Senator Byrd Remembered as Workers' Champion Who 'Loved CWA'

The death of Robert Byrd on Monday was the end of an era in West Virginia, where the country's longest-serving senator was a hero to CWA members and workers across the state who knew he was always in their corner.

He loved CWA, as many of the things he believed in and fought for are the very same things that are important to us," said CWA District 2 Representative Elaine Harris, whose many memories of Byrd include his stand for workers when AT&T tried to close its Charleston call center in 1994. At least some of the 500 jobs were going to be sent overseas.

"He had a meeting with Bob Allen, the AT&T CEO, and he scolded him, he said, 'How dare you take the jobs away from the people in my state!'" Harris said. AT&T backed down.

Although the center ultimately was closed in 2004, "because of Senator Byrd, we had those jobs for 10 years longer than we would have," Harris said.

In another show of support, Byrd wrote to Verizon Wireless CEO Ivan Seidenberg in 2005 to inquire, in his typically polite fashion about "concerns that Verizon Wireless is infringing upon the collective bargaining rights of its employees."

Through his five decades in the Senate, he fought tirelessly for workers' jobs, rights and safety, championing laws to protect miners, opposing job-killing trade deals and, as majority leader in the 1970s, battling a Republican filibuster of labor law reform.

"He was a giant in West Virginia, as a senator and as a friend to so many of us," Harris said, recalling the letter and poem Byrd sent her when her father died. On Wednesday, her office had lunch delivered to Byrd's grieving staff. Tonight, CWA members in red shirts will march in a procession through Charleston as Byrd's body is carried to the state capitol for a memorial. "Everybody here was touched by him," she said.