CWA Newsmakers

Hall Sisson, who came to CWA as a lobbyist in 1972 and later served as the union’s deputy political director, has retired. Sisson, who was born and raised in California, was working as a lobbyist for the National Aerospace Services Association when he learned of a job at CWA. He was hired by CWA founding President, Joseph A. Beirne. After 20 years of lobbying Congress about issues important to CWA members and working families, Sisson was put in charge of House of Representatives races and later Senate races and political action committees. His most memorable CWA experience came in 1988 at the union’s 50th anniversary convention in New Orleans. There, Sisson helped host scores of international union members, including guests from Europe, Japan and South America. Since he retired, Sisson, 61, has done consulting work and taught a week-long leadership class for District 4.

Bill Harwell, executive assistant to CWA Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling, has retired after 41 years of union service. Harwell started work in 1959 as a tool and die maker at Western Electric Manufacturing Co. in Lee’s Summit, Mo. He joined Local 6360 and quickly became a shop steward. Within five years he was elected president. In 1969, he was hired as a CWA representative in the Dallas office of District 6. He transferred to Kansas City in 1976 and to St. Louis in 1980, where he was administrative assistant to the District 6 vice president. Over the years, Harwell chaired CWA bargaining committees for contracts with AT&T, Illinois Bell and Southwestern Bell. He served as District 6’s legislative and political director for six years and handled public relations for two years. He also was active in many organizing campaigns. In 1988, CWA’s then-secretary-treasurer, Jim Booe, asked Harwell to come to Washington to be his assistant, a position he continued to hold under Easterling’s leadership.

Clint Boling, a CWA representative in District 6 with 38 years of union service, has retired. Boling, 63, started work at Southwestern Bell as a cable splicer’s helper in late 1961 in Jonesboro, Ark., and held a variety of outside craft jobs over the following 24 years. In 1984, when AT&T spun off the Bell companies, he began working for AT&T. He was active in Local 6505 from the beginning of his career, serving as a steward from 1962 to 1975, then as president for 10 years. Under his leadership in the so-called “right-to-work” state, membership grew from 72 percent to 98 percent. In November 1985, Boling was hired by CWA as a representative in St. Louis, Mo. Over the years, he also worked in Tulsa, Okla., and Little Rock, Ark. Among his accomplishments, he is proud of programs he helped create at Southwestern Bell that allowed people who were scheduled for layoffs to remain on the payroll.

Edward (Ed) Schultz, 64, a CWA representative who for three years served as administrative assistant to the president and as director of CWA’s Public Worker Department, has retired. During his career Schultz organized more than 30 public employee units in New Jersey and negotiated more than 200 union contracts in Districts 1 and 2. In 1976 he received the Joseph Anthony Beirne award for organizing achievement. Schultz joined the staff as a CWA Representative in the District 1 Union, N.J., office in August 1970. He was a seasoned staff professional who had worked as a research associate and organizer for the International Chemical Workers Union, an organizer for the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Department and council director and international representative for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. He served at the Washington, D.C., headquarters from July 1980 to August 1983 as director of the Public Employee Department before the union established a Public and Health Care Workers Sector with its own CWA vice president.