How Has the Telecom Industry Changed?

The historic base of CWA members, landline telephone service, is shrinking dramatically. Customers are choosing to go wireless or Voice over Internet (VoIP) through their cable TV or internet provider.

Not so long ago, long distance revenues were extraordinarily valuable. Today, there is no premium for long-distance service. Not so long ago, voice was a service that kept on producing revenue. Now it is given away for free.

The digital communications revolution has led to the convergence of previously separate voice, video, and data sectors. CWA employers now compete with largely non-union cable companies to deliver these triple-play services. Cable dominates the broadband market, as DSL loses subscribers to cable’s faster-speed Internet service. One-third of all Americans—and 60 percent of young adults—are wireless-only as tablets and smartphone usage explodes. Investments in next-generation 4G wireless promises to deliver high-speed broadband and video at speeds that compete with many wireline networks.

Where CWA employers have invested in high-speed broadband—Verizon’s FiOS, AT&T’s U-Verse, and CenturyLink’s nascent high-speed service—they are competing successfully against the cable triple play. The companies’ decisions about where and how to invest determines our future. Verizon is exiting landline networks and going all wireless, while AT&T still is investing in the landline network.

Union density in the converged telecommunications sector has dropped significantly. Cable is about 5 percent union, AT&T Mobility is the only union wireless company.

Our current organizing focus is T-Mobile, where we have partnered with ver.di, the German union that represents T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom. We’ve won tough fights to represent Cablevision workers in New York City, who join CWA-represented Comcast units in Pittsburgh, Detroit, and the Bay Area.

CWA is also building a movement to support policies that grow good union jobs in the telecommunications industry, including actions to block the offshoring of call center work and a focus on increasing investment in high-speed Internet to compete against the cable companies. 

Telecom Bargaining Update

Across the telecom industry, CWA members are facing some tough bargaining:

• At AT&T Southwest, 22,000 CWA members are covered by the contract that expires April 6, 2013; early bargaining got underway in mid-December.
• AT&T Southeast members ratified a new three-year agreement, CWAers at AT&T Midwest and AT&T Legacy also have ratified new three-year agreements.
• Separate negotiations covering 18,000 CWAers at AT&T West and 3,200 CWA members at AT&T East in Connecticut are continuing.
• For CenturyLink (the former Qwest operation) members in 13 District 7 states, negotiations are continuing and the contract is being extended. CenturyLink continues to press for more offshoring and outsourcing of work and wants to shift more health care costs to workers and retirees, among other issues.
• CenturyLink workers, members of Local 6171, covered by two separate contracts in Arkansas, continue negotiations for fair contracts. 
• AT&T Mobility members covered by the “orange” contract are gearing up for negotiations that get underway in January; that contract expires Feb. 9. Participants to the bargaining unit conference set bargaining goals and plans for mobilization. Issues include wages; job security and limits on subcontracting and the movement of work outside the bargaining unit; retirement security, and job issues including commissions, performance plans, and quotas/quota relief.
• At Verizon Southwest, 1,800 CWA members have been mobilizing for a fair contract.

For Telecom Workers:
How Movement Building Builds Power

Members of Local 1103 have been building their movement for three years now. Initially a partnership between Local 1103 and Westchester for Change, a volunteer community organization that worked mainly on electoral campaigns, the two groups joined forces with Move On, the NAACP, SEIU, Westchester Disable on the move, Hunger Action Network and others, to support each other’s fights and goals.

Coalition partners came out in support of Verizon strikers, and over the long 16 months of negotiations, organized People’s Town Halls to make sure working people’s voices are heard. The group now is known as the Hudson Valley Coalition for a Fair Economy and fights for economic and social justice.