Putting Union Clout Behind Public Service

In Buffalo, N.Y., a man is alive because he could get to an emergency room. In Midland, Texas, a needy child is fed because of a social worker's patient attention. On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, hurricane victims receive emergency assistance because state workers help them fill out the necessary applications. All benefit from the services of publicly funded institutions, but more particularly from the dedication of CWA members.

Walking the Walk

When last December a New York state commission recommended the closing or modification of nine hospitals to curb skyrocketing Medicaid costs — including three in the Buffalo area — CWA Local 1168, Nurses United, swung into action. The commission's recommendations became law when the state legislature failed to act upon them by Dec. 31. So the local planned a 320-mile walk from Buffalo to Albany, the state capital, hoping to publicize the plight of their patients and secure a meeting with Gov. Eliot Spitzer and key legislators.

Two Local 1168 members, Dawn Mele and Pat Sullivan, accompanied by local President John Klein, local executive board members and members of Locals 1122 and 1133, set out from DeGraff Memorial Hospital on Jan. 2. Buffalo's DeGraff, Millard Fillmore and St. Joseph's hospitals, employing about 4,000 Local 1168 members, treat hundreds of patients in their three emergency rooms — all slated for closing.

"Many indigent and elderly patients receive care in these ERs, and there's normally a four- to-five-hour wait," Klein said. "They're already diverting ambulances to other hospitals. In cases of heart attacks or other acute problems, an extra 10 minutes' drive could cost a patient his or her life."

The walkers averaged about 16 miles a day, stopping at other health care facilities, listening to the concerns of communities, and sometimes braving temperatures below zero.

A few days into the walk, Mele joked about a blister, calling it "my friend — it's bandaged pretty good, so we're just moving along. We're lucky today; it's 35 degrees and we've got some sun."

But with warm jackets and orange scarves emblazoned with a big "CWA," she and Sullivan were prepared for the bitter cold that would come. "I think it's for a great cause. It's for the community, so they'll have a say in this, and it's for the workers. We'll be out in the cold instead of our patients," Mele said.

Mele, an anatomic pathology assistant at Fillmore, and Sullivan, who works in patient reception in DeGraff's radiology department, did the entire walk. Other union members participated in stretches close to home. And CWA President Larry Cohen and District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton walked the final day, Jan. 26, as the nurses headed into Albany.

Spitzer and legislators met with the nurses, heard their concerns and pledged to maintain a continuing dialog. For the first time, said Shelton, he heard the word "flexibility" as to how the commission's report might be implemented.

The local is continuing its community awareness and lobbying activities to try to save as many as 4,000 health care jobs in the Buffalo area.

Saving Social Services

When the Texas Legislature in 2003 passed a bill authorizing the conversion of the state's human services eligibility system to a privatized call center system, the Texas State Employees Union-CWA mounted a campaign that saved 99 local human services offices, 2,900 state employee jobs and the face-to-face contact that is so important to clients in need of assistance.

"Hundreds of our activists led the local forward into an all-out fight to put an end to the deal," said TSEU-CWA Local 6186 Vice President Mike Gross.

The state awarded an $899 million contract to Accenture, a Bermuda-based consulting firm, to establish up to four call centers around the state to process human services applications. Accenture set up call centers in Midland, San Antonio and Austin and planned to shut down other offices around the state, causing layoffs of CWA-represented state workers.

More than 100,000 children's Medicaid and health insurance enrollments and food stamp applications became backed up at the Midland and Austin call centers.

Groups of TSEU-CWA members lobbied county leaders, state legislators and members of Congress, building bipartisan opposition to the plan. The local prevailed on 60 state legislators to press the state's Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) to halt the call center experiment and return more than 12,000 backlogged cases to state employees.

In December, HHSC announced its contract with Accenture would be reduced to $566 million — for the scanning of documents and other data processing functions only.

TSEU-CWA activists continue to visit legislators, asking for full cancellation of the Accenture contract and the hiring of additional workers to strengthen the agency.

Caring After Katrina

Two years ago when Hurricane Katrina struck the state's Gulf Coast, social workers represented by the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees, CWA Local 3570 — often cut off from their own families that had sustained losses — were dispatched to storm-ravaged Biloxi, Ocean Springs and Gulfport, where they took applications for assistance from hundreds who had lost their homes and possessions.

"For the first time our governor had an opportunity to see our state employees in action," said Local 3570 President Brenda Scott. "We had members who went down and stayed in tents and trailers just to be able to provide those services. Now, we're fighting to get a disaster relief package in place that's friendly to communities and to our members, particularly those who are in the eye of the storm."