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Lucent Members Fight for Merrimack Valley Jobs
CWA members and community supporters are fighting to “save family wage jobs” at the Lucent Technologies Merrimack Valley Works in Andover, Mass.
Lucent, which has been cutting jobs in the United States and overseas, plans to shift to contract manufacturing at the Merrimack plant, jeopardizing about 1,000 CWA jobs. The company plans to keep 300 to 500 workers at the Lucent Integration Center and CWA is pressing Lucent to contract out to just one manufacturer and have the work done at the existing facility.
The Merrimack Valley Project, a coalition of CWA and other local unions, Jobs with Justice activists, and religious and civic leaders, has spearheaded the campaign to demonstrate that Lucent is putting quality jobs at risk.
As part of the campaign, about 300 citizens attended a public meeting with members of Congress, including Reps. John Tierney and Martin Meehan, staff from the offices of Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, CWA Vice Presidents Larry Mancino, District 1, and Ralph Maly, Communications and Technologies, religious and civic leaders, and top Lucent officials.
“Lucent has an obligation to workers and their community. That obligation doesn’t end when Lucent decides to pull up stakes and leave the communities it has depended on for its workers for over a half century,” Mancino said.
CWA and the Merrimack Valley Project have called on Lucent to make the preservation of good jobs a condition of the plant’s sale, and to keep the relationship between workers, their union and their company intact, he said.
“We have a right to go with the contract, and to say that when Lucent sells this plant, that there’s a union here,” Mancino said.
He refuted Lucent’s claim that it is getting out of manufacturing because of the poor economy and lack of orders, saying, “this company’s a bust because of mismanagement.”
Maly pressed Lucent for guarantees that the workers’ union contract would be honored by new companies that contract to do Lucent’s work.
Separately, CWA President Morton Bahr and Maly met with Kennedy to discuss the situation. Kennedy told Bahr he took up the matter with Lucent CEO Henry Schact and pledged that the entire Massachusetts delegation was ready to work with the governor on a plan to save workers’ jobs.
The trouble for Merrimack Valley workers mirrors cuts and layoffs Lucent has made throughout the company. So far this year, more than 3,800 installers have been laid off and more than 2,700 manufacturing jobs have been lost. Lucent also declared workers to be “surplus,” or likely to be laid off, in operations, Bell Labs and repair distribution.
Lucent, which has been cutting jobs in the United States and overseas, plans to shift to contract manufacturing at the Merrimack plant, jeopardizing about 1,000 CWA jobs. The company plans to keep 300 to 500 workers at the Lucent Integration Center and CWA is pressing Lucent to contract out to just one manufacturer and have the work done at the existing facility.
The Merrimack Valley Project, a coalition of CWA and other local unions, Jobs with Justice activists, and religious and civic leaders, has spearheaded the campaign to demonstrate that Lucent is putting quality jobs at risk.
As part of the campaign, about 300 citizens attended a public meeting with members of Congress, including Reps. John Tierney and Martin Meehan, staff from the offices of Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, CWA Vice Presidents Larry Mancino, District 1, and Ralph Maly, Communications and Technologies, religious and civic leaders, and top Lucent officials.
“Lucent has an obligation to workers and their community. That obligation doesn’t end when Lucent decides to pull up stakes and leave the communities it has depended on for its workers for over a half century,” Mancino said.
CWA and the Merrimack Valley Project have called on Lucent to make the preservation of good jobs a condition of the plant’s sale, and to keep the relationship between workers, their union and their company intact, he said.
“We have a right to go with the contract, and to say that when Lucent sells this plant, that there’s a union here,” Mancino said.
He refuted Lucent’s claim that it is getting out of manufacturing because of the poor economy and lack of orders, saying, “this company’s a bust because of mismanagement.”
Maly pressed Lucent for guarantees that the workers’ union contract would be honored by new companies that contract to do Lucent’s work.
Separately, CWA President Morton Bahr and Maly met with Kennedy to discuss the situation. Kennedy told Bahr he took up the matter with Lucent CEO Henry Schact and pledged that the entire Massachusetts delegation was ready to work with the governor on a plan to save workers’ jobs.
The trouble for Merrimack Valley workers mirrors cuts and layoffs Lucent has made throughout the company. So far this year, more than 3,800 installers have been laid off and more than 2,700 manufacturing jobs have been lost. Lucent also declared workers to be “surplus,” or likely to be laid off, in operations, Bell Labs and repair distribution.