Organizing Update

Verizon Wireless Retail Store Workers Vote for CWA in Massachusetts

Retail workers at a Verizon Wireless store in Everett, Mass., voted for bargaining rights and CWA representation.

The vote is a huge victory for these workers, who stayed strong despite an aggressive and intimidating management campaign to dissuade them. There are 16 workers at the Everett store. Fairness in promotions and discipline and greater job security were key issues in the campaign.

It follows the vote last May by nearly 70 Verizon Wireless store workers at six Brooklyn stores who also made a successful stand for bargaining rights to address their issues on the job.

"There's a real movement of Verizon Wireless workers that we knew we wanted to be a part of, to stand up with our colleagues for fairness and our rights on the job," said Mike Tisei, a retail worker at the Everett store. "Today, we joined that movement."

A growing wave of retail workers is looking for bargaining rights to make real changes on the job. Hundreds of Verizon Wireless workers are building the movement online too, through Facebook and other social media.

"We welcome the Everett retail store workers to our union family. All of us are stronger when we stand together," said Chris Shelton, CWA District 1 vice president.

Just as in Brooklyn, and for more than a decade nationwide, Verizon Wireless management put extreme pressure on the Everett workers in an effort to block the vote for CWA representation. There were countless one-on-one captive audience meetings, where managers forced workers to listen to one-sided attacks on union representation.

VZW has done everything possible to prevent Wireless workers from joining the 40,000 Verizon Communications workers, 80 Verizon Wireless technicians and nearly 70 Verizon Wireless workers who have CWA representation. Today's vote shows that Verizon Wireless's wall of resistance to workers' bargaining rights is crumbling.

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NABET-CWA Wins NLRB Election for Workers in Congress

Technicians and other workers at the U.S. House of Representatives Recording Studio have voted to join NABET-CWA. Fighting against a vicious anti-union campaign by management in the election that the National Labor Relations Board ran last week, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-Communications Workers of America won 11 of the 19 votes that workers cast.

NABET-CWA will represent the 24 workers in the unit in contract negotiations with their employer, Maslow Media Group. Workers in the unit do the same type of work as 45 NABET-CWA members who work in the House Recording Studio and are employees of the U.S. Government.

Tyrone Riggs, who lost his job at CNN 11 years ago, led the campaign with NABET-CWA staff Representative Carrie Biggs-Adams, and Local 52031 Local President Rich McDermott.