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CWA Newsmakers
- A computer specialist who had no union protection is being lauded as a hero for standing on principle — and he’s gained support from the Newspaper Guild-CWA and the National Labor Relations Board. Dwight Biermann was fired from his job as a computer systems worker by the non-union St. Joseph (Mich.) Herald-Palladium and American Publishing Co. after telling management he would agree to take training as a scab at the Chicago Sun-Times but that he would not cross a TNG-CWA picket line. The TNG-CWA local in Chicago promptly filed charges on Biermann’s behalf and TNG-CWA President Linda K. Foley reports that the NLRB has said it will issue a complaint and seek a settlement. Meanwhile, Biermann, who said he reacted strongly because “They tried to push me into doing something against my conscience,” has landed another job as a computer systems operator with Michigan State University in East Lansing.
- A former CWA local president, Julia Greer, who left the union in the mid-1970s to become a commissioner with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, is winning praise today for transferring her conflict resolution skills from the bargaining table to the classroom. Greer, former president of CWA Local 4010, Detroit, has been chosen to head up an FMCS pilot peer mediation program with the Department of Labor’s Job Corps to develop conflict resolution for youths. She’s now working with “kids (who) have emotional problems that are upsetting their entire lives. “They use the conflict resolution skills I teach them in all their relationships, whether it is with their siblings or classmates, teachers or parents,” she said. Greer’s efforts have already won recognition from the City of Detroit and State of Michigan.
- William Bennett, 55, a member of CWA Local 1250, has been credited with saving the life of an eight-year-old boy who fell through the ice on a pond near Bennett’s New Britain, Conn., home on Jan. 19. Bennett had just finished his workday as an AT&T comm tech in the company’s Wallingford office and was headed home when he saw a woman waving frantically. Bennett and another passerby jumped into the freezing 20-foot deep water and pulled the boy, Colin O’Neil, to safety. The lad’s eyes were glazed over and he had stopped breathing, so Bennett administered CPR and within minutes, the boy responded. Bennett is being nominated for a Theodore N. Vail award for his efforts.
- Loretta Cookston, a member of CWA Local 6012 and a 17-year employee of Southwestern Bell, shares CWA President Morton Bahr’s enthusiasm for lifelong learning. A resident of rural Cleveland, Okla., Cookston makes a daily drive of 50 miles each way to work in the company’s engineering department in Tulsa. Faced with that daily commute, yet still wanting to expand her educational horizon, Cookston enrolled in an ICS Learning Systems PC specialist program — a distance learning program offered by Southwestern Bell — and completed the program in less than four months with a 94-point average. Flush with that success, she next enrolled in the ICS Desktop Publishing program — which she has completed in less than a year, with a 96-point average. She’s shown at her graduation ceremony with Dean Franklin, president of Local 6012, left, and Nelson Downend, the national tuition assistance plan manager for ICS.