CWA Prepares Major Grassroots Push for Employee Free Choice Act

U.S. senators can expect to hear from tens of thousands of CWA members and their families the week of May 14, as CWA steps up pressure on the Senate to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

All CWA districts and locals have been given lists of senators and phone numbers and are urged to flood them with phone calls from their constituents. IBEW will also be joining in the week's effort.

"We are going to rise up as if we were bargaining our toughest contract, because we are," CWA President Larry Cohen said in a conference call with local officers this week.

CWA and IBEW are focusing primarily on 11 senators who are considered swing votes on the Employee Free Choice Act, including several who sponsored it in the last Congress.

The 11 are Democrats Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Ken Salazar of Colorado and Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, John Sununu of New Hampshire, George Voinovich of Ohio, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

Union members are also being asked to call the 47 senators who have signed on as co-sponsors to thank them and to counter the pressure being put on them by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other anti-union organizations bitterly opposed to the bill, which would restore workers' badly eroded rights to organize and bargain contracts. The U.S. House passed the bill in March by a vote of 241-185.

Noting that some senators say they're getting calls almost exclusively from opponents, Cohen said it's critical that working families make their voices heard. "Good jobs, health care and retirement security are not just union values, they are American values, and they are fundamentally tied to the right to bargain collectively," he said.

He pointed to polls – that show a majority of Americans support unions and that more than two-thirds support the Employee Free Choice Act.

To illustrate the critical need for the changes the bill would bring, Cohen addressed Verizon's aggressive union-busting and CWA's campaign to "tear down the wall" the company is building between its existing union workforce and other units Verizon is determined to keep union-free.

On the conference call, Local 9586 President Gregg Gibson described the company's recent campaign to destroy a union drive at its West Coast DSL maintenance-control office in Long Beach, Calif.  Nearly two-thirds of workers signed cards seeking representation but in the days leading to an election, Verizon -- completely violating the neutrality agreement covering this unit -- unleashed a relentless anti-union campaign, slamming CWA, lying about the union and making threats.

The union lost the election by a handful of votes. "We had cards signed by 65 percent of our members," Gibson said. "With the Employee Free Choice Act, we would have had a union."

Public officials around the country have taken a stand for Verizon workers in letters to CEO Ivan Seidenberg. They include Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Hartford, Conn., Mayor Eddie Perez, whose letters Cohen has shared with locals.

He urged locals across the country to seek out other leaders to write to Seidenberg and other employers who are stripping workers of their rights.

"We want to send a message to all employers: We are making this a hard-core issue," he said. "We will fight for our rights, we will fight for our future, we will fight for our children."