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‘Employers Should Take Page out of Cingular’s Labor Playbook’ |
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In a little more than a year, some 22,000 former AT&T employees who now work for Cingular Wireless have signed up to join the Communications Workers of America. Many live in right to work for less states such as Virginia, Mississippi and Texas. Overall, some 90 percent of Cingular’s employees, or nearly 40,000 workers, have CWA representation. And they did it without the employer harassment or worker fear of being fired that too often happens when workers choose to join a union.
This success reflects what happens when workers have free choice to join a union. Under the CWA-Cingular pact, the company agreed it would not interfere in workers’ choice to join a union and to recognize the union after a majority of workers at an eligible site indicates a desire for a union by signing union authorization cards. In fact, the process has worked so well, the company has filed a brief with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) supporting majority verification.
According to the workers’ advocacy group American Rights at Work (ARAW):
Like a growing number of employers, Cingular Wireless rejects knee-jerk hostile labor relations practices, and instead invests energies toward respecting its employees, their rights, and their decisions on whether to join a union.
ARAW’s Executive Director Mary Beth Maxwell says:
The nation’s top wireless carrier proves that worker-friendly labor policies and financial success are not mutually exclusive. More employers should take a page out of Cingular Wireless’ labor relations playbook. They’ve replaced an old-fashioned model pitting management against its workers with a profitable, collaborative approach well suited for the 21st century workplace.
Union organizers meeting Dec. 8–9 in Washington, D.C., at the AFL-CIO Organizing Summit will closely examine the Cingular success story and explore strategies for implementing the lessons learned to improve efforts to build the union movement. Summit participants will focus on successful grassroots organizing techniques and innovative campaign strategies that have enabled workers to join unions despite the anti-union decisions of the Republican-dominated National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The summit comes after a summer in which AFL-CIO national unions finalized plans to put at least an additional $150 million a year into staffing, research and support for workers’ efforts to join unions.
Many employers, encouraged by the NLRB’s anti-union rulings that deny the freedom to join a union to graduate assistants and others, are fighting workers’ wishes to form unions. A 2005 study by Chirag Mehta and Nik Theodore of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois revealed that when faced with organizing drives:
- 30 percent of U.S. employers fire pro-union workers;
- 49 percent threaten to close a worksite if the union prevails;
- 51 percent coerce workers into opposing unions with bribery or favoritism; and
- 82 percent of employers hire union-busting consultants to fight organizing drives.
One such workplace is Verizon Wireless, one of Cingular’s competitors. Former Verizon Wireless employee Clyde Rucker says Verizon workers are treated as second-class citizens. Rucker was fired from his job as a senior customer representative at Verizon Wireless’ facilities in Laurel, Md., in 2003 after speaking up in favor of unions:
The majority of workers where I worked want a union, but because of the intimidation by management, they are afraid. They are even afraid to take a piece of literature from a union worker when they leave the parking lot.
They changed work schedules at any time. Many of our workers were single mothers with children, changing schedules was a problem. Even with the [federal] Family and Medical Leave Act, many of my co-workers were fired because they claimed the workers were misusing that particular benefit. And without a union, no one has anywhere to go for a fair grievance hearing.
Management held captive audience meetings, telling us things like the union wouldn’t be good for our workplace, it would slow us down, it wouldn’t be as profitable. All of that was nonsense, of course, and I spoke up in those meetings.
If Congress passes the Employee Free Choice Act, the employees of Verizon Wireless would all have the right to card-check recognition enjoyed by Cingular employees.
Participants in the Organizing Summit will rally Dec. 8 on Capitol Hill to call for passage of the act, which will be re-introduced when the new Congress convenes in January. During the campaign, workers hit the stump to let congressional candidates know how important the freedom to form unions is to working families. Some 215 U.S. House members co-sponsored the bill—two short of a majority—and 43 members of the Senate signed on.
If passed, the Employee Free Choice Act would:
- Allow employees to freely choose whether to form unions by signing cards authorizing representation;
- Provide mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes; and
- Establish stronger penalties for violations of employee rights when workers seek to form unions and during first-contract negotiations.
To register for the summit or for more information, call Tiffany Heath at 202-637-6247.
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