, they're figured out how to take that off the corporate balance sheet and move it to the social balance sheet."

The panel was put together by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chair of the House Committee on Financial Services. Members of Congress attending included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.), Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.). Economists included Alan Blinder of Princeton University, Matthew Slaughter of Dartmouth and Jeff Faux of the Economic Policy Institute.

Cohen, the only labor representative at the forum, noted the vast differences for workers between companies that recognize union rights and those that don't, citing the 3,000 AT&T tech support jobs that had been outsourced and are now moving back into the United States. "That happened because 185,000 workers at AT&T have collective bargaining rights and management there is prepared to bargain and listen," he said.

He contrasted that experience with Alcatel-Lucent, whose French workers have union rights and are collectively fighting job cuts. In the United States, where most Alcatel-Lucent workers don't have union representation, the company is freely slashing jobs.

Blinder, who has written extensively on outsourcing and argues that 30 to 40 million American jobs will be vulnerable within the next 20 years, gave the panel's main presentation.

"The offshoring revolution will lead to more unemployment, more imports and lower real wages in jobs that are potentially offshorable," he said, urging better safety nets for displaced workers and more and better education for jobs of the future.

He outlined the differences between "impersonal" services that can be outsourced and "personal" services that generally can't, from doctors patients see in person to nurses, taxi drivers and janitors. But radiologists, security analysts, accountants and others in "impersonal" jobs are on their way to joining call center workers in the march toward outsourcing.

"The dividing line between personal and impersonal services will move over time," Blinder said. "As information technology improves, more and more personal services will become impersonal. No one knows how far this will go."

NLRB Hands Big Win to Local 1104, Grad Students

In a big, long-awaited victory for CWA Local 1104 and graduate students working at a private research foundation, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that the students are employees and entitled to union representation and collective bargaining.

The ruling immediately affects more than 2,000 research assistants, support specialists and other employees of the Research Foundation at the State University of New York, who have been working with Local 1104 to organize for over six years. Ballots from elections held in Albany, Buffalo and Syracuse between 2002 and 2004 will begin being counted by NLRB officials next week.

"The decision of the board properly recognizes that the Research Foundation is a private employer and its employees deserve the rights guaranteed under the National Labor Relations Act," Local 1104 President George Bloom said.

CWA leaders said they are optimistic about the vote count, though they are disappointed that it has taken so long for the students to have their union rights upheld. "I am confident that after the ballots are counted we will be calling them brothers and sisters," District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton said. "CWA will then start the all-important task of gaining the respect on the job and securing the working conditions that only can be accomplished through collective bargaining."

The win comes three years after a major NLRB case was decided against graduate students serving as teaching assistants at Brown University, a private school. In that case, the NLRB ruled that the workers were not employees but students who don't have bargaining rights. The case didn't affect the thousands of graduate students CWA already represents on public campuses, including 5,000 Local 1104 members at SUNY.

In the CWA case, the NLRB found that because the students are working at a private foundation that is not part of the university system, they should be treated as employees with union rights. "The undisputed evidence demonstrates the existence of an economic relationship" between the students and the research foundation "rather than an educational relationship as in Brown," the board said.

The case was decided by a three-member panel of the five-member, Republican-majority board. Democrat Dennis Walsh and Republican Peter Kirsanow were in support; board Chairman Robert Battista voted against the union.

Brooks Sunkett, CWA vice president for public, health care and education workers, said the decision "will impact cases around the country, that's why it's so important. It sends a clear message to other workers that they, too, can have a union voice. It's encouraging to know that we can go out and organize them – and we will."

Retired C&T Staffer John Agee Dies at 75

John Agee was known as an effective negotiator and leader who helped members at AT&T deal with the transformation of Ma Bell into its various corporate incarnations following the company's breakup in the early 1980s.

Agee, who retired in 1991 as administrative assistant to Communications and Technologies Vice President Jim Irvine, died on July 7 at 75.

He began his career in the 1950s when he hired on as a switchman for Southwestern Bell in Dallas, Texas.  Agee went on to serve as a steward and then president of Local 6215.  He was named a CWA representative in 1972 and worked out of the Houston office.

Shortly after the Bell System breakup, Agee came to Washington in 1984 to work as assistant to Vice President Ron Allen for the AT&T Technologies unit – the manufacturing arm of the newly configured AT&T.  That office moved to Somerset, N.J., and in 1987 it was combined with the AT&T Communications unit.  Shortly thereafter, Agee became administrative assistant to Jim Irvine.

The C&T offices moved back to Washington, D.C. in July 1990, and that's where Agee worked until his retirement the following year.

IN BRIEF:

  • AT&T announced that as part of its agreement with CWA last fall to return thousands of contracted tech support jobs to the United States, it will be bringing 350 new jobs to Louisville, Ky., later this year.  The company will create a new customer care center in the downtown area to support AT&T Internet services.

    The announcement brings to about 1,800 the number of new tech support jobs AT&T has created or announced so far this year.  Other locations for new call centers are Texas, Indiana and Nevada.

  •  The National Labor Relations Board's General Counsel has filed a formal complaint against the Washington Post for failing to bargain with TNG-CWA over extra duties imposed on newsroom and commercial employees.

    The NLRB General Counsel determined that the Post repeatedly violated established federal labor law over "mandatory" subjects of bargaining beginning in 2006. The Post refused to bargain with TNG-CWA about employees' work on Washington Post radio and unilaterally implemented a system of unfair payments – and for the most part, non-payments – to Post employees who contribute to Washington Post Radio.

    The Post also was cited for refusing to negotiate over work demanded of employees for "The Onion," an independent weekly newspaper published by the Washington Post.

    The case is scheduled to go to trial before an administrative law judge in late September. The General Counsel is seeking back pay, with interest, for employees who were not compensated fairly for their work at The Post, along with other appropriate relief for employees.

  •  Americans are sometimes so sure and so proud of their rights and freedoms that they take them for granted -- assuming, for instance, that free speech protections apply everywhere, including at work. Wrong.

    Truth is, the First Amendment often doesn't apply on the job and exercising what you think are your rights could get you fired. That's why Working America, the AFL-CIO's community affiliate, has started an online Q&A called Ask a Lawyer. Simply write in with a question and check back for a response.

    Questions so far include concerns about work hours and breaks and whether an employer can control a worker's after-hours activities, such as dating a coworker or blogging. Check it out at www.workingamerica.org/askalawyer/.