Community Support Key in Battles with Comcast

CWA successfully leveraged its influence with local officials against Comcast to fight for card check organizing in Oakland, Calif., and in Detroit, Mich., to force the huge corporate bully to bargain a contract with its workers. And, in Port Huron, Mich., the local built such strong community support that Comcast had no choice but to drop its opposition to a voluntary union representation election.

A full year before the Detroit workers' contract expired in 2004, Local 4100 began taking the concerns of Comcast employees to the city council and the city's cable commission. The local built a network of elected officials, religious leaders and community activists to put pressure on the company and released a scathing report documenting more than 40,000 electrical code violations by the company.

The independent analysis, "Plant Safety Evaluation of Comcast Cable in the City of Detroit, Mich.," was conducted in December 2003 by Kramer.Firm Inc., and was commissioned by CWA.

Consumer advocate Esther Shapiro, CWA Representative Shannon Kirkland and representatives from Michigan Jobs with Justice and the Detroit AFL-CIO met with reporters outside a Comcast facility to release the findings March 1, 2004.

"Many of these violations are serious and can cause fires and electric shocks, yet Comcast refuses to acknowledge its service shortcomings and the dangerous conditions that exist in the Detroit community," Kirkland said.

To satisfy the community,  Comcast had no choice but to come to the table and bargain with its workers, who ratified a contract that summer.

In Port Huron, Comcast tried to decertify the union, forcing a new election. The local won and the company appealed. Rather than wait the months —  or, more likely, years —  it would take to get a National Labor Relations Board ruling, Local 4107 officers decided to redo the election voluntarily and began meeting with mayors and city councils in the Port Huron service area.

They built so much community support that Comcast had to back down from its efforts to block the voluntary election. The victory against the decertification was even bigger the second time around. In both the examples above, the locals were honored at CWA conventions with the CWA Paul Wellstone Action Award.

Most recently, Local 9415 and District 9 won the first round in their campaign to require that franchises doing business with the city of Oakland follow a card check procedure so employees can make a free and fair choice about union representation. In a preliminary vote, the Oakland City Council approved the measure, included in the franchise agreement, and five of eight City Council members stuck to their guns on Feb. 24, voting final approval.

Comcast fired one of its workers, Navy veteran Will Goodo, who testified before the council and at a workers' rights forum last December about Comcast's unrelenting assault on workers in the Oakland system who wanted a union voice. CWA has filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board over the firing.

Noting that victories against the cable bully are incremental, CWA President Larry Cohen praised the local, the district and the city council for taking a stand for workers and consumers.

"Comcast has been demonstrating just this kind of confrontation in its relations with communities and workers across the country," Cohen said.