Building Bargaining Power At AT&T Mobility

Members at AT&T Mobility across the country are talking one-on-one with co-workers to build bargaining power.

This year, hundreds more AT&T Mobility workers have won a CWA voice, and that builds our union’s bargaining power.

In Puerto Rico, another 376 retail store and sales support workers won representation by CWA Local 3010 through majority sign up. The former Centennial Wireless workers join another 350 workers from the former Centennial Wireless in Puerto Rico who have won a CWA voice this year. In an intense campaign, CWA Local 3010 organizers and activists visited more than 20 stores and locations across the island.

Securing good health care benefits and the ability to take work breaks were among the workers’ top issues, said local organizer Javier Sepulveda. “They wanted to know how CWA could help them, and we got the message across effectively by having members from AT&T talk with them,” he said.

A key part of the campaign’s success was maintaining one-on-one contact, listening to workers’ concerns, and letting them know the value of a collective bargaining agreement, said District 3 Staff Representative Jorge Rodriguez who led the campaign.

Volunteer local union stewards Melvin Nazario, Rolando Hernandez and Elix Morales met with activists regularly to help them build worker support.

“Organizing is a duty for all local unions,” said Local President Rafael Castro-Torres. “It is what we must do to grow our union and is the only way to create better contracts and a stronger labor movement.”

Also this year, in separate campaigns in Alabama, Indiana, and Michigan, some 350 AT&T Mobility workers from Centennial joined CWA through majority sign up. They joined technicians and other Mobility workers from Alabama, Idaho and Washington in getting a CWA voice and strong representation.

CWA represents about 42,000 workers at AT&T Mobility, nearly 100 percent of all workers eligible for union representation. That proves two important points: 1) that workers want a union voice, but don’t want to endure a crushing campaign of harassment and intimidation from their employers to get it, and 2) that majority sign up works.

CWA first negotiated a majority signup and neutrality agreement with Southwestern Bell Mobile in the late 1980s that became the model for CWA agreements at Cingular Wireless, AT&T Mobility and other AT&T companies.