August 30, 2007

CWA Launches Campaign for Quality Health Care for All

CWA is launching a union wide campaign to spotlight the health care crisis and its devastating effects on working families.  CWA's campaign will be built on an electoral, legislative and mobilization strategy that will engage CWA members in an all out effort to convince elected officials and political candidates to champion comprehensive health care reform. 

The keystone of CWA's campaign is the Stewards Army of members and retirees who will mobilize, along with other unions and allied organizations, to press for comprehensive reform.  A network of coordinators is being recruited to help train CWA members and retirees to become health care activists. In the months leading up to the 2008 elections, activists will be asked to meet with key members of Congress, communicate the urgent need for serious health care reform that meets CWA's principles, and hold them accountable for enacting legislation to achieve comprehensive reform by the year 2012. 

Another important element is CWA's health care website, www.healthcarevoices.org.  On the site, CWA members can post personal accounts of their experiences with the health care system and why they think health care reform is so important. These stories will be used in the meetings with congressional representatives and candidates to demonstrate the widespread demand for meaningful reform. 

The website also serves as a resource center on health care, with up to date information on CWA's health care campaign as well as on political, legislative and policy developments, access to reports and studies and links to useful sites. 

CWA's campaign goes hand-in-hand with the AFL-CIO's drive to secure health care for all in America, which it will launch at events over the Labor Day weekend. "In America, no one should go without health care," is the AFL-CIO's message. More information on the AFL-CIO campaign is available at http://www.aflcio.org/issues/healthcare/.

"The health care crisis goes well beyond the 47 million Americans who lack health care coverage," said CWA Vice President Annie Hill, head of the Executive Board Committee on Health Care. "It's about working families, including CWA members, who have suffered attacks on their benefits from their employers.  And it is about union employers that face a competitive disadvantage from companies that refuse to provide quality health care. This is not the way the health care system should operate in America.  We can do better than this."

AT&T Cited for Cooperative Efforts with Workers, CWA

AT&T has been included by American Rights at Work (ARAW) in its annual "Labor Day List" of "socially-responsible" companies that stand out in the corporate world for working cooperatively with workers and their unions. In singling out AT&T as one of seven companies that was honored for helping "redefine labor relations in a global economy," ARAW said, "AT&T has proven that a large company can have a cooperative relationship with its workers' unions and still remain competitive and profitable."

The group praised AT&T for working together with CWA to return thousands of outsourced tier 1 DSL/Internet support jobs to the United States. So far this year, AT&T has announced plans to open seven call centers, creating over 3,000 union jobs.

ARAW also applauded AT&T and the other Labor Day List recipients for "embracing higher labor standards than those currently mandated by U.S. labor law." One of the other honorees, SCA Tissue, has, along with AT&T, negotiated card check and neutrality agreements.

Last year, Cingular, now AT&T Mobility, was presented with ARAW's "Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award" for respecting workers' organizing rights.

In a related note, workers at AT&T are continuing to organize at the company's wireless division. Just last week, the American Arbitration Association certified union recognition for 22 network technicians in Mississippi, and this week, CWA filed cards with the AAA for nearly 1,100 sales associates in Florida.

Techs Tell Verizon Business Execs: Keep Your Promises

Angered that Verizon Business has been hiring entry-level technicians at higher rates than are being paid to more senior and higher-ranking workers, and the increased the use of outside contractors in New England, 63 Verizon Business techs urged the company's top executives to halt the practices and make good on their promises to begin addressing the workers' concerns.

"Many techs are frustrated that the company has begun to hire techs from the outside as Tech IIIs at a much higher rate of pay than employees who have worked for the company for years," the techs wrote this week in a certified letter to John Killian and Bob Toohey, Verizon Business's president and vice president for human resources. To add insult to injury, the company has been requiring its experienced technicians to train inexperienced new hires who are just starting out and being paid at higher rates of pay.

"This is unfair, especially to the techs who have shown years of loyalty to the company," said the letter signed by each of the technicians, who work at company locations in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

The techs also asked Killian and Toohey to live up to promises that the company had made immediately after they began agitating for a union. In captive audience meetings, management urged the workers to give the company "a chance" and promised that it would take care of any concerns that they had.

More public officials are adding their voices to the many calling on CEO Ivan Seidenberg to respect workers' right to organize through card check. Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley urged the CEO to allow the workers to organize "without management interference, harassment or intimidation" and to honor card-check as the company had done "in past organizing campaigns." Rochester, New York, Mayor Robert Duffy asked Seidenberg to give the workers "the freedom" to organize by card check or NLRB election, and the county executive for St. Louis County, in Missouri, Charlie Dooley, urged the company's top executive to "allow your employees to assemble with as little hindrance as possible."

AFA-CWA Files for Election at Compass Airlines

With support from an overwhelming majority of the employees, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA filed for a representation election at Compass Airlines, a new regional airline owned by Northwest Airlines.

"It is unfortunate that Compass management refused to recognize the intention of 90 percent of their flight attendants" by refusing to grant consent recognition, said AFA-CWA President Pat Friend.  "In spite of the fact that management would rather go through the long and drawn out process of a formal election, we look forward to having our new colleagues from Compass join with tens of thousands of flight attendants" currently represented by the union.

The rapidly growing airline expects to have 300 employees on the payroll by the end of the year.  It began daily flights in May between Minneapolis and Dulles Airport near Washington, and soon will be serving hubs in Detroit and Memphis.

An election will be scheduled by the National Mediation Board, which oversees labor relations in the airline industry, once the agency verifies majority support in the unit.

IN BRIEF:

  • Medications that arrive on time can save a life, and the drivers and dispatchers employed by IBA Molecular are proud of what they do, delivering pharmaceuticals to hospitals. They're also proud to be union. They voted 21-18 in an NLRB election to bring their unit of 43 into CWA Local 1032, Ewing, N.J.

    Local Organizer Mikki Santiago worked with the organizing committee, helping them overcome a classic anti union campaign, complete with captive audience meetings.

    Said Local 1032 President Jim Marketti, "The employer attempted to intimidate the employees with the threat that if they unionized, a strike would occur. We thought that was peculiar since it was the employer talking about a strike and not the employees. I guess we know what the employer is really afraid of."

    The workers' campaign was built upon the desire for better pay and benefits and respect. It was their third attempt to organize.  Said Marketti, "Their previous attempts never got as far as an NLRB election; they fell apart. This time they held together."

  • The oft-quoted number was 45 million, then 46 million and now the number of uninsured Americans has risen to 47 million, according to the Commerce Department's Census Bureau.

    George Bush's Texas had the highest rate of uninsured, with 24.1 percent of residents without health care coverage. Collectively, the southern and western United States had the highest uninsured rates, accounting for more than 32 million people without health care.

    The percentage of Americans with either employer-paid insurance or government-sponsored health coverage continues to drop, according to the census and other reports.

  • The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration has refused a request from the families and fellow miners devastated by the loss of six men in Utah this month to have the Mine Workers' union represent them during the investigation. 

    "This means that there will be no independent voice at the table in MSHA's investigation, questioning the actions of both the company and the federal government in this disaster," Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts said. "These families should have the right to be full participants in this investigation, and they should be able to designate whoever they want to be their representatives."

    The so-called mine "safety and health" agency is run by a former mining executive whose track record at his worksites was dismal – twice the national average for rate of injuries. Even with Republicans in charge last year, President Bush couldn't get them to approve Richard Stickler's nomination. So as Bush has done with other "unpopular" appointments, he took advantage of a loophole in the law and gave Stickler the job while Congress was in recess.

    The Utah mine, owned by Murray Energy, is nonunion, but federal rules are supposed to allow the Mine Workers to represent workers at any mine, union or not, at the workers' request.