Lessons from Comcast: It Shouldn't be this Hard to Join a Union in the USA

Yes, Comcast technician John Pezzana tells skeptics and critics, there are labor laws on the books. The real question is this: Do they even begin to protect workers from employers determined to stop them from exercising their rights?

"Would you allow a group of well paid and highly motivated personnel to block, disrupt, intimidate, coerce, and use any marketing or media efforts to keep you out of your elected office?" Pezzana recently asked an audience that included Pennsylvania politicians. "This is what workers face under current labor laws."

Pezzana, a member of CWA Local 13000, struggled with both AT&T Broadband and then Comcast to organize Pittsburgh-area technicians. When he came to his plant seven years ago after working for a smaller CWA-represented telecom company, unhappy AT&T workers asked him if he'd contact the union on their behalf. When he did, he was thrilled to learn that CWA had negotiated a neutrality agreement with AT&T.

"I thought this was going to be easy," he said. "Boy was I in for a surprise."

After months of hard work, the workers collected enough cards to file a petition for an election. Despite the neutrality pact, Pezzana said managers held one-on-one meetings, hovered over groups of workers trying to talk on breaks and otherwise harassed and pressured employees.

Workers stood their ground and ultimately voted for CWA in the fall of 2000. But when merger talks began with Comcast, AT&T stalled negotiations.

When Comcast took over, it illegally took away the workers' pension plan and incited a move to decertify the union. The union lost an election in 2003 but the NLRB found Comcast guilty of so many violations that it ordered a new election. That time, workers voted 3-to-1 for CWA but Comcast still stalled negotiations.

Pezzana said the company went through seven attorneys and brought in human resources personnel from across the country to subvert the union drive. But after another close election and more charges against the company, the unit was finally certified. In 2006, after five long years, workers got a contract.

He thinks of those five embattled years when he hears corporate-funded attack ads that claim employers are fighting for workers' rights by trying to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act.

"The 'labor' laws on the books today favor corporations, not employees," he said. "Our story is just one example. We need the Employee Free Choice Act to level the playing field for hard-working Americans."