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At its peak, the New Mexico Coalition of Public Safety Officers/CWA Local 7911 represented 500 police and sheriff's department employees. Then it lost nearly half its members when the state's collective bargaining law expired under Republican Gov. Gary Johnson.

After a 3 1/2-year struggle, TNG-CWA members at the Boston Globe overwhelmingly approved a contract Aug. 5 that significantly reduces workers' share of health care costs and provides the highest flat-dollar wage increase since 1996, as well as full retroactive pay increases.

CWA was a tough sell with Cingular Wireless employees in eastern Pennsylvania until they saw their job security on the line, learned about new benefits they would have under the union contract and saw the results of mobilization in another state by organized Cingular workers.

CWA bargainers in Verizon Southwest and Supply Chain negotiations are fighting back against the company's demands on contracting out and excessive mandatory overtime, and are seeking improvements in health care, employment security and wages, reported District 6 Vice President Andy Milburn.

In one of the mostly profoundly cynical, yet revealing, comments by a corporate robber baron, railroad tycoon Jay Gould, looking to break a strike in 1896, proclaimed: "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."