Sep 29, 2016 - Verizon Neglect Harms Customers

CWA filed testimony with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission as part of the push for a public investigation into the service provided by Verizon to Pennsylvania customers.

CWA presented the testimony of Jim Gardler, president of CWA Local 13000, and Susan Baldwin, a nationally recognized expert on telecommunications service quality.

Last year, CWA documented more than 200 examples in 13 counties where Verizon is failing to provide safe facilities by refusing to 1) replace damaged, bent, and broken poles; 2) repair or replace damaged cross-connect boxes and remote terminals; 3) repair or replace damaged cable; and 4) properly control falling trees and vegetation near its facilities. The filing documents the further deterioration of Verizon’s copper network and the impact on service and safety for customers, workers, and the public. Read the full filing here.

CWA has documented more than 200 examples in 13 counties
where Verizon is failing to provide safe facilities.

Following is a statement by Chris Shelton, President of the Communications Workers of America, on the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump:

The first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump provided even more evidence that Hillary Clinton is the candidate most qualified to become President of the United States and to implement policies and programs that will improve the lives of millions of working families.

Hillary Clinton spelled out exactly what her administration would mean to working people. "We have to build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. That means we need new jobs, good jobs, with rising incomes…We also have to make the economy fairer. That starts with raising the national minimum wage and also guarantee, finally, equal pay for women's work," Clinton said.

"I want us to do more to support people who are struggling to balance family and work…Let's have paid family leave, earned sick days. Let's be sure we have affordable child care and debt-free college," she said.

Donald Trump proposed to help working families by "reducing taxes tremendously, from 35 percent to 15 percent for companies, small and big businesses," something workers know is just another version of discredited "trickle-down economics."

Trump said not paying any federal income taxes "makes me smart." He said, "I take advantage of the laws of the nation because I’m running a company," when Clinton challenged him about stiffing workers who worked on Trump projects. He said, "That's called business," when Clinton noted that Trump "rooted for the housing crisis," because it provided him the opportunity to "go in and buy some and make some money."

It's clear: working families need Hillary Clinton as our next president.

CWA has a large number of members and retirees in all the battleground states, energized and engaging their co-workers every day as part of our effort to elect Hillary Clinton the next President of the United States.

CWA President Chris Shelton met with CWAers and AFL-CIO activists in northern Virginia at the start of a Saturday labor walk to mobilize support for Hillary Clinton for President.

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Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine stopped by CWA Local 6222 in Houston last week, energizing the crowd by reminding them that his home state, Virginia, is a good example of a red state that turned "bluer," thanks to a lot of hard work by union activists and others.

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CWA activists from Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Tennessee attended the District 3 legislative-political boot camp.

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North Carolina CWAers worked the phones for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Deborah Ross, who is challenging Richard Burr (R), and Roy Cooper (D), who is running for governor against Republican Pat McCrory.

Former bank workers Ruth Landaverde and Julie Miller, members of the Committee for Better Banks, came to Washington, DC, to meet with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Rep. Al Green (D-TX) to discuss their personal experience with big banks' damaging sales practices. They also attended a House Financial Services Committee hearing in which Members of Congress grilled Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf on his bank’s opening of fraudulent, unwanted bank accounts for customers.

In an op-ed in The Hill, CWA President Chris Shelton wrote about how the damaging practices of big banks are harming customers and bank workers. Read it here.

Read more about the Committee for Better Banks, a project of CWA, and get involved here.

Left: Former bank workers Ruth Landaverde and Julie Miller met with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) to talk about their personal experiences with big banks' damaging sales practices.
Right: Ruth Landaverde, a former worker at Wells Fargo and Bank of America, was interviewed by ABC, CBS, and NBC. Both Landaverde and Miller talked with several reporters.

In a piece in the Huffington Post, CWA President Chris Shelton took on Donald Trump's long record of sexism:

With his decades-long record of sexism and disdain for women, Donald Trump as president would be catastrophic for working women. This kind of backwards thinking has no place in our country in 2016.

When it comes to working women's issues, Trump seems to be stuck in the 1940s. Trump has said that "putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing." He's said, "I don't want to sound too much like a chauvinist – but when I come home and dinner's not ready, I go through the roof."

Trump's pathetic stance on equal pay for equal work is, "You're gonna make the same if you do as good a job." He has complained of pregnancy being "an inconvenience," and thinks breastfeeding working mothers are "disgusting." Trump's take on paid family leave? "We have to keep our country very competitive, so you have to be careful of it."

Trump is so out of touch on this issue that he once bragged on the campaign trail about a child-care program for his employees, but it turned out that the program he mentioned was actually not for his employees – it was for the children of his hotel and golf club guests.

Read President Shelton's full column here.

CWA recently launched CWA Women for Political Power, an initiative focused on mobilizing women members of our union to elect Hillary Clinton and spotlighting the power of women workers to move the country forward on issues like fair pay, paid sick leave, and others.