CenturyLink/Qwest: Workers Organizing to Meet Challenges of Merger

Good paying jobs, strong contracts, and access to the jobs of the future are big issues for CWAers at CenturyLink, the company formed by the acquisition between CenturyLink and Qwest Communications.

There are about 14,000 CWA-represented workers at Qwest and 3,700 at Century Link. About 20,000 Century Link workers have no union representation. The CWA-represented CenturyLink workers worked for Century Tel and Embarq, formerly the local telephone division of Sprint.

“Organizing is the only way that we are going to protect what we’ve fought for and to secure a future for CWA members at the company, said CWA Local 4370 President Harry Williamson. Local 4370 in Lorain, Ohio, organized CWA’s first Century Link unit in 1978 and has fought the company’s efforts to outsource jobs.

“Management will try to move as many jobs as it can to the non-union parts of the new company,” said CWA Executive Vice President Annie Hill. “All call center work at Qwest is now done by CWA members. At Century Link, just 10 percent of call center workers have union representation.”

CWAers at Qwest say organizing is critical to maintaining their benefits following the merger. “Maintaining our health care is a huge issue with members,” said Local 7906 President Ken Saether, whose local represents 400 workers at Qwest and 75 at CenturyLink in Oregon. Management must negotiate changes in health care and other benefits at Qwest. That’s not the case at CenturyLink.

“The company will do everything in its power to try to dilute our heavily-organized Qwest bargaining units through attrition, or by transferring jobs to non-union parts of the new company,” said Saether. “That’s why organizing at CenturyLink is so important.”

“Building our union’s strength at the new company is the only way to increase our leverage at the bargaining table so that we protect what we have,” Hill said.