CWA Mourns Loss of Glenn Watts

CWA’s Second President Led CWA through ‘Golden Age Record Bell System Bargaining Achievements

CWA’s President Emeritus Glenn E. Watts, who headed the union from 1974 until his retirement in 1985, died Aug. 30, at a Washington, D.C. hospital after suffering complications from gastrointestinal surgery. He was 82.

Among many accomplishments, Watts led CWA in the nation’s largest set of contract negotiations over four rounds of national bargaining with AT&T’s Bell System — covering more than 500,000 workers at 22 operating companies and Western Electric manufacturing — between 1974 and 1983. Each record-breaking contract set a new standard for the entire labor movement and added to the foundation of benefits members enjoy today throughout telecommunications.

“Glenn Watts showed that a labor leader could be a soft-spoken gentleman and yet be as tough as they come in standing up for working people,” said CWA President Morton Bahr, who succeeded Watts in the top post. “He presided over the golden age for workers in the Bell System, but when the big breakup came, Glenn had the vision to help guide us toward the many changes we would have to make in the new information age.”

On the eve of the court-ordered breakup of AT&T, announced in 1982, to take effect Jan. 1, 1984, Watts called for creation of a rank-and-file CWA Committee on the Future, which met with expert futurists and conducted a year-long study of the changes to come in a new world of global competition, mega-mergers, and an information technology explosion.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney called Watts “a tireless advocate for workers who led CWA through a period of great transition and was one of the moving forces in making it the powerhouse union it is today.”

A New York Times obituary described Watts as a “pragmatic progressive” who led the push for equal wages for women.

Throughout his career Watts was active in national and local Democratic politics and he served for several years as a member of the Democratic National Committee. President Jimmy Carter considered Watts “one of my best personal friends who had confidence in me very early on” and often sought Watts’ advice and support. CWA was the first union to endorse Carter for president.

Watts also had a keen interest in international affairs. While CWA president, Watts headed the Postal, Telegraph and Telephone International, which at that time was the global federation of telecom unions, and he continued CWA’s involvement in helping Latin American workers organize.
Middle East peace was one of his deep concerns. Watts was invited by President Carter to participate in the historic meeting with Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat as part of Carter’s peace-making initiative.

Watts later was honored by Israel’s labor federation Histadrut with the creation in 1985 of the Glenn E. Watts Cultural Center in Jerusalem, a project to encourage understanding between Jewish and Arab union families through sharing cultural and educational activities.

He also served on the National Holocaust Memorial Commission and spent much time raising funds for the museum and its library in Washington, D.C. Additionally, he was chairman of the board of governors of the United Way of America, a trustee of the Ford Foundation, a member of the Tri-Lateral Commission, and member of the Aspen Institute.

Watts was born June 4, 1920, in Stony Point, N.C., where his grandfather ran a cotton-spinning mill. When the Depression wiped out the business, his family moved to Washington. He went to work for the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. for 25 cents an hour in 1941, after hearing about the job from workers installing a telephone at the YMCA.

Watts became a telephone installer and joined the National Federation of Telephone Workers, which later became CWA. He was active in his local and became its president. With the encouragement of CWA’s founding president, Joseph A. Beirne, Watts decided to make a career in the union. He rose through the ranks, winning election as vice president of CWA District 2 and then, in 1956, becoming one of Beirne’s three top assistants.

Watts later was elected to the posts of executive vice president and then secretary-treasurer, becoming the CWA executive board’s choice for president when an ailing Joe Beirne stepped down shortly before his death on Labor Day, 1974. The previous January, Beirne, who was dying of cancer, had the opportunity to announce the achievement he had worked for all of his career — national bargaining with the far-flung Bell System. His protégé, Glenn Watts, would pick up the torch and turn that achievement into a decade of solid contractual gains for the nation’s telecom workers.

Watts, who lived in Chevy Chase, Md., is survived by his wife Bernice, his daughter Sharon Perlmutter and her two children; his daughter Marianne Erickson and her husband Mark and three children; and daughter-in-law June Wood and two children. Watts’ son, Glenn, died in 1997.