A message to members from the
Combined Bargaining Committee on behalf of the Regional Bargaining
Committees for District 1 (Verizon North), 2 and 13 (Verizon
mid-Atlantic) and the IBEW:
After many months of bargaining with Verizon Communications, our united
bargaining committees have reached an agreement in principle with
management pending document review. More detailed information on
the settlement and the ratification vote will be provided by your local.
Throughout this process, we focused on ensuring our place in the work of
the future.
Our critical goals also included health care for active and retired
workers, retirement security and a fair wage increase.
The involvement and mobilization of tens of thousands of our members
made a huge difference in these negotiations. All of us together showed
our strength, our commitment, our determination
to get the best possible agreement.
We're proud to have represented the 65,000 union members at Verizon in
these negotiations.
Read more about this agreement.......
A big victory for a campaign dubbed "One Big Bang"
has created a new unit of The Newspaper Guild-CWA comprising 225 workers
at the largest newspaper company in northern California's Bay Area.
Reporters, photographers, copy editors and other
newsroom workers at nine papers owned by Denver-based MediaNews Group
cast ballots June 13 at seven polling sites in an election run by the
National Labor Relations Board.
"This vote represents a powerful investment in the
future of journalism in the Bay Area, one that's going to move us all
forward, both staff and managers," said Contra Costa Times reporter Sara
Steffens, co-chair of the organizing committee. "It will be good for our
news coverage and good for our communities."
The election capped a nine-month organizing drive
that began after MediaNews merged newsroom operations at the Oakland
Tribune and four smaller newspapers with the non-union Contra Costa
Times. After the merger, MediaNews withdrew recognition of the existing
Guild unit.
Rather than play defense, the Northern California
Media Workers,
TNG-CWA Local 39521, decided to organize all the papers
that were now part of what MediaNews calls its Bay Area News Group
(BANG) - East Bay. Workers called their campaign, "One Big Bang: One
Guild Universe."
TNG-CWA President Linda Foley said the BANG victory
is part of an ongoing effort for the Guild at MediaNews, building both
worker and community support.
"Using strategic industry funds, we have focused on
the importance of having quality, local journalism," Foley said. "The
journalists at BANG saw a union that was strong and could fight for them
and their profession. The terrific group of Guild supporters who have
hung on at what used to be the Alamedia Newspaper Group now find
themselves in a bigger, stronger and more powerful Guild, ready to
ensure that they are partners -- not pawns -- in an industry
transitioning into a digital world."
Despite a strong counter-campaign by management and
anti-union consultants, the BANG organizers ran a positive campaign.
They repeatedly reached out to MediaNews executives and publicly stated
that both the Guild and management cared deeply about the papers'
quality and future of journalism.
"We're looking forward to working together with
management to ensure our papers and web sites are as efficient and
high-quality as possible," said Karl Fischer, another Contra Costa Times
reporter and a campaign co-chair. "We know management is interested in
those goals too."
Contract negotiations are expected to be underway
soon. Currently, members are talking about contract priorities at the
bargaining table and who they want to represent them at the bargaining
table.
CWA's Executive Board has approved a statement
endorsing Senator Barack Obama for president of the United States, and
will be submitting it to the Resolutions Committee for action by
delegates at this month's 70th Annual Convention in Las Vegas.
The statement anticipates the critical changes that
workers and working families can expect from an Obama administration
after the hardships and challenges of the last 7 1/2 years.
Senator Obama has made clear his commitment to CWA's
four key issues, the Employee Free Choice Act, universal health care,
fair trade and good jobs and financial security for retirees.
"The differences between Senator Obama and the
presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Senator John McCain, could not
be more clear-cut," the resolution states. "It is the choice between
fundamental change for the better for working Americans or four more
years of policies that favor the rich, that ship jobs overseas, that
thwart the rights of workers to organize and bargain contracts, that
leave health care decisions to the whims of insurance companies, that
attempt, again, to privatize Social Security. And the list goes on." 
Obama has repeatedly pledged to support and sign the
Employee Free Choice Act, telling the AFL-CIO convention in April that,
"It's time we had a president who didn't choke saying the word, 'union.'
A president who knows it's the Department of Labor and not the
Department of Management. And a president who strengthens our unions by
letting them do what they do best -- organize our workers."
McCain not only voted against the Employee Free
Choice Act, he has a track record of supporting anti-union
"right-to-work" laws, voting to let employers hire permanent
replacements during a strike and voting to deny collective bargaining
rights for police and firefighters, as well as TSA airport screeners,
the Board noted.
On health care, Obama is committed to universal,
affordable coverage. While he has laid out a detailed plan, he has made
clear that he is open to new ideas, including those from CWA's health
care campaign.
As the Board statement describes, McCain's only plan
for health care reform is to make a bad situation worse. McCain wants to
make employer-provided health care benefits part of taxable income.
Experts say the likely effect would be the end of employer health plans,
pushing workers into the private health care market where insurance
companies could continue to refuse coverage.
On trade issues, Obama supports fair trade agreements
with labor, safety and environmental protections. He has been a staunch
opponent of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement and other pacts that are
bad for American workers and workers in other countries.
McCain, the Board said, "has never seen a trade deal
he didn't like." Despite the loss of more than 1 million good, American
jobs to the North American Free Trade Agreement, he continues to see the
pact as good for America. He has enthusiastically voted for all
subsequent trade agreements and "fast track" bills allowing the
president to bypass Congress when negotiating trade deals.
McCain also remains an eager supporter of privatizing
Social Security. In his Senate career he has voted many times to
undermine the system, from his support of deep benefit cuts to his
refusal to back a plan that would have created a strategic reserve for
Social Security through a slight reduction in tax cuts for the rich.
Senator Obama adamantly opposes schemes to privatize
Social Security and has pledged to take steps to ensure that it remains
solvent. Unlike McCain, he doesn't support a plan to raise the
retirement age for Americans and has laid out a strong agenda for
corporate reform to protect workers' pensions.
The Board's resolution recognizes not only Obama's
shared values with CWA, but the revolution that his "hopeful, spirited
campaign" has been for millions of Americans. He "has invigorated a new
generation of voters and touched Americans of all ages -- Democrats and
Republicans -- who have felt discouraged and hopeless over the last 7
1/2 years," the Board said.
The Board urges CWA delegates to resolve not just to
support Obama but to "use every tool at our disposal and give generously
of our time to work to elect him and to elect Democrats to Congress to
ensure that his pro-worker policies have the support of true majorities
in both the U.S. House and Senate."
"CWA will work as never before to get out members to
the polls on November 4, 2008, to cast their votes to transform our
country's political landscape and restore the rights, dignity and
financial security of America's workers and working families," the
proposed resolution concludes.
In a victory for
CWA's Speed Matters campaign, the
Federal Communications Commission this week released its order raising
its definition of "high speed" broadband service from 200 kilobits per
second (kbps) to 768 kbps for downloading. The definition hadn't been
changed in nine years.
While the new definition is not quite the 2 megabits
downstream and 1 megabit upstream that CWA urged, the FCC did adopt
other CWA recommendations. Significantly, the new order requires
broadband providers to report upload speeds as well as download speeds,
acknowledging that most applications today - uploading video to YouTube,
teleconferencing, telemedicine and interactive distance learning -
require two-way communication.
Further, the FCC adopted another CWA Speed Matters
recommendation to collect detailed information about the actual number
of subscribers by census tract, moving away from its flawed methodology
of claiming an area had broadband if there was only one subscriber in a
zip code. CWA was heavily involved in the rulemaking process.
There is one problem in the FCC Order that must be
corrected, in CWA's view. Unlike current data collection, this order
does not require broadband providers to report separately the number of
residential and business subscribers. Without this information, the FCC
will not be able to track the number of households that subscribe to
broadband -- a key metric in any assessment of broadband adoption. CWA
has already contacted the FCC about the need for this change.
The FCC Order makes passage of S. 1492 -- the
Broadband Data Improvement Act now pending in the Senate -- more
important than ever. S. 1492 and the companion H.R. 3919 that has
already passed the House complement the new requirements in the FCC
Broadband Data Order. The legislation would make funds available to
states to collect broadband data and to create local public-private
partnerships to create community plans to accelerate broadband
availability and adoption.
Speed Matters is a CWA Strategic Industries Fund
campaign to promote the rollout of faster Internet networks to create
jobs and spur the U.S. economy. For more information:
www.speedmatters.org.
