Mobilization Makes the Difference in AT&T Pact

At the bargaining table, CWA’s negotiating team knew it could count on AT&T locals nationwide to send AT&T a clear message: We’re fighting for our future at AT&T.

“Our locals really made the difference in enabling us to win an agreement that achieves our bargaining goals,” said Ralph Maly, CWA vice president for communications and technologies. When leaders of AT&T locals met in January to set bargaining goals, they also discussed ways to expand the mobilization effort and make certain CWA members got the company’s and the public’s attention, he said.

CWA also had the support of the entire labor movement. The AFL-CIO Strategic Approaches Committee joined the campaign and organized an initiative to survey the use of AT&T long distance services by unions, community organizations, vendors and others, demonstrating to AT&T that the labor movement was standing tall with CWA members.

In a statement, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney pledged that if a fair agreement was not reached, the federation would, wherever possible, switch its AT&T accounts “to employers that respect their employees’ rights and show concern for their welfare” and would enlist all affiliates, other AFL-CIO bodies and supporters to do the same.

CWA’s mobilization actions got underway well before the start of contract talks, with locals holding training sessions for stewards and mobilizers and distributing information on key bargaining issues throughout the AT&T system. When negotiations began on March 11, CWA locals intensified their efforts, mobilizing around the key bargaining goals of jobs, quality health care coverage and retirement security.

Members held “just practicing” picket sessions, leafleted the public at AT&T locations and demonstrated at the AT&T-sponsored Pebble Beach professional golf tournament, in addition to holding worksite rallies and, of course, wearing red every Thursday.

Among the many mobilization actions:

• Nearly 400 union members and supporters rallied outside AT&T’s Pittsburgh headquarters, showing the company that CWA members and retirees had the support of union members throughout Pennsylvania and Delaware in their fight for a fair contract. CWA District 13 Vice President Vince Maisano was joined by State AFL-CIO President Bill George, Allegheny County AFL-CIO President Jack Shea, and members of CWA Locals 13000, 13302, 13500, and 38061.
  
  
• In Chicago, CWAers from Locals 4250, 4998, 2252, 14408, 54041, and District 4, plus supporters from the Chicago Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, rallied outside the Wyndham-Chicago Hotel and caused the cancellation of an AT&T-sponsored symposium on outsourcing to foreign nationals.
  
  
• CWA members of Locals 3151 and 3106 in Jacksonville, Fla., held an afternoon-long information picket outside AT&T offices to protest the company’s attempt to slash health care coverage for workers and retirees. The AT&T workers were joined by local elected officials and other supporters.
  
  
• Members of CWA Local 6151 spent some Saturday mornings at a bargaining “study hall” and throughout bargaining, stewards supplied members with information and balloons “for a popping good time.”
  
  
• Actions from El Paso, Texas, to Pleasanton, Calif., to New York City, helped spread the word that AT&T workers were determined to win a fair contract.