Convention Calls for Bold Action to Build Bargaining Power

CWA Convention delegates on July 10 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 America workers.

Delegates created a new Strategic Industry Fund to support major campaigns to change employers' anti-union behavior and to impact public policy on issues such as trade and health care.

The Strategic Industry Fund will be earmarked for different industries based on the percentage of member contributions in each at the rate of about $24 million per year. The SIF will be financed by future contributions to CWA's Members Relief Fund, beginning in September 2006. The level of the MRF as of July 11 becomes a floor, and if the fund falls below that level, contributions will revert back to the MRF until it reaches the established floor once again. The MRF will continue to grow through investment income.

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 major industry group," he said.

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 above $5 million a year 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 Ready for the Future process began 10 months ago when 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 this week 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.

The full Ready for the Future plan is available at ga.cwa-union.org/future.