68th CWA Convention: CWA Convention Calls for Bold Action To Build Bargaining Power

Delegates to CWA's 68th annual convention in early July approved the "Ready for the Future" blueprint calling for innovative workplace and political strategies to build the union's bargaining power and achieve four essential goals — job security, quality and affordable health care, retirement security and real bargaining and organizing rights for American workers.

A key element of the plan is a new Strategic Industry Fund to provide as much as $24 million per year to support major campaigns to change employers' anti-union behavior and to impact public policy on issues such as trade and health care. 

CWA President Larry Cohen said "offense, not defense, is the point of the Strategic Industry Fund." The fund "will give us the means for major, long-range action programs to change the terms of engagement with our employers and reshape the economic landscape in which we bargain. This proposal lets us take charge of our future and build our bargaining power in every industry group," he told the July 10-11 gathering in Las Vegas.

Delegates also adopted the 10-point Ready for the Future strategic plan to strengthen bargaining power and bolster CWA Triangle programs.  Among key provisions:

• Training an army of stewards and activists 50,000 strong to fight for workers' rights and to build a movement for fundamental change. 
• Building a political program to help boost voluntary CWA-COPE contributions by members to $5 million in three years and train and deploy thousands of political activists.
• Tapping the potential of as many as 800,000 retirees through a RetireE-Activist network.
• Expanding organizing beyond the current 10 percent commitment by all levels of the union, bolstering local organizing efforts and encouraging multi-local and regional projects.

The full Ready for the Future plan is available at ga.cwa-union.org/future.
The Ready for the Future process began last October after 2005 convention delegates called for a union-wide conversation on ideas for structure, strategies and activities to meet challenges facing CWA and the labor movement today.  The program drafted by CWA's Executive Board and adopted at this convention was the product of input from members, stewards, and local officers throughout every region and sector of the union.

Numerous outside observers — academics, writers, historians and others, including those from other unions — have called CWA's process unique in the labor movement in terms of the opportunity for union-wide democratic involvement.

Addressing the convention, Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling cited the economic and political challenges for CWA today at what she called "the most pivotal moment facing CWA in a generation." She told the delegates that their action on the new strategic plan "will determine the direction, shape and effectiveness of CWA 25 years from now."

Executive Vice President Jeff Rechenbach told the convention that creating a strategic fund to take the fight to our employers "is fundamental to the future of this union.  None of us got involved in CWA because we wanted to sit in a foxhole with our heads down."

The convention also established union policy by passing resolutions on a variety of issues, as described in a separate story.