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CWA: We're Fighting for Our Future at AT&T

AT&T LOCAL UNION OFFICERS met with CWA's top leadership for a daylong strategy session, developing an action plan to counter AT&T's attempt to keep unions out of
the growth areas of the company.


CWA President Morton Bahr, Executive Vice President Larry Cohen and Vice President Jim Irvine, communications and technologies, sat down with nearly 100 local union officers to review ongoing organizing and bargaining issues among new AT&T workers. The meeting focused on AT&T's refusal to live up to the terms of the contract's neutrality and consent election agreement and its refusal to bargain fairly when workers in new areas of the company choose CWA representation.


Not only is AT&T trying to keep our members out of the growth areas of the company, but it is cutting jobs in core units and shifting union work to AT&T Local Service and other non-union areas, Irvine charged.


Local union leaders are signing onto the action plan and are mobilizing members around job, bargaining and organizing issues.


Since the expedited election process took effect July 1 for Wireless and Local Service (ALS) - it goes into effect next March for AT&T's cable operations - workers at four AT&T locations have voted for CWA representation, and campaigns are underway in several other cities.


Irvine told the union presidents that "we need to determine how we act together at AT&T, and how we show the company that cooperation with us pays," while a refusal to cooperate also has a price. "Right now, the
message from management is that `things have changed and CWA has to understand that.' Our message to AT&T is we
won't stand by and see our jobs lost and our influence diminished," he said. AT&T is buying up cable and other companies with the money and profits our members have earned, Irvine added.


CWA's success in organizing at new AT&T operations has the company trying a new tactic: AT&T is now charging
that CWA has violated the neutrality and consent election agreement, President Bahr noted, adding none of AT&T's
challenges has succeeded because "the company violates the agreement, not us."


AT&T's move to cable is viewed as risky by many analysts, Bahr said, because much of the technology AT&T is counting on is still under development. "Every time a CEO makes a multibillion dollar error, we pay for it with jobs," he said. AT&T is undergoing vast change and "it's important to find places for our members to go," Bahr said, explaining why CWA fights hard to win access to the company's growth jobs for CWA members.


"Right now, we represent a minority of technical and customer service workers at all of AT&T," said EVP Cohen. But "we're not going to be stuck in a box. We need to
determine how to connect with workers in all the new areas of the company, and we need to get the message to our own members that they see AT&T as one picture. Our members want a future at AT&T," he said.


With AT&T's continuing acquisition of new cellular and cable companies, as well as partnerships and joint ventures with additional firms, CWA today represents just a little more than half the non-management jobs.