Telecom News - Telecom Leaders Gear Up for Bargaining

With contracts set to expire for more than 254,000 members at Verizon, AT&T and Qwest over the next two years, local CWA leaders will hold bargaining council meetings in coming months to prepare for negotiations.

Meetings will address issues the union is likely to face at the bargaining table, explore bargaining trends and strategies and develop a plan for mobilizing members.

The AT&T Mobility contract in District 6 expires February 2008, the AT&T Mobility national healthcare contract expires in June and Verizon East and the Qwest contracts expire next August.

The Verizon bargaining council meeting will be held Nov. 27-29 in Philadelphia. The AT&T meeting, covering members at the former SBC, AT&T legacy, Bell South, and AT&T Mobility, will be held Dec. 9-11 in St. Louis. The Qwest bargaining council will coordinate its meeting with the annual District 7 meeting in Utah next spring.

CWA's first-ever combined leadership conference for locals representing members in the union's Telecom-munications and Communications and Technologies units will be held March 9-12 in Dallas, bringing together members from AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya and OFS, as well as independent Telecom units ADT, Century Tel, Citizens, Embarq and Windstream.