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Mailers Ramp Up Pressure for Wash Post Contract
Silk-tied and well-heeled executives arriving for the Washington Post-sponsored FOSE Exhibition at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center were greeted by a blaring megaphone, honks of solidarity from passing truckers and about 60 Post mailers and their supporters conducting an informational picket.
"The Washington Post is unfair to workers and their families," a CWA Local 14201 activist shouted into the megaphone, followed by group chanting of "Equal Pay for Equal Work," one of the CWA-represented mailers' key issues in bargaining.
The 400 Mailers at the Post have been working without a contract since May 19, 2003. They picketed and handed out fliers at FOSE, a technology exhibition for federal, state, local and international technology professionals, because it is an enterprise of Post/Newsweek Tech Media.
After participating in the mailers' last bargaining meeting with the company on Feb. 25 along with CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen and Vice Presidents Bill Boarman of the Printing Sector and Linda Foley of TNG-CWA, President Morton Bahr warned the company that if the talks weren't resolved, the company would provoke a "war of attrition" with the full-backing of CWA for a corporate campaign. Both Boarman and Foley, and headquarters staff were on hand for the March 24 picketing.
"What we're trying to get here is respect, and we're getting no respect at the bargaining table for the union or the workers," Boarman said.
The Post's management wants mailers to work longer hours for less pay, to give up overtime and surrender their pension for a pay raise, Boarman said.
Also, "We have utility people who get paid less than 50 percent of the scale, and we're trying to bring them up to full journeyman scales," said Local 14201 President John McInerney. "The Post won't even negotiate it."
Boarman alleged racial discrimination insomuch as the utility mailers, who have no chance for advancement, are predominantly African-American and Hispanic.
Earlier this month CWA mounted an electronic activist campaign that in its first few days sent several hundred protest emails to the Post's publisher and CEO and ran newspaper ads in Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, exposing the Post's treatment of the mailers.
With bargaining scheduled to resume April 1, the picketers handed out fliers urging the public to "join with us in bringing an end to this injustice. Please contact Washington Post Publisher Bo Jones at (202) 334-7141 or jonesb@washpost.com and tell him that these employees deserve equal pay for equal work and that our community deserves better than this."
"The Washington Post is unfair to workers and their families," a CWA Local 14201 activist shouted into the megaphone, followed by group chanting of "Equal Pay for Equal Work," one of the CWA-represented mailers' key issues in bargaining.
The 400 Mailers at the Post have been working without a contract since May 19, 2003. They picketed and handed out fliers at FOSE, a technology exhibition for federal, state, local and international technology professionals, because it is an enterprise of Post/Newsweek Tech Media.
After participating in the mailers' last bargaining meeting with the company on Feb. 25 along with CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen and Vice Presidents Bill Boarman of the Printing Sector and Linda Foley of TNG-CWA, President Morton Bahr warned the company that if the talks weren't resolved, the company would provoke a "war of attrition" with the full-backing of CWA for a corporate campaign. Both Boarman and Foley, and headquarters staff were on hand for the March 24 picketing.
"What we're trying to get here is respect, and we're getting no respect at the bargaining table for the union or the workers," Boarman said.
The Post's management wants mailers to work longer hours for less pay, to give up overtime and surrender their pension for a pay raise, Boarman said.
Also, "We have utility people who get paid less than 50 percent of the scale, and we're trying to bring them up to full journeyman scales," said Local 14201 President John McInerney. "The Post won't even negotiate it."
Boarman alleged racial discrimination insomuch as the utility mailers, who have no chance for advancement, are predominantly African-American and Hispanic.
Earlier this month CWA mounted an electronic activist campaign that in its first few days sent several hundred protest emails to the Post's publisher and CEO and ran newspaper ads in Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, exposing the Post's treatment of the mailers.
With bargaining scheduled to resume April 1, the picketers handed out fliers urging the public to "join with us in bringing an end to this injustice. Please contact Washington Post Publisher Bo Jones at (202) 334-7141 or jonesb@washpost.com and tell him that these employees deserve equal pay for equal work and that our community deserves better than this."