CWA Ready for the Future: Strategic Industry Fund

Thinking Big: Strategic Industry Fund Can Turn Possibilities into Realities

How do we get off the defensive with employers that systematically outsource our jobs and weaken our bargaining power and then attack our health benefits and retirement security at contract time?

How do we defend our rights and contract standards in converging industries like media, telecom and cable where mega-mergers are shrinking the union presence in these emerging corporate empires?

How do we win the absolutely critical battles for a national health care solution, strengthened worker bargaining and organizing rights, and reform of trade laws and policies that are draining thousands of American jobs?

"We need to aim higher," stated the CWA Executive Board in its proposal to establish a Strategic Industry Fund to bring about a "resurgence in bargaining rights and help create opportunities for positive change in every major CWA industry."

The plan would establish a strategic fund to finance large-scale and long-term campaigns to fundamentaly change anti-union behavior by employers, build CWA bargaining power and campaign for policies and reforms to create jobs and protect CWA members' benefits. It would make $20 million in funds available in the first year to launch strategic campaigns.

The Board's report stresses that the strategic campaigns would not be focused primarily on organizing or responding to a specific bargaining crisis or defensive battle, but rather would be based on "fighting for the future" by changing the industrial and political environment to build bargaining power.

Specific campaigns would be drawn up by CWA's individual sectors, but the report offers some possible examples:

• Boost union jobs and also challenge the anti-union behavior of the cable industry through a massive campaign, community-by-community, to promote union video services.
• Build CWA's presence and bargaining power among the media giants that are buying up newspapers, broadcast stations and Internet sites through a multi-faceted mobilization at community, state and federal levels.
• Support CWA health care locals in building strategic alliances and mobilizing for quality health care and statewide health care reforms that establish and move toward universal health coverage.
• Change public policy to end bad trade deals and corporate subsidies for sending jobs overseas, and push bold initiatives such as a value-added tariff on imports.
• At Verizon, which is fighting to keep its Verizon Wireless and former MCI operations (nearly 50 percent of its business) non-union, mount a sustained campaign to break down its commitment to union busting.

The Strategic Industry Fund would be financed from future contributions to the Members' Relief Fund above an established floor, which would allow the MRF to continue to grow through investments while also providing money each year for strategic campaigns. If the MRF funding level falls below the floor because of major strike activity, contributions to the Strategic Industry Fund would revert back to the MRF until it again reached the established floor.

The current balance of the MRF is about $372 million. The funding level as of July 11, 2006 would be the established floor.

The Strategic Industry Fund would be a single fund with monies earmarked to different industries based on MRF contributions from each industry. For example, contributions in the first year for telecom industry campaigns would total about $13.4 million; for media (covering TNG-CWA, NABET-CWA and the Printing Sector) about $2.8 million; for manufacturing, $3.9 million, and for health care, $528,000.

Currently Public Sector and AFA-CWA members do not contribute to the MRF, although they could choose to opt in at a later time.

Strategic plans for the program would be initiated by the appropriate vice presidents and approved by the Executive Board, and the rank-and-file Defense Fund Oversight Committee would have oversight responsibilities.