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In My Opinion: At SBC: Tackling the Toughest Workplace Issues
It took more than three months of negotiations, an intense member mobilization, and finally a four-day strike to produce a settlement at SBC this year.
It was a tough round of bargaining, similar to our Verizon talks last year - for similar reasons: we were confronting two of the toughest issues in the American workplace and the economy overall.
Health care costs have been climbing nearly out of control in double-digit percentages each year. In the face of SBC's demands to shift more of the cost to workers and our retirees, we found ourselves trying to deal with what is a national crisis - one that requires a national solution - in bargaining with a single company.
The other issue was that of ensuring that our members have a role in performing the technical jobs of the future. More and more, employers have been outsourcing this work in a race to the bottom for cheap labor standards.
We began the talks with SBC members enjoying health benefits that rank in the top 5 percent in the nation in terms of coverage, access and low out-of-pocket costs. At the end of this contract, we'll still be in that top category.
But if the current health care crisis continues, by 2009 when we bargain with SBC again, few will believe that there are still workers receiving health coverage that costs nothing unless the worker gets sick - and even then, just relatively modest co-payments. Such coverage for retirees is even rarer; fewer than 20 percent of large companies offer any level of coverage for retirees, and that number has been shrinking.
If nothing is done about this crisis in the next five years, providing decent health coverage won't be sustainable for corporations like SBC or for the economy at large.
The time to push for a political solution is now, not when our major contracts next begin to expire. We must get active at every level, working with coalitions of business and citizens groups, in demanding a national health care program for the United States.
When it comes to the new jobs, ironically, it's communications technology that is making it possible for companies today to outsource technical and customer support work all over the globe. At SBC, you could say that we were determined not to be the victims of our own technology.
One of the most important achievements in our settlement is winning SBC's acknowledgement that the evolving digital, wireless and Internet-based technologies are not distinct areas from traditional telephone work - and are not areas from which our members should be excluded. It was agreed that Fiber to the Premise (FTTP), Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Wi-Fi and other data services "are extensions of traditional telephone work or copper cable switched technology." And the comparable work we now do will be performed by workers covered by our collective bargaining agreements, the settlement stipulates.
Our jobs of the future agreement, while not perfect in every respect, is a breakthrough in opening the door to these growth jobs for our members, and for reducing contractors and using card check to organize and raise job standards for new areas of SBC.
There are thousands of jobs at SBC that our members can do that have been outsourced, both domestically and offshore, or confined to areas that previously were off limits to our card check agreement. Gaining access to these areas expands opportunities for our members to have long-term careers with SBC.
We can't all by ourselves reverse the national trends toward health care cost shifting and overseas job shifting. But we can hope that this settlement sets an example for other major corporations to act responsibly instead of victimizing workers, abandoning communities and compounding America's economic problems.
Our strike, short as it was, focused heavy media coverage on the issue of outsourcing technology and customer service jobs. Again, we can hope that increased attention to the issue helps prompt Congress to take action and find ways to make it more attractive for companies to create jobs here rather than export them in huge numbers.
I briefed Senator John Kerry on our SBC settlement, and he was quite interested in how we handled the challenge and found creative ways to deal with health care costs and limit outsourcing.
I wish that we had a similar opportunity to brief those in the current White House, for quality American jobs for American workers shouldn't be a partisan issue.
It was a tough round of bargaining, similar to our Verizon talks last year - for similar reasons: we were confronting two of the toughest issues in the American workplace and the economy overall.
Health care costs have been climbing nearly out of control in double-digit percentages each year. In the face of SBC's demands to shift more of the cost to workers and our retirees, we found ourselves trying to deal with what is a national crisis - one that requires a national solution - in bargaining with a single company.
The other issue was that of ensuring that our members have a role in performing the technical jobs of the future. More and more, employers have been outsourcing this work in a race to the bottom for cheap labor standards.
We began the talks with SBC members enjoying health benefits that rank in the top 5 percent in the nation in terms of coverage, access and low out-of-pocket costs. At the end of this contract, we'll still be in that top category.
But if the current health care crisis continues, by 2009 when we bargain with SBC again, few will believe that there are still workers receiving health coverage that costs nothing unless the worker gets sick - and even then, just relatively modest co-payments. Such coverage for retirees is even rarer; fewer than 20 percent of large companies offer any level of coverage for retirees, and that number has been shrinking.
If nothing is done about this crisis in the next five years, providing decent health coverage won't be sustainable for corporations like SBC or for the economy at large.
The time to push for a political solution is now, not when our major contracts next begin to expire. We must get active at every level, working with coalitions of business and citizens groups, in demanding a national health care program for the United States.
When it comes to the new jobs, ironically, it's communications technology that is making it possible for companies today to outsource technical and customer support work all over the globe. At SBC, you could say that we were determined not to be the victims of our own technology.
One of the most important achievements in our settlement is winning SBC's acknowledgement that the evolving digital, wireless and Internet-based technologies are not distinct areas from traditional telephone work - and are not areas from which our members should be excluded. It was agreed that Fiber to the Premise (FTTP), Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Wi-Fi and other data services "are extensions of traditional telephone work or copper cable switched technology." And the comparable work we now do will be performed by workers covered by our collective bargaining agreements, the settlement stipulates.
Our jobs of the future agreement, while not perfect in every respect, is a breakthrough in opening the door to these growth jobs for our members, and for reducing contractors and using card check to organize and raise job standards for new areas of SBC.
There are thousands of jobs at SBC that our members can do that have been outsourced, both domestically and offshore, or confined to areas that previously were off limits to our card check agreement. Gaining access to these areas expands opportunities for our members to have long-term careers with SBC.
We can't all by ourselves reverse the national trends toward health care cost shifting and overseas job shifting. But we can hope that this settlement sets an example for other major corporations to act responsibly instead of victimizing workers, abandoning communities and compounding America's economic problems.
Our strike, short as it was, focused heavy media coverage on the issue of outsourcing technology and customer service jobs. Again, we can hope that increased attention to the issue helps prompt Congress to take action and find ways to make it more attractive for companies to create jobs here rather than export them in huge numbers.
I briefed Senator John Kerry on our SBC settlement, and he was quite interested in how we handled the challenge and found creative ways to deal with health care costs and limit outsourcing.
I wish that we had a similar opportunity to brief those in the current White House, for quality American jobs for American workers shouldn't be a partisan issue.