Labor Launches Revolutionary Program to Restore Collective Bargaining and Organizing Rights for Mill

Spurred by CWA, the AFL-CIO Executive Council has embraced a sweeping new program to build up the labor movement and bring collective bargaining and organizing rights to tens of millions of workers. Its cornerstone will be the most massive member education and mobilization in the history of the labor movement.

Building on a statement passed by the CWA Executive Board in January, the AFL-CIO effort seeks to inspire a "revolution in culture and attitudes," not only within the labor movement but also in Congress and throughout society as a whole.

The council's statement, issued Feb. 26, points out that the percentage of workers with collective bargaining rights has dropped below 8.5 percent in the private sector and 38 percent in the public sector - less than half the density of unionization in every other industrialized democracy. Because fewer workers are represented by unions, working families, communities and the economy suffer.

As unions become a weaker counterweight to unchecked corporate power, the council said, income inequality rises and fewer working families have adequate health care, pensions or the ability to send their children to college.

"Reversing this failure is the central moral challenge of our time," the council stated. "History will judge today's union leaders by whether we rise to it. The unions of the AFL-CIO must devote the full measure of energy and resources necessary and available to help working men and women come together to improve their lives. And we must do so despite the most assiduous attempts by our federal government to weaken unions in a generation."

CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen, who addressed the council, said,"Millions of union members need to make this our priority."

"Our union can help lead the way just as we did 15 years ago with Jobs with Justice," Cohen said. "Every member has a story that is part of this - the health care strike at GE, the fight for jobs at Verizon, the one-year strike for dignity and respect at New Era Cap Co. - we all know the system is broken."

Cohen said planning is underway for coordinated national actions led by the AFL-CIO to focus media attention on the injustices suffered by workers who are denied collective bargaining and organizing rights.

Huge Commitment
Cohen authored the CWA Executive Board statement on devoting greater resources to collective bargaining and organizing rights. He challenged union organizers and international presidents to adopt its principles when he spoke at an AFL-CIO Organizing Summit in Washington, D.C., in January. He and CWA President Morton Bahr engaged federation executive council members on the subject at the council's winter meeting, with dramatic results.

The council, representing 65 national and international unions, joined with CWA in launching an immediate "unprecedented, unified campaign" to radically change the climate for collective bargaining and organizing.

"We undertake this campaign at a moment of extraordinary opportunity," the council stated, making note of a 2003 poll by Peter D. Hart Associates indicating that more than half of U.S. workers would vote for a union in their workplace if not blocked from doing so by their employers. "Workers express more interest in organizing than has been seen in decades. Distrust of employers and corporations is high. The naked political attacks on working people provide potential for galvanizing support. And recent experiences, including state-level initiatives expanding workers' collective bargaining rights, point to the potential for greater success."

The federation's four-point program seeks to:

• Publicize the Benefits of Collective Bargaining. Unions will build new alignments of community and political support for organizing and launch campaigns to expose the ugliness of employer retaliation. Even workers who succeed in winning recognition through the National Labor Relations Board process often find their struggle futile: One-third of employers never negotiate first contracts. Unions will use every means to publicize their organizing campaigns and make a public case for the benefits of collective bargaining and the urgency of protecting the freedom of workers to organize.
  
  
• Build an Environment of Public Support. The federation will work with Jobs with Justice, the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice and other workers' and civil rights coalitions to promote public understanding of the benefits of collective bargaining and the reality of employer opposition. The council also resolved to support the creation of a nonprofit organization with an expected budget of $3 million to $5 million to help promote collective bargaining and organizing rights. The new group, the National Rights at Work Committee, will promote the right of workers to form a union and collectively bargain as a fundamental freedom, equally as understood and cherished as freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the freedom to join a professional organization, church or political party.
  
  
• Harness State and Local Political Gains. CWA Local 7026 recently won recognition for 348 school employees in Tucson, Ariz., by campaigning for and electing two school board members who agreed to vote for recognition. Unions in California won passage of the Cedillo statute banning the use of public money to influence union campaigns. New York has a law granting card-check recognition for private-sector employees not covered by the National Labor Relations Act. Washington State has expanded collective bargaining rights for a range of state and state-funded employees. AFL-CIO unions will continue to link politics and organizing, targeting 2003 and 2004 state and local political races, electing union members to political office and electing mayors and governors who support workers' rights.
  
  
• Build Support for Effective Labor Laws. Unions will strive to build majority support in Congress and state legislatures for laws that protect the free and fair choice of employees to form unions without interference from management and enable more workers to bargain collectively. Working together, they will implement a comprehensive program of member education and will advance proposals for effective labor law, including protections for voluntary recognition of unions in place of the current, failed system. They will integrate workers' rights into their national political work, targeting federal races to elect candidates who support workers' freedom to organize.

"A campaign of this magnitude requires dedicated resources at the AFL-CIO, coordination among our unions and an unparalleled level of engagement of the labor movement at every level," the council stated. "The need is urgent. Our response must be similarly urgent. We will not shrink from the challenge."