Jun 27, 2019 - Verizon's Broken Promises

Envoy Air

Last week, the CWA bargaining team reached a tentative agreement with Envoy Air that raises wages, establishes work rules, and improves benefits and job security over the previous TA. The agreement also includes a ratification and retention bonus based on each agent's years of service in recognition of the time spent in negotiations and to encourage retention.

"For more than two years, CWA members at Envoy have stood strong in their fight for a contract with fair, family-sustaining wages and a contract that treats them with the respect they deserve," said CWA President Chris Shelton. "Thanks to the dedication of our members, we now have a strong agreement that gives Envoy agents increased wages, improvements on numerous benefits, and better opportunities for agents moving forward as they continue to make Envoy successful."

Click here to learn more details about the agreement.

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AT&T Southeast

As bargaining opened on Monday with AT&T Southeast for about 22,000 CWA members, the CWA bargaining team emphasized the need for AT&T to share its record-breaking profits with the people who make it all possible – its employees.

"If you were to visit any work center or call center across [CWA] District 3, you would discover that your employees, our members, are not treated with the respect they have earned and deserve," said Richard Honeycutt, Vice President of CWA District 3, in opening remarks to the company.

Though the company claims that recent job cuts announced before Father's Day including more than 900 in the Southeast are a result of a lack of work to be done, AT&T has increasingly turned to contractors to perform CWA members' work in call centers and in the field.

"We start this bargaining session demanding AT&T show our hard-working members the respect and loyalty they deserve. This can be done through better wages, benefits, improved work rules, and job security. Give work to your employees – CWA members – not the employees of other companies," Honeycutt said.

The current contract expires on August 3, 2019.

CWAers mobilized as bargaining began to show AT&T Southeast that they are ready to fight for a fair contract.

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General Electric

On Monday, the Union Coordinated Bargaining Committee (CBC) of IUE-CWA and five other member unions at GE reached a tentative agreement containing several general wage increases spread over four years and controlling employee healthcare costs. IUE-CWA local union delegates voted to recommend the agreement to their members, and will be returning to their locals to share the details of the agreement. Each local will have an informational meeting, and a membership vote will be scheduled.

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Hawaiian Airlines

Hawaiian Airlines Flight Attendants, represented by AFA-CWA, and labor allies demonstrated on Wednesday at Honolulu International Airport to protest protracted negotiations with Hawaiian Airlines management for a new contract.

"Hawaiian Airlines is successful and growing, in large part due to previous sacrifices and persistent work of Flight Attendants on the front lines," said Sharon Soper, AFA-CWA Hawaiian Airlines President. "Two years of negotiations is too long to negotiate a new contract that reflects our contributions and hard work. We are done with delay tactics. Public protest will continue as we turn up the heat all summer long and until we get this done."

Hawaiian Airlines Flight Attendants, represented by AFA-CWA, and labor allies demonstrated on Wednesday at Honolulu International Airport to protest protracted negotiations with Hawaiian Airlines management for a new contract.

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Nokia
 
CWA members are continuing to call on Nokia to stop eliminating U.S. jobs, sending work out of the U.S. to overseas locations, and putting retirement security and healthcare at risk for its current employees and retirees. The company is trying to eliminate U.S. telecommunications installers by offshoring good jobs and terminating its own highly-skilled U.S. workforce. These actions will cause U.S. workers to lose their jobs and place the health and security of tens of thousands of retirees at risk. 
 
"We're urging Nokia to bargain a fair deal that allows the company to invest in our communities, keep its long-standing installer workforce, and maintain quality of service for customers," said CWA Telecommunications & Technologies Vice President Lisa Bolton.
 
Nokia wants access to lucrative 5G business opportunities in the United States as well as taxpayer-funded government contracts. CWA members and concerned citizens have been writing letters and signing a petition urging President Trump and Congress to tell Nokia the federal government will not reward Nokia with federal contracts for killing U.S. jobs and putting healthcare and retirement at risk for thousands of workers and retirees.

A new CWA report shows that Verizon has failed to deliver key community benefits it promised when the company and the City of Sacramento established a public-private partnership to build out a next generation 5G wireless network. The report also details the major issues around Verizon's use of subcontractors for the work associated with the 5G network build-out. Instead of generating jobs for Sacramento by hiring locally, out of 10 known subcontractors Verizon has hired to build the 5G network, seven are out-of-state firms, many with bad track-records when it comes to accountability and safety.

Along with the report release, CWA is launching a new website to inform Sacramento residents and communities across the country about the pitfalls of deals like the Verizon-Sacramento agreement, which favor corporate profits over the public interest. The site, www.Fair5G.org, provides resources to equip communities in their negotiations with wireless carriers. 

"It's clear that Verizon pushed Sacramento into an unfair deal with the promise of being a 5G city. Our report and website provides insight and resources to ensure the people of Sacramento, as well as folks across the country, get the transparency and accountability we deserve," said Tom Runnion, CWA District 9 Vice President. "The report clearly shows there was no transparency around the approval process for the deal and that Verizon has faced no accountability despite delaying or completely dropping key community benefits that it promised to deliver."

Read the full report here.

Working people have watched as thousands of U.S. jobs have been offshored in the past several years because big corporations choose to put profits over people. We must end these corrupt offshoring practices that exploit workers worldwide and decimate U.S. communities that rely on these jobs. 

As part of CWA's "The Summer of #NoMoreOffshoring" campaign to fight back against job loss, corporate tax loopholes, and the trade deals that harm working people, CWA members will be participating in a Day of Action on Friday, June 28, to get Congress to act.

Join the #NoMoreOffshoring movement to urge Congress to support the U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act (H.R.3219/S.1792) and the No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act (H.R.1711/S.780). This legislation would stop rewarding companies that ship jobs overseas and reverse the offshoring tax cuts embedded in the GOP tax scam 

CALL YOUR MEMBER OF CONGRESS TODAY: 1-866-948-8977.

Watch CWA's new video featuring workers from AT&T talking about how offshoring is harming working people and their communities.

Just days after the company threw a party to celebrate 190 years in business, those who helped the Philadelphia Inquirer achieve this milestone – its employees – were warned of coming layoffs. On Wednesday, Inquirer newsroom staff, members of TNG-CWA Local 38010, walked off the job to protest the potential layoffs and to show the company that journalists and the public are united in supporting keeping the Philadelphia Inquirer vibrant and protecting local news.

CWAers from across District 7 came together to hold a four-day organizing blitz to build unity, grow membership and do side-by-side training with leaders from CWA Local 7070 in Albuquerque, N.M. The participants identified nearly three dozen new leaders and signed up 85 new members!

Earlier this month, CWA activists in District 3 and District 7 participated in Human Rights Trainings in Atlanta and Phoenix organized by CWA's National Human Rights Department.

Participants discussed methods to develop and strengthen their organizing skills while learning how to recognize tactics used to divide and conquer the working class. Following the training, activists created a personalized action plan to take steps towards increasing the number of human rights committees in our union and working with grassroots organizations to advance broader causes of social and economic justice for working people.

CWA District 3 Vice President Richard Honeycutt attended training in District 3 and encouraged members to FIGHT FORWARD for our union and a better future!

CWA activists in District 3 (top) and District 7 (bottom) participated in Human Rights Trainings in Atlanta and Phoenix organized by CWA's National Human Rights Department.

CWAers were honored last week at the AFL-CIO's 25th anniversary Pride at Work celebration.

CWAers were honored last week at the AFL-CIO's 25th anniversary Pride at Work celebration, receiving Solidarity Awards recognizing those who have supported and embodied what it means to have Pride at Work. Pride at Work is a constituency group of the AFL-CIO that organizes mutual support between the organized labor movement and the LGBTQ community to further social and economic justice. 

Receiving Solidarity Awards were Shane Larson, CWA's Director of Legislation, Politics, and International Affairs and former co-president of Pride at Work; and the Staff Union at Lambda Legal, a national legal organization whose mission is to achieve full recognition of civil rights for the LGBTQ community and those living with HIV. The Lambda Legal staff won their union election last year to join TNG-CWA Local 32035 and secured their first tentative agreement this month.

CWA joined Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), activists, and allies for a rally in Washington, D.C., this week to fix Trump's broken NAFTA 2.0 proposal and demand changes to make a serious effort to end the race to the bottom in wages and standards. Trump's NAFTA 2.0 does not get the job done to stop NAFTA's damage. The agreement's workers' rights provisions can't be enforced, and it still includes provisions that would make NAFTA worse by locking in high drug prices.