Remarks of Sec.-Treas. Jeff Rechenbach to CWA 71st Convention

Good afternoon. It is an honor to once again stand before this Convention.

Like some of us from the Midwest, I enjoy listening to Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion. Each week he relates a little bit of what has been going on in a fictional Minnesota town. Keillor always begins his story with the phrase, "It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone…"

I wish I could tell you it has been a quiet year in the CWA Secretary-Treasurer's office, but, it has been anything but that.

For those of you that know me, this would be right on track with most of my career within CWA. I became a steward back in 1971, and one week later we went on a nationwide strike against the Bell System. I was first elected President of Local 4309 in Cleveland on the day in 1973 when President Nixon fired the Special Watergate Prosecutor, prompting the resignation of the Attorney General.

8 years later in 1981, I joined the CWA staff on the week Ronald Reagan took office. I became Vice President of District 4 the week that Newt Gingrich and the conservative coalition took control of Congress for the first time in over 40 years.

And on August 23, 2005, I was elected Executive Vice President of CWA on the very day Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans.

So it should come as no surprise that, not long after you elected me Secretary-Treasurer, our nation would fall into an economic depression the likes of which we haven't seen in a lifetime.

You'll be relieved to know, I have no plans to seek any other elected office in CWA.

With that knowledge in your pocket, let me take the next few minutes to review where we have been over the past year and where I would like to take us over the next one.

President Cohen often talks about the operation of our Union like a wristband, everybody sees the outside of it, but you can't or rarely see the inside. But, each has a role to fill, the outside to send a message, the inside to hold things together and enable the outside to do its job.

The Secretary-Treasurer's job is an awful lot like the inside of the wristband. We have to make certain that the inner workings of the Union are operating as smoothly and efficiently as possible. And that's a dynamic state, which has us constantly dealing with changing conditions and processes. It requires us to try and position ourselves ahead of the curve instead of behind it.

Fortunately, I have some very talented people who have helped me over the past year and I would like to recognize a few of them this afternoon.

It hardly seems like a CWA Convention without the guidance of Eileen Brackens and Vera McGee, but both of them retired a few months ago after a combined 93 years of service to CWA. I know Eileen is here, please stand up and up and be recognized by this Convention.

If I combine their service with our former Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling's years of service, I would be in big trouble because it might give a hint to Barbara's age. So suffice it to say, it would add up to quite a bit.

While they can't be replaced, helping me to fill the void are two newcomers to my office. Teri Pluta, out of District 4 by way of the Telecom office, and Gail Gannon. Teri brings years of experience in getting things done in CWA and Gail brings an MBA and CPA to the equation for us. Both have been tremendous assets.

We also have the secretarial staff from the Secretary-Treasurer's office here including my secretary, Robin Childress. In addition, we opened up the opportunity for our headquarters support staff working in Facility Services, Membership Dues & Accounting to come over in 2-hour shifts and see first hand, this great democratic experience. So some of them are in the guest section right now and others will be throughout the next three days.

All in all, I am fortunate to be surrounded with terrific people and given the challenges we face, I am going to need all the help I can get.

In an economic mess stemming from years of mindless deregulation of the financial industry, we find ourselves confronting a fiscal crisis. Like each of you, trying to balance your budgets with declining memberships and revenues, the task we face is not an easy one. It brings to us difficult choices, but choices that, as stewards of our members dues money, must be made, and must be made with an eye towards the long-term viability of our Union.

Now the inclination might be to just hunker down and wait out this economic storm, batten down the hatches and hope that we will survive. But, let me suggest the better course would be to lean right into it. After all, if we are going to be Ready for the Future, we need to take advantage of the moment and push harder than ever for the kind of change that would alter the makeup of our movement for generations to come.

And nothing would do that more completely or dramatically than passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. As you have heard, it won't be easy, although having all of you here this week will be the single largest push for the Employee Free Choice Act that this town has ever seen.

All of us will be heading up to Capitol Hill to try and undo some of the damage that has been done by the repeated fly-ins by the Chamber of Commerce in their all-out, $100 million effort to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act.

Yes, as we heard earlier today from President Cohen, the same Chamber of Commerce that opposed OSHA and SCHIP (the children's health care bill); the same Chamber of Commerce that fought against the Family Medical Leave Act and said maternity leave benefits shouldn't be paid because, "Pregnancy is voluntary."; the same Chamber of Commerce that kept the minimum wage frozen for more than 10 years; And, the same Chamber of Commerce that opposed the extension of unemployment benefits.

So no surprise they are, once again, on the wrong side of the angel. Corporate America will stop at nothing in their efforts to hang on to what they have, power in the workplace. Power that has delivered them incredible wealth. Wealth they didn't work for, but that they will do everything possible to hold onto and accumulate more of it.

To show just how out of whack our economic system is, all you have to do is look at how the 400 wealthiest Americans are getting by. In 1982, the top 400 had an average wealth of $620 million, over half a billion dollars! By 1995, that figure had doubled from $620 million to $1.2 billion, and now in 2009 the top 400 average over $3.9 billion, and that is after the stock market crash! That's more than a trillion and a half dollars in the hands of 400 people.

To put it in perspective, the average individual in the top 400 could write a million dollar check to each delegate, alternate and guest in this hall and still be worth over 2 billion dollars! It is no wonder they will do anything to keep workers from getting a voice.

It is never enough for some of these greediest in our nation. They wave the flag and cry crocodile tears over the alleged loss of democratic principles, which of course, is in and of itself an outright lie. As all of us know, no one's right to a vote is being taken away. Rather, workers are being given the option of deciding if they want a vote - - not their bosses.

So while corporate America pretends to tout democracy, we know better. This is nothing but democracy hypocrisy on their part.

I don't hear any of them putting decisions on where to relocate work to a vote. Unless you have a Union contract, you aren't getting a vote on what your wages will be. Health care, pensions, do any non-Union workers get votes on those? Or how about who their boss is? If they are for democracy in the workplace, surely they will let us start voting on who the boss should be!?! Who here would like to have the chance to vote on who their boss is at work? Hands down those of you who work in the Secretary-Treasurer's office.

Well, if the Chamber is so dedicated to the cause of democracy in the workplace, I am sure they will rally to our side on this idea.

Despite this democracy hypocrisy, we have heard some of the most outrageous statements from CEOs about Employee Free Choice. Most of you have probably heard the statements from Bernie Marcus at Home Depot or Lee Scott, the CEO of Wal-Mart, but the most outrageous one I have heard was by Sheldon Adelson. Adelson owns the Sands and Venetian Casinos in Las Vegas. He told the Wall Street Journal that the Employee Free Choice Act is, "one of the two fundamental threats to society." The other, he explained, is radical Islam.

When our Convention returns to Vegas in 2 years, your new membership cards will burn a hole in your pocket if you enter either the Sands or the Venetian.

So imagine how different all of our negotiations would be today if 1/3 of working Americans, which is what it was when I was born, belonged to a Union and had a voice at work versus the 7% of the private sector that it is today.

Wages and benefits would be out of competition in all of the industries we hold contracts in. And as far as health care, well, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that we would have a national, single payer health care system if a third of the workforce were in Unions.

By the way, the opponents of reforming the health care system are already rolling out the old Harry and Louise arguments that health care decisions should be made by doctors and patients and not the government. We already know decisions aren't made by patients or doctors or even the government, but by insurance companies. Which as we also know, insurance companies are a lot like hospital gowns, chances are neither one will cover your ass.

I could go on and on over the way things would be different if Union members made up a larger portion of our workforce, trade; employment security; pensions; but that's what the fight for the Employee Free Choice Act is all about. They have the power and if we want it, we are going to have to take it.

So while we may be a little more crowded than usual inside this hotel ballroom, we simply could not have picked a better time to be here in Washington, DC.

And let me follow up on a question I received from the floor last year on the potential savings to our Union that holding our Convention here in Washington, DC might represent. For the National Union, the figure would exceed a quarter of a million dollars. For Locals, it is a little more difficult to calculate because no two are alike.

But let's project a Local with 500 members that would send 3 delegates to the Convention and would have sent 2 delegates to the LP conference, and lets also assume that at least one of those 2 LP Conference delegates would have also been 1 of the 3 that attended the Convention.

Using a conservative calculation and assuming that all of the Convention delegates stay over for the LP conference with an additional delegate coming for just the LP conference, the savings per Local would be $2,085 each. It may not sound like much, but consider that average across a few hundred Locals and you can see the savings overall is well into 6 figures and surpasses the savings achieved by the National Union.

But, perhaps as a better measure, I took the total room nights booked for the 2008 Convention and the 2008 LP Conference, multiplied them times the effective room rates, (rooms in Vegas averaged $40 a night less than here in DC), and came up with a total. Then I took the total number of room nights booked here for this combined Convention/LP Conference and applied the effective rates to that. In room charges alone, the savings were $362,434, with nearly 90% of that being to Local Unions. And that doesn't include reductions in the number of paid days of wage loss, transportation, fewer days of per diem and the elimination of the LP Conference registration fee.

More importantly, the greatest value is having 2,000 CWA members and supporters marching up to Capitol Hill on Wednesday demanding action on the Employee Free Choice Act, and joining 10,000 others on Thursday on a push for health care reform. As the MasterCard commercials say, "Priceless!"

But until the day when we get that 60th vote, and at this point we should be just days away from Al Franken being seated as a Senator from Minnesota. And let me digress on that point. You know, I have been following the court battle surrounding the fight to seat Franken and my favorite quote from all of this was one by Norm Coleman when he said, "God wants me to serve." Really? How bad a candidate must Coleman be, if he supposedly has the creator of the universe on his side and still can't win this race?!?

Of course as we heard this morning, the drive to 60 votes doesn't end with the swearing in of Al Franken. We have a number of Democrats who need a spinal transplant to get the 60 votes we need for cloture. And while that may seem daunting at times, I would turn back the clock and remind you, as Larry mentioned, what happened 45 years ago this past Friday.

After 83 days, 83 days of filibuster, just a couple of miles from here in the chambers of the United States Senate, the filibuster was broken and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.

And unlike today, when not one single Republican Senator has the guts to support the single most important legislation on the road to rebuilding the middle class, in 1964, 46 Democrats and 27 Republicans voted to pass the Civil Rights Act. I am certain there were times during those 83 days when supporters of the Act where ready to throw in the towel and try again next year, but they didn't and they prevailed. So can we!

At any rate, until the day when President Obama is putting his name on the bottom of the Larry Cohen Act, (some of you may refer to it as the Employee Free Choice Act), we still have plenty of challenges facing us as a Union.

In the first quarter of this year, we averaged a drop in membership of nearly 4,000 a month. Our 2009/2010 fiscal year budget was put together forecasting a reduction in revenue of nearly $6 million. This has been further compounded by market losses in our pension plan, which necessitated us contributing $4 million. The first contributions we have had to make in many years.

Adding all of that together and still coming up with a balanced budget was a tough task. Only with the cooperation of the Executive Board and the work of this year's Finance Committee, were we able to do just that.

As with any challenges in life, there are opportunities. And in keeping with the spirit of Ready For The Future, the Secretary-Treasurer operations are being evaluated as we look to the future. We are looking toward structure issues within our Union, as well as, ways to take advantage of 21st century technology.

Towards that end, we have been making changes in the operations of the Secretary-Treasurer's office to help improve our efficiency and our service. We have reorganized the Accounting Department, which had become entirely too dependent on outside contract help to get all of the books and reports that come with the territory completed.

Next up is tackling our dues processing. I have put together a task force to sit down and evaluate the hows and whys of our current system with an eye towards, not only making it more efficient, but linking it directly into an online database. A database that you can access, as well as, the National Union.

Two weeks ago, I sent out a survey and I want to thank the over 200 Local Union Officers who responded as we collectively try and carve a path into the future.

This project is going to take time and I would ask you to be patient as we wade through all of the issues that have to be dealt with. The information about our members and more timely ways to communicate with them is good for CWA Locals and good for CWA.

In closing, let me for a moment go back to that day in the Rose Garden when President Obama is handing Larry a pen he used to sign the Cohen Act.

Are we, as a Union, ready for what happens next?

I can tell you this much, every other major Union in the US is in the process of putting together their plans for a post Employee Free Choice world. ComCast is now the third largest residential phone service provider in the country with half a million more voice customers than Qwest. Do we think for a moment that the IBEW will sit back and wait for us to organize the ComCast's of the world? What about the T-Mobile or the Verizon Wireless workers - - will the Teamsters be interested in them? Or the SEIU, will they be content to wait for us to train a new organizing force and decide what our targets might be?

I can promise you, they all have plans underway to build their bargaining power off the passage of this legislation and shame on us if we don't as well. One person's opinion here, but I believe we need to be mobilizing now, identifying and training local union organizers, putting together a list of our prime targets and figuring out strategies to give those workers an opportunity to enjoy the benefits of a collectively bargained agreement.

If there was ever a call to be "Ready for the Future" - this is it! And we shouldn't hesitate but to look to our strategic industry funds to contemplate ways to get more Local activists on the street and organizing for our Union.

Imagine how different our negotiations would be if we represented a majority of the workers in the industries that touch CWA. It changes the dynamic at the bargaining table in ways that harken back to the days when we were able to play offense all the time instead of constantly being on defense.

We can do this. It is no longer a pipe dream. With the leadership that the Convention has always provided within CWA, you can show the way to make this happen again.

If I can leave you with one thought, it is to take some time over the next few days to let your imagination run. Let it take you to a place where our Union has a renewed strength at the bargaining table, where it has unmatched political clout and where Union members, once again, have a powerful and dominant voice in workplaces across America.

Together, we can make that happen.

Thank you.