CWA Joins with Occupy Activists to Protest Corporate Greed at Verizon
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Chanting, “We are the 99 percent; you are the 99 percent,” Verizon workers represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) yesterday marched through downtown Washington, D.C., joining with activists from the Occupy movement. Some protesters carried signs that read, “Occupy Verizon.”
Latasha Carpenter of CWA Local 2108 said she felt a strong feeling of solidarity with the Occupy protesters. She told us:
There’s an attack on working families across the world. It’s not just unions—it’s about everybody. What the people of Occupy DC and across the world are trying to do—we have to fight. It’s a global movement, and it’s going to flourish…a lot of people fought to get us where we are now….Those of us who are having the baton passed onto us, we have to take it and say, “We’re not going back.”
Beginning their march at Freedom Plaza, just blocks from the White House, where the “Stop the Read the rest of this entry »
Creating Jobs the First Step to Ending Inequality in America
Adele Stan, a journalist and lifelong member of the labor movement, reports on a timely forum on inequality and jobs at Georgetown University today.
In Washington, D.C., as in dozens of other U.S. cities, the 99 percent movement is inescapable, even in the politest of venues, as demonstrated today at a forum titled “Jobs, Inequality and the Role of Government,” sponsored at the Georgetown Law School. The movement’s chant, “We are the 99 percent,” is meant to draw the distinction between the average American and the top 1 percent who possess 42 percent of the nation’s wealth.
Sponsored by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University and the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the forum brought together economists and academics with representatives of labor, the financial community and the Obama administration. The 99 percent movement, as represented by young people working with Occupy D.C. and the October 2011 protests, made its presence felt in the question-and-answer session that followed opening remarks by CWA President Larry Cohen, Goldman Sachs Senior Investment Strategist Abby Joseph Cohen, and Jason Furman, White House adviser and deputy director of the National Economic Council.
Cohen presented a series of slides that told a grim tale of the economic fate of the average American who, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has suffered virtually stagnant wages while generating a nearly 200-percent growth in productivity. Cohen’s final chart suggested a major reason for the productivity/compensation disparity: compared with other major democracies, the United States lags far behind in collective bargaining coverage. Indeed, in a chart showing 10 major democracies—Germany, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the U.K.—the United States ranked dead last.
As the representative of Goldman Sachs, which has become the poster child for corporate greed on both Read the rest of this entry »
Global Unions File Complaint Against T-Mobile’s Parent
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A complaint filed today with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) describes how Deutsche Telekom has engaged in anti-union activity in the United States that violates the organization’s guidelines for multinational enterprises.
The complaint, filed by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the German union ver.di and the global union federation UNI Global Union, details the union-busting activity of Deutsche Telekom’s wholly owned subsidiary T-Mobile USA, which “has engaged in a pattern of conduct designed to undermine and frustrate employees’ efforts to choose union representation freely and to deny employees their rights to collective bargaining.”
American Rights at Work Honors Cromwell, United Streetcar and Founders
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The voice of America’s workers and middle class rang out loud and clear at the 7th Annual American Rights at Work (ARAW) Awards Celebration earlier this week in Washington, D.C.
Kimberly Freeman Brown, American Rights at Work executive director, set the theme of the evening when she said to the 400 participants, ”Our aim is to show the Wisconsin teacher and the Washington machinist that they are not alone.”
Bo McCurry, president of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 2143 in Sparta, Tenn., described life on the frontlines in the battle to save America’s middle class. His plant has been repeatedly honored as productive and effective. Yet the employer, Dutch multinational Philips Lighting, is closing the plant and shipping those jobs to Mexico. McCurry said:
We’ve got to think about our trade laws and what we’re doing to protect our interests here. If we’re going to have a future at all, we’ve got to tell our children that making things in this country is important. We need manufacturing jobs. We’ve earned our place in the global competition and we’re willing to keep improving and keep competing, but when we do that and then have it yanked from us, well that’s just a kick in the head.
You can read McCurry’s entire speech here.
In contrast to Philips, Oregon’s United Streetcar, one of the recipients of the evening’s Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Awards, was honored as an example for other businesses to emulate.
Proposed NLRB Rule Change Draws Wide Support
The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB’s) modest, common-sense proposed rule to remove roadblocks for workers who want to vote on whether to form a union has drawn praise from working men and women, political leaders and activists around the country. Here’s a sample of the comments:
Electrical Workers (IBEW) President Edwin Hill:
By eliminating delays, the board is not only bringing some balance. It is also saving money for taxpayers who foot the bill because of unnecessary litigation.
Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Larry Cohen:
Workers at T-Mobile USA and nearly every other company know firsthand how U.S. corporations use delay to keep workers from making a fair choice about union representation. The changes proposed by the National Labor Relations Board are a first and modest step toward ending some of that delay.
Colombian Trade Unionists: Free Trade Deal Would Harm Workers
The proposed U.S. Colombia Free Trade Agreement will only exacerbate already “critical” conditions of poverty and repression in Colombia. Further, the labor action plan that was negotiated between the United States and Colombia in April does not include provisions to verify that workers are being treated better, several Colombian trade unionists said today.
Six union leaders, members of the CUT and CTC labor federations, are spending the week in Washington, D.C., urging lawmakers not to ratify the agreement until real, verifiable progress is made in ending the violence against union members and restoring human and workers’ rights in Colombia.
In a statement, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said now is not the time to advance the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. “We need to focus on domestic job creation efforts, not passing another NAFTA-style agreement.”
But most importantly, with more than 2,850 trade unionists killed in the last 25 years, Colombia is still the most dangerous place in the world to be a union member. And when trade unionists are targeted for organizing to help raise the standard of living for Colombians, it perpetuates poverty that hurts all of Colombia’s people.
German Workers Rally For T-Mobile USA Employees’ Rights
More than 500 workers from ver.di, the German telecommunications workers union, today descended on Deutsche Telekom’s global annual shareholders’ meeting in Cologne to demand the company ensure its American employees at T-Mobile USA the same rights enjoyed by its German workforce.
The workers formed a human chain around the meeting venue and released black balloons as a sign of mourning for their U.S. co-workers’ rights.
In Germany, Deutsche Telecom recognizes the union and has a collective bargaining agreement with workers. But at its American subsidiary, T-Mobile USA, management harasses workers who try to join the union, and has implemented a company-wide strategy of refusing to recognize the workers’ choice of a union and collective bargaining rights.
Merger of AT&T and T-Mobile Good for Consumers, Workers
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The announcement over the weekend that AT&T is buying T-Mobile USA could benefit both consumers and employees. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the deal offers tens of thousands of T-Mobile USA employees the opportunity to benefit from the pro-worker policies of AT&T, the only unionized U.S. wireless company. Some 42,000 AT&T mobility employees are represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Trumka adds:
For T-Mobile USA workers who want a voice in their workplace, this acquisition can provide a fresh start with T-Mobile management.
Global Unions Launch Campaign for Workers’ Rights at T-Mobile
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The global union movement has launched a major worldwide campaign to convince Deutsche Telekom to end its anti-union actions and allow employees at its T-Mobile USA subsidiary to join a union if they choose.
While Deutsche Telekom respects workers’ rights in its home country of Germany, T-Mobile workers in the United States and other countries face management campaigns of intimidation and harassment when they indicate they want to form a union and gain collective bargaining rights. Deutsche Telekom has repeatedly refused to stop the anti-union campaign being waged by T-Mobile USA.
“We expect better from Deutsche Telekom,” said International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) General Secretary Sharan Burrow.
Report: Romania Beats U.S. in Internet Connection Speed
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Just as the interstate highway system opened up the nation to fast transportation of goods and services in the 20th century, the road to economic prosperity in the 21st century rides on the Internet highway. But nearly half (49 percent) of U.S. residents have Internet connection speeds that do not meet the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) minimum broadband standards and, more importantly, the United States overall ranks in the bottom half of the world in broadband speed.
The “2010 Report of Internet Speeds in All 50 States” released today by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) found there are wide areas of the nation, both rural and urban, that do not have any broadband access at all. We even trail countries like Romania in broadband speed.
CWA President Larry Cohen told a Washington, D.C., press conference:
Improving broadband deployment, connection speeds, and adoption will help facilitate job and business growth across the nation.
The report shows that the rate of increase in U.S. Internet connection speed is so slow, it will take the United States 60 years to catch up with current Internet speeds in South Korea, the country with the fastest Internet connections.
