Retirees: One of the Union’s Best Tools

By Ed Creegan
Retired Members' Council Chair

The following are excerpts from the speech given by Retired Members' Council President Ed Creegan at the 2006 CWA Convention in Las Vegas in July.

I have been attending CWA conventions as a union delegate and now as a retiree delegate for over 40 years. This is without a doubt the most meaningful and interesting convention I have ever attended.

As part of the extensive agenda to rebuild and energize our union, I want to emphasize that retirees, more than ever, are a vital part of the local and national structure of CWA. We are involved in all types of job actions, including phone banks, demonstrations and rallying at shareholders' meetings and a lot more.

But most locals haven't even come close to using the retiree resources available to them. About 90 percent of our locals don't have a retiree chapter. We're determined to change that. The officers and board of CWA, as well as the board of the CWA Retired Members' Council, have made a major commitment to organize our retirees into working, active chapters throughout the country.

Our goal is to double in size to 50,000 in the next three years. If you were to count all the retirees over the years, we have a potential of about 800,000. The RMC board is ready to help your locals build and grow retiree chapters. We are available to attend chapter meetings and meetings with the intent of creating new chapters.

A really positive thing happened today. We have a booth outside and to my unbelievable joy, 135 locals have signed up so far. This is more than double the amount we have today.

An organized active, retiree council can be a tremendous weapon when dealing with unreasonable and anti-union employers. At our Saturday leadership meeting, we had more than 130 retiree leaders. It was terrific. I hope by next year it will be 300.

To join a CWA Retired Members' Council chapter or learn more about launching one in your area, send an e-mail to: RMC@cwa-union.org.