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Despite strong Democratic opposition, the House of
Representatives voted 248-169 to approve a blatant attack on
workers' rights as part of the Federal Aviation Administration
Reauthorization bill. Some 157 Democrats voted against the
measure.
CWA President Larry Cohen said that "the FAA
Reauthorization Bill contains a cynical attack on organizing
rights that should never have even been considered. It is
consistent with lobbying by Delta and the leadership of the
right wing majority."
The provision provides that a majority of workers has to
express interest or support for a union before the
representation process can even begin. What is not enshrined in
law is that if a majority of workers votes for union
representation, those workers get their union.
"This is reprehensible in this or any democracy. Fair
minded Senators should reject this bill and return it to the
conference. This is not a clerical error; it is a deliberate
attack on workplace rights. We are waiting for Senators to stand
up for democracy at work!" Cohen said.
CWA activists from the Leg-Pol conference took that message
to Capitol Hill this week.
CWA, AFA-CWA and 17 other unions representing nine million
workers also joined together to condemn the deal and urge the
House and Senate not to gut transportation workers' rights.
CWA President Larry Cohen talks about what's at stake here.
And watch
Rep. George Miller (D-CA) stand up on the House floor against
this attack on workers' rights.
More than 700 CWA activists covered Capitol Hill as part of
CWA's Legislative-Political conference in Washington. Their
message to senators, representatives and staff: we're fighting
back to restore democracy and economic justice for working
families. CWA activists visited more than 350 congressional
offices.
CWA President Larry Cohen talks about what's at stake for
working families.
CWA President Larry Cohen said it will take real resistance,
"peaceful nonviolent resistance," to confront the
attacks on working families. "They attack us in every way,
our jobs, our health care, our pensions. They control our
political system. In the past we used resistance to overcome
this assault. We need that today. We need a path and we will
find it."
Click
here to watch highlights of the Leg-Pol conference. And get
more updates at www.cwa-union.org.
Broken Senate Rules
CWA President Larry Cohen said the latest attack on workers'
rights — the ongoing effort by the Republican minority to
rewrite the Railway Labor Act and make it harder for
transportation workers to have a union representation election
— was an outrage and the direct result of our broken Senate
rules. "Because of those rules, no single advancement in
workers' rights was ever discussed on the floor of the Senate,
not for a single second," but the Republican minority can
take draconian provisions and put them into law, he said.
Rep. Jeff Merkley (D-OR).
The only advancement in workers' rights we've won was the
rule change made by the National Mediation Board last year that
finally gave transportation workers the same democratic election
process for union elections that is the standard in our country,
Cohen said, and now, "this advancement is under attack, as
we are, every minute."
"We need to stand up and fight back. We will fight back
when we go to the Senate, every single minute that we're up
there."
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), as a freshman senator, was a key
supporter of CWA's campaign to reform the Senate rules, and told
activists he will continue to fight to end the filibuster rule
and other provisions that block legislation from ever getting to
the Senate floor.
Economic Justice
and Ending the Offshoring of Jobs
A bi-partisan bill to end the practice of using U.S. taxpayer
dollars to support the offshoring of call center jobs was a big
focus of activists' lobbying and speakers at the Leg-Pol
conference.
Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY).
Ron Collins, CWA's chief of staff, led a panel on the bill
introduced by Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) Local 13100 Vice
President Patrice Mears-Swift and a T-Mobile call center worker
(who can't be identified because of T-Mobile USA's anti-union
intimidation) talked about how their jobs are at risk, as
companies like Verizon and others look to send good jobs
overseas.
Mears-Swift, who works at a Verizon residential customer
service center, said Verizon was one of the biggest opponents of
the call center bill. "We need to keep good jobs here in
the U.S., to protect taxpayers and communities from being taken
advantage of by companies that promise everything when they hope
to get tax breaks, but move jobs overseas all too quickly. A
$100 billion company like Verizon shouldn't be using its profits
to send jobs overseas."
Collins, who joined a media teleconference with Reps. Bishop
and Dave McKinley (R-WVA.), told reporters that CWA activists
were heading to Capitol Hill to tell members of Congress that
U.S. workers need the U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer
Protection Act.
Bishop, whose parents both were CWA members, told the Leg-Pol
activists that more cosponsors were signing on to the bill every
day, with 27 now on board.
The bill makes companies that move call center jobs overseas
ineligible for federal grants or guaranteed loans; requires
overseas workers to disclose their physical location at the
start of a call, and enables consumers to request that their
call be transferred to a representative within the U.S.
Getting
Corporate Money out of Politics
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN).
Leg-Pol activists heard from several speakers who outlined
exactly how workers can regain their voice in politics, by
getting corporate money out of politics and reversing the
Supreme Court's Citizens United decision of two years ago that
opened the door to this democracy-destroying effort.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) said we need to build the national
will to get rid of Citizens United. "Democracy is not for
sale. We need a constitutional amendment that states the
obvious: corporations are not people."
Bob Edgar, president and CEO of Common Cause, said the
Citizens United decision is enabling corporations and the
wealthy to hijack our government and take away the voice of
ordinary Americans. CWA and Common Cause are working together,
to restore democracy to the people.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT.) agreed that "unity is the
issue and fight back is the slogan. At the end of the day, there
are more of us than them. We can roll over these guys because
they have nothing to say about what's important to working
families. But we must have a constitutional amendment to make it
clear that corporations are not people."
Voter
Suppression
NAACP President Ben Jealous.
Below: Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS).
Efforts are underway in 38 states to deprive citizens of the
rights to vote. This has nothing to do with voter fraud and
everything to do with keeping people from voting.
Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, said the "flip side
of buying elections is suppressing the vote." As much as
Republicans tried to find big examples of voter fraud, they just
couldn't, he said, coming up with maybe 25 cases per year over
50 years. "Our ability to defend our rights is leveraged on
our ability to vote and turn out big numbers at the ballot box.
The other side gets that, and that's why they're fighting hard
to keep people from voting."
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said the voting requirements that
states are adopting "are intended to discourage people from
showing up to vote. I don't have to show a photo id to pay my
taxes. We need to set public policy so that it makes sense and
that we don't unfairly target people."
CWA Secretary-Treasurer Annie Hill.
A panel with CWA Secretary-Treasurer Annie Hill, D4 Vice
President Seth Rosen and D6 Vice President Claude Cummings,
looked at how CWA activists in Ohio, Wisconsin and Texas are
fighting back against voter suppression.
Biden: 'We're
Going to Make the State of the Unions Stronger'
Vice President Joe Biden.
Forty years ago, CWA was the first union to endorse
29-year-old Joe Biden in his campaign to become a U.S. senator
from Delaware. At CWA's Leg-Pol conference, Vice President Joe
Biden thanked a new generation of CWAers after CWA endorsed the
re-election of President Barack Obama and the Vice President.
Read
more on the endorsement here.
"Last week, President Obama talked to you about making
the state of the union stronger," Biden said. "I want
to talk to you about how we're going to make the state of the
unions stronger."
Watch
Biden's speech here.
Pelosi: 'We Owe
It to Our Founders' to Keep the American Dream Alive
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Paying tribute to CWA's historic role in making the American
Dream possible, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi praised CWA
members for working hard today to restore the path to the middle
class, just as CWA founders some 70 years ago got together to
work for better wages, working conditions and benefits.
"That is a value, that is a tradition, that is a
vision," she told CWA Leg-Pol activists, and the Democratic
Party stands with the labor movement in its commitment to "reigniting
the American Dream. Pelosi was greeted with cheers of "best
speaker ever" and "you'll be back."
Elections matter, she said. "We owe it to our founders,
to keep going for our democracy."
Watch
Pelosi's remarks here.
Moving Working
Families' Issues Forward
Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA).
Rep. Joe Baca, (D-CA), said building relationships with
members of Congress was critical to getting lawmakers' attention
and support on the issues that matter to working families.
"We want our families to have the same opportunities that
others have, that we can pay our mortgage and send our kids to
college."
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) outlined his six point plan to get
the economy moving again. It includes investing in
infrastructure and manufacturing, from smart grids and broadband
access to a national manufacturing strategy. Another key point
is the financial transaction tax that will fund programs that
working families need.
Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) said when progressives join
together with unions, community organizations and like minded
people, "you can't break that." And that will be
critical in the 2012 elections. "The real prize in 2012
will be protecting our workforce, our environment, social
security and retirement benefits. On those issues, the lines are
drawn for us."
CWA members are ready to "stand up, fight back."
AFL-CIO's Rich Trumka told CWA activists that "workers
are turning the tide against attacks on their organizing and
collective bargaining rights by 'turning outrage into
mobilization and action.'"
He called CWA's organizing and political action campaigns
"models" for the labor movement. "No politician
or political party will give us the power, because our power
comes from us."
Click
here for more highlights from the Leg-Pol conference.
CWA Officers
Meet for First Presidents' Meeting
Following the CWA Legislative-Political Conference, the first
biennial presidents' meeting was held to deal with appeals. It
was well attended by CWA local leaders.
AFA-CWA reached a tentative agreement with US Airways this
week on a single, combined contract to unite the 6,700 Flight
Attendants at the airline from US Airways and the pre-merger
America West. The airlines merged in 2005, and union negotiators
fought hard to reach a fair agreement in the bargaining, which
eventually went to federal mediation.
The AFA-CWA presidents of each pre-merger airline, Mike
Flores, representing pre-merger US Airways Flight Attendants and
Deborah Volpe, representing pre-merger America West Flight
Attendants, issued the following joint statement.
"This is about moving forward. These negotiations have
been arduous, frustrating and far too long," they stated,
noting "the process began in the midst of an industry
restructuring and on the cusp of this new consolidation era.
Until we gained the right to federal mediation with oversight by
the National Mediation Board, management did not take our
members seriously. Now, they do. We have been focused on
reaching an agreement that recognizes the contributions of
Flight Attendants to the success of the airline and getting that
agreement in the hands of members for their consideration. And
now, we will."
After a full review, the tentative agreement will be
presented to members in a ratification vote.
An ad hoc committee of passenger service agents organizing
for a CWA voice at American Airlines convinced a U.S. bankruptcy
judge to block a huge multimillion dollar payoff by parent
company AMR Corp. to financial firms working on the airline's
bankruptcy reorganization.
AMR proposed the multimillion dollars payments to financial
advisers despite moving to cut airline workers' jobs and
benefits.
Last week the bankruptcy judge blocked the company from
entering into agreements to make large multimillion-dollar
payments to other advisors until a hearing at the end of
February.
Despite having $4 billion on hand, AMR has paid just $6.5
million of the $100 million it owes to workers' pension plan.
One leader of the agents' organizing campaign said that the
fact that the agents' Ad Hoc Committee was recognized by the
bankruptcy court is gratifying. "This counters the
company's claim that our Ad Hoc committee would be
powerless," said American Airlines agent Regina Reed.
"Organizing together gives us strength."
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