Labor's Free Choice Push Spotlights Verizon Campaign

As they champion the Employee Free Choice Act in cities, counties and states across the country, union organizers are also helping CWA and the IBEW build a coalition of local and national political leaders who are pressuring Verizon to respect the right of its workers to organize and bargain collectively.

"We're sending a message that elected officials are going to side with Verizon's workers, not with the greedy bosses," CWA President Larry Cohen said in a conference call Wednesday with members of the AFL-CIO's central labor councils and state federations, who are enthusiastically embracing the Verizon campaign.

CWA at every level, along with unions and the AFL-CIO network, are working with city councils, county commissions and state legislatures to pass resolutions urging Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. State bodies in Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia, Hawaii and Michigan, as well as the Minnesota Senate, are among key victories so far, and resolutions are pending in at least eight other states.

At the same time, union organizers and leaders are asking public officials to write letters to Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg urging him to stop the company's relentless union-busting and let Wireless and Verizon Business workers organize and bargain contracts.

"Verizon had neutrality, had card check," Cohen said. "Now Verizon is a poster child for a company abandoning its commitment to workers."

AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff said: "There is no more important campaign than the Verizon campaign. It's a growing company, a wealthy company, a company that's only going to get wealthier, and traditionally it's been a union company. If we had the Employee Free Choice Act today, Verizon Wireless and Verizon Business employees would be organizing and forming unions across the country. We cannot save and restore the American middle class until we restore the right of every worker in this country to form a union."

The Employee Free Choice Act, which was passed overwhelming in the U.S. House in March and is pending in the Senate, would effectively end the battle at Verizon by allowing workers to organize when a majority signs cards indicating they want representation – which Verizon Business techs in the Northeast already have done. The bill also calls for first-contract arbitration if necessary to stop the stalling tactics companies use now to avoid bargaining.

The AFL-CIO and member unions are pushing the Senate to vote on the bill by the end of June. Cohen said he expects 52 senators will show their support by voting to end debate on the bill. While 52 is a majority, under Senate rules 60 votes are required to bring a bill to the floor.

But Cohen and Acuff said majority support in both chambers of Congress will build even more momentum and the Employee Free Choice Act will ultimately pass, likely as part of an appropriations or trade package in the way the long-awaited minimum wage hike was tied to last week's war funding bill.

The bill's final hurdle is President Bush, who has already promised to veto it. But union leaders say all the groundwork being laid now will pay off for workers once a new president takes office in 2009. Cohen said any candidate labor decides to support in the 2008 presidential election must be fully committed to signing the bill.