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67th Annual Convention: Cohen Takes Helm As Union's Fourth President
Delegates to CWA's 67th annual convention were witnesses to history as the union gave an emotional and grateful sendoff to the union's president for the past 20 years, Morton Bahr, and enthusiastically welcomed Larry Cohen as his successor.
Cohen, previously CWA's executive vice president, is only the fourth person to head the union. In his first speech as president, Aug. 30, he issued a challenge to the union's employers in the United States and Canada to work with union members to "define what leadership really means."
"We believe leadership means working together for health care, not squeezing working families and standing on the sidelines while a national crisis grows worse every day," Cohen told the 2,500 delegates and guests at Chicago's Navy Pier convention center.
"We believe leadership means working together to provide meaningful careers for employees, not hollowing out our companies by outsourcing nearly everything," he said. "We believe leadership means standing by our retired members, your former employees, and not breaking the commitments made to them."
A Call to Work Together
And Cohen established a theme for his presidency in calling for every element of CWA to work together for "A common vision of our future." That means, he said: "All of us together, using our diversity and understanding it to make us stronger - young members and retired members, minorities, women and men, straight and gay, all sectors - diversity of leadership as well as membership, all working together. That is our strength and that will be the source of our success."
Running with Cohen as part of a Unity Team slate, Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling was reelected to the post she has served for 13 years, and Jeff Rechenbach, District 4 vice president since 1994, was elected executive vice president.
Easterling started her union work as an operator at Ohio Bell, joining and serving in various posts in Local 4302. She became an assistant to the CWA president in 1980, was elected executive vice president in 1985, and was first elected secretary-treasurer in 1992. Rechenbach's work with CWA began at Ohio Bell in Cleveland, when at age 19, he was elected president of the 2,000-member Local 4309.
Cohen, recognized as one of the movement's most
effective organizers, was elected executive vice president in 1998, after serving as Bahr's assistant and director of organizing the previous 12 years. A native of Philadelphia, he began his union work as an unrepresented state worker in New Jersey, where he led the successful drive that brought 36,000 state workers into CWA.
As the convention opened, Hurricane Katrina was just hitting the Gulf coast, and delegates quickly acted to allocate up to $4 million in special relief funds to help affected members of the CWA family. (See Tragedy on the Gulf Coast.)
Highlighting convention action as the delegates' first major piece of business was passage of Resolution #1 titled, CWA: Ready for the Future, to involve every level of the union - from individual members to locals, sectors, districts, staff and officers - in charting CWA's course for the future. (See CWA, Ready for the Future for details.)
Delegates also set union policy on a wide variety of other issues by adopting another nine resolutions, including one naming Bahr president emeritus. (See Resolutions Address Union, Workers' Issues.)
Bahr passed the gavel to Cohen after installing the new officers on Aug. 30. He was recognized and celebrated throughout the gathering for his tireless work, integrity, innovation and generous spirit.
"I am honored and humbled to follow Morty Bahr," Cohen said. "You have passed on a member-run union, mobilized, ready for action and able to bargain successfully with some of the world's largest employers. You are universally admired throughout the trade union movement, in the halls of Congress and in the communications industry."
A special guest speaker, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney also had warm words for Bahr, his friend and colleague for many years; and he praised CWA's new leader, Cohen, as "a writer, a speaker, a thinker, an international strategist, and a leader in the noblest tradition of our movement." Largely because of Cohen's vision and hard work, Sweeney said the Employee Free Choice Act, to allow workers to organize and bargain contracts without fear of management retaliation and stalling tactics, now has 201 co-sponsors in the U.S. House and 40 in the Senate.
Easterling told delegates that passing the act is critical. "We are forced to fight our organizing battles with sticks and stones while management gets to use nuclear weapons," she said, describing how workers are routinely fired for union organizing, forced to attend management's captive audience meetings and face threats that their jobsites will close if they choose to unionize.
Rechenbach praised the union's great diversity, solidarity and commitment to making life better for all Americans - no matter how tough the fight. "The willingness to stand up together, to make sure that workers get a fair share from the sweat of their brow, that's what we're all about," he said.
CWA is known in the labor movement for just that kind of determination and hard work, said another guest speaker, Greg Juneman, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. "The great thing that I see here is that you are not only making decisions, you understand that you need to do the heavy lifting," he said.
Biggest Leadership Transition
With the new top leadership team and the election of six new vice presidents, the 67th Convention witnessed the biggest single-year leadership transition in CWA's history.
In the only contested district election, District 9 Vice President Tony Bixler was overwhelmingly reelected. Also reelected were Pete Catucci, District 2, and Andy Milburn, District 6. District 1 delegates voted Chris Shelton to his first full term. He succeeds Larry Mancino, who retired in April. Noah Savant was elected in District 3, succeeding Jimmy Smith, who retired in January. In District 4, Rechenbach's former administrative assistant, Seth Rosen, was elected. Annie Hill was elected in District 7, succeeding John Thompson, who retired in February. In District 13, James Short was elected, succeeding Vince Maisano, who retired in April.
Among CWA sectors, delegates reelected Vice Presidents Ralph Maly, Communications and Technologies; Jimmy Gurganus, Telecommunications; Brooks Sunkett, Public, Health Care and Education Workers, Bill Boarman, Printing, Publishing and Media Workers, and John Clark, NABET-CWA. James Clark, named by the IUE-CWA executive council as the Industrial Sector's president this spring, was elected at the convention to his first full term as a CWA vice president. Linda Foley of The Newspaper Guild-CWA was sworn-in to a new term beginning with this convention, although her election took place last May. (Vice President Pat Friend of AFA-CWA was installed last year and is in the middle of a term that expires at the end of 2006.)
All of the newly elected officers will serve 3-year terms.
Bahr Lays Out Challenges
Bahr's farewell speech on the convention's first day opened and closed with thunderous standing ovations and was interrupted often by cheers - even as he laid out the many challenges facing the labor movement in the most hostile political climate for workers in at least 70 years.
He spoke of efforts by the business lobby and its backers in Congress and the White House to dismantle Social Security, weaken the Family and Medical Leave Act, further assault workers' overtime rights and otherwise erode the Fair Labor Standards Act.
"Since Eisenhower won in 1956 we have had nine presidents," Bahr said, citing the first election he took part in as a union activist. "I can tell you categorically that never has there been a more ideological, anti-worker, anti-union administration than the current one."
"President Bush continually talks about building democracies around the world," Bahr said. "He needs to take a look at democracy here at home. There can be no true democracy in a society where workers do not have the unfettered right to form a union free of employer threats and intimidation."
In closing the convention, President Cohen read a quote from a former CWA activist, a writer at the Baltimore Sun, Murray Kempton: "The union is not for yourself, but for your children. It did not arise to avenge the past, but to claim the future. The union leader is not the owner of an institution, he or she is the caretaker of a tradition."
"I think that applies to all of us - certainly we all feel this, Jeff and Barbara and me and our entire board," he said. "All of us thank you for the trust and confidence you have put in us. I thank you for the trust and confidence you have put in me. I am humbled. And we are all committed, this entire board, to work together more than we ever have, more than maybe we could even imagine."
Cohen, previously CWA's executive vice president, is only the fourth person to head the union. In his first speech as president, Aug. 30, he issued a challenge to the union's employers in the United States and Canada to work with union members to "define what leadership really means."
"We believe leadership means working together for health care, not squeezing working families and standing on the sidelines while a national crisis grows worse every day," Cohen told the 2,500 delegates and guests at Chicago's Navy Pier convention center.
"We believe leadership means working together to provide meaningful careers for employees, not hollowing out our companies by outsourcing nearly everything," he said. "We believe leadership means standing by our retired members, your former employees, and not breaking the commitments made to them."
A Call to Work Together
And Cohen established a theme for his presidency in calling for every element of CWA to work together for "A common vision of our future." That means, he said: "All of us together, using our diversity and understanding it to make us stronger - young members and retired members, minorities, women and men, straight and gay, all sectors - diversity of leadership as well as membership, all working together. That is our strength and that will be the source of our success."
Running with Cohen as part of a Unity Team slate, Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling was reelected to the post she has served for 13 years, and Jeff Rechenbach, District 4 vice president since 1994, was elected executive vice president.
Easterling started her union work as an operator at Ohio Bell, joining and serving in various posts in Local 4302. She became an assistant to the CWA president in 1980, was elected executive vice president in 1985, and was first elected secretary-treasurer in 1992. Rechenbach's work with CWA began at Ohio Bell in Cleveland, when at age 19, he was elected president of the 2,000-member Local 4309.
Cohen, recognized as one of the movement's most
effective organizers, was elected executive vice president in 1998, after serving as Bahr's assistant and director of organizing the previous 12 years. A native of Philadelphia, he began his union work as an unrepresented state worker in New Jersey, where he led the successful drive that brought 36,000 state workers into CWA.
As the convention opened, Hurricane Katrina was just hitting the Gulf coast, and delegates quickly acted to allocate up to $4 million in special relief funds to help affected members of the CWA family. (See Tragedy on the Gulf Coast.)
Highlighting convention action as the delegates' first major piece of business was passage of Resolution #1 titled, CWA: Ready for the Future, to involve every level of the union - from individual members to locals, sectors, districts, staff and officers - in charting CWA's course for the future. (See CWA, Ready for the Future for details.)
Delegates also set union policy on a wide variety of other issues by adopting another nine resolutions, including one naming Bahr president emeritus. (See Resolutions Address Union, Workers' Issues.)
Bahr passed the gavel to Cohen after installing the new officers on Aug. 30. He was recognized and celebrated throughout the gathering for his tireless work, integrity, innovation and generous spirit.
"I am honored and humbled to follow Morty Bahr," Cohen said. "You have passed on a member-run union, mobilized, ready for action and able to bargain successfully with some of the world's largest employers. You are universally admired throughout the trade union movement, in the halls of Congress and in the communications industry."
A special guest speaker, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney also had warm words for Bahr, his friend and colleague for many years; and he praised CWA's new leader, Cohen, as "a writer, a speaker, a thinker, an international strategist, and a leader in the noblest tradition of our movement." Largely because of Cohen's vision and hard work, Sweeney said the Employee Free Choice Act, to allow workers to organize and bargain contracts without fear of management retaliation and stalling tactics, now has 201 co-sponsors in the U.S. House and 40 in the Senate.
Easterling told delegates that passing the act is critical. "We are forced to fight our organizing battles with sticks and stones while management gets to use nuclear weapons," she said, describing how workers are routinely fired for union organizing, forced to attend management's captive audience meetings and face threats that their jobsites will close if they choose to unionize.
Rechenbach praised the union's great diversity, solidarity and commitment to making life better for all Americans - no matter how tough the fight. "The willingness to stand up together, to make sure that workers get a fair share from the sweat of their brow, that's what we're all about," he said.
CWA is known in the labor movement for just that kind of determination and hard work, said another guest speaker, Greg Juneman, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. "The great thing that I see here is that you are not only making decisions, you understand that you need to do the heavy lifting," he said.
Biggest Leadership Transition
With the new top leadership team and the election of six new vice presidents, the 67th Convention witnessed the biggest single-year leadership transition in CWA's history.
In the only contested district election, District 9 Vice President Tony Bixler was overwhelmingly reelected. Also reelected were Pete Catucci, District 2, and Andy Milburn, District 6. District 1 delegates voted Chris Shelton to his first full term. He succeeds Larry Mancino, who retired in April. Noah Savant was elected in District 3, succeeding Jimmy Smith, who retired in January. In District 4, Rechenbach's former administrative assistant, Seth Rosen, was elected. Annie Hill was elected in District 7, succeeding John Thompson, who retired in February. In District 13, James Short was elected, succeeding Vince Maisano, who retired in April.
Among CWA sectors, delegates reelected Vice Presidents Ralph Maly, Communications and Technologies; Jimmy Gurganus, Telecommunications; Brooks Sunkett, Public, Health Care and Education Workers, Bill Boarman, Printing, Publishing and Media Workers, and John Clark, NABET-CWA. James Clark, named by the IUE-CWA executive council as the Industrial Sector's president this spring, was elected at the convention to his first full term as a CWA vice president. Linda Foley of The Newspaper Guild-CWA was sworn-in to a new term beginning with this convention, although her election took place last May. (Vice President Pat Friend of AFA-CWA was installed last year and is in the middle of a term that expires at the end of 2006.)
All of the newly elected officers will serve 3-year terms.
Bahr Lays Out Challenges
Bahr's farewell speech on the convention's first day opened and closed with thunderous standing ovations and was interrupted often by cheers - even as he laid out the many challenges facing the labor movement in the most hostile political climate for workers in at least 70 years.
He spoke of efforts by the business lobby and its backers in Congress and the White House to dismantle Social Security, weaken the Family and Medical Leave Act, further assault workers' overtime rights and otherwise erode the Fair Labor Standards Act.
"Since Eisenhower won in 1956 we have had nine presidents," Bahr said, citing the first election he took part in as a union activist. "I can tell you categorically that never has there been a more ideological, anti-worker, anti-union administration than the current one."
"President Bush continually talks about building democracies around the world," Bahr said. "He needs to take a look at democracy here at home. There can be no true democracy in a society where workers do not have the unfettered right to form a union free of employer threats and intimidation."
In closing the convention, President Cohen read a quote from a former CWA activist, a writer at the Baltimore Sun, Murray Kempton: "The union is not for yourself, but for your children. It did not arise to avenge the past, but to claim the future. The union leader is not the owner of an institution, he or she is the caretaker of a tradition."
"I think that applies to all of us - certainly we all feel this, Jeff and Barbara and me and our entire board," he said. "All of us thank you for the trust and confidence you have put in us. I thank you for the trust and confidence you have put in me. I am humbled. And we are all committed, this entire board, to work together more than we ever have, more than maybe we could even imagine."