News

After working 12-hour shifts to restore phone service to much of Louisiana in the wake of devastating storms, Bell South technicians on loan from Shreveport, Baton Rouge, Monroe, Lake Charles and other areas were returning to their homes in late October.

“This year we celebrate our second annual customer service professional day by highlighting contract language and policies that bring out the best in our members,” said CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen, in kicking off CWA’s annual Customer Service/Marketing Conference in Boston in October.

CWA locals in New York City and San Jose, Calif., Teamsters in Philadelphia and Electrical Workers in Topeka, Kansas have mobilized behind an AFL-CIO boycott of direct broadcast TV provider DISH Network/ EchoStar, in support of bargaining for nearly 200 DISH workers.

At their national conference in Milwaukee, nearly 150 CWA operators prepared to press for state and federal regulation and legislation to counteract the grim state of today’s telecommunications industry, resolved to reach out to the unorganized and sought new ways to position themselves as “customer

Two days before Sen. Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash Oct. 25, CWA President Morton Bahr stood with him at a union rally in Minneapolis, the kind of people-powered, high-energy, spirited event that Wellstone relished.