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CWA and German Union Plan Joint High-Tech Organizing
More than 30 CWA activists and a dozen from the German metal workers’ union IG Metall developed joint strategies and pledged increased cooperation for organizing among high-tech workers, during a three-day conference at Cornell University.
“Our employers operate globally, so it’s important that we in CWA think and act globally when we have workers in different countries confronting the same problems,” said CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen, who gave the keynote address.
The conference, held Nov. 16-18 on Cornell’s campus in Ithaca, N.Y., was put together by the university’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations in consultation with CWA and IG Metall leaders. IG Metall represents over 2 million workers at several multinational corporations headquartered or doing business in the United States, among them IBM, Lucent Technologies, Siemens and Compaq. The Friedreich Ebert Foundation, a co-sponsor of the conference, made the arrangements necessary for the German participants.
Garrett Lanzy, an Alliance@IBM/CWA Local 1701 organizer at IBM’s Endicott, N.Y., facility, pointed out that “new personnel policies start in the U.S. and then get farmed out to the rest of the world,” including Germany, where the use of contingent workers is growing.
Linda Guyer, president of Local 1701, gave a detailed presentation on “Using the Internet to Organize.”
Marcus Courtney, co-founder and organizer for WashTech/CWA Local 37083 and local organizer Gretchen Wilson described how WashTech has challenged the perception of “new economy” workers that unions are out of touch. They described WashTech’s aggressive public policy and legislative advocacy on behalf of Microsoft “permatemps,” and noted that the union offers “its own training in programs and programming languages like Flash, C++, JavaScript, ASP and XML.”
CWA participants included several additional organizers from Alliance@IBM and Jim Joyce, vice president of NABET-CWA Local 51016.
At the conclusion the activitists agreed to:
“Our employers operate globally, so it’s important that we in CWA think and act globally when we have workers in different countries confronting the same problems,” said CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen, who gave the keynote address.
The conference, held Nov. 16-18 on Cornell’s campus in Ithaca, N.Y., was put together by the university’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations in consultation with CWA and IG Metall leaders. IG Metall represents over 2 million workers at several multinational corporations headquartered or doing business in the United States, among them IBM, Lucent Technologies, Siemens and Compaq. The Friedreich Ebert Foundation, a co-sponsor of the conference, made the arrangements necessary for the German participants.
Garrett Lanzy, an Alliance@IBM/CWA Local 1701 organizer at IBM’s Endicott, N.Y., facility, pointed out that “new personnel policies start in the U.S. and then get farmed out to the rest of the world,” including Germany, where the use of contingent workers is growing.
Linda Guyer, president of Local 1701, gave a detailed presentation on “Using the Internet to Organize.”
Marcus Courtney, co-founder and organizer for WashTech/CWA Local 37083 and local organizer Gretchen Wilson described how WashTech has challenged the perception of “new economy” workers that unions are out of touch. They described WashTech’s aggressive public policy and legislative advocacy on behalf of Microsoft “permatemps,” and noted that the union offers “its own training in programs and programming languages like Flash, C++, JavaScript, ASP and XML.”
CWA participants included several additional organizers from Alliance@IBM and Jim Joyce, vice president of NABET-CWA Local 51016.
At the conclusion the activitists agreed to:
- Develop joint activities with a focus on the IBM shareholders meeting in April 2002, link their websites, and share mailing lists.
- Establish Internet and mail links between WashTech and Microsoft union activists and works councils in Germany.
- Combine mailing lists for organizing at Lucent.
- Develop further joint organizing projects at Hewlett Packard and Compaq, Siemens and Infineon.