Utica Workers Take on Cable Giant Time Warner

Backed by community leaders in upstate New York, a small but determined unit of CWA members are taking on media giant Time Warner, challenging one town after another to consider whether the union-busting monopoly cable company deserves their business.

Last week, the Utica-based workers represented by CWA Local 1126 showed up at a city council finance committee in Syracuse and two days later held a protest in Binghamton, where they were joined by members from other CWA locals, labor council leaders and the mayor and other city officials in decrying the company's treatment of workers.

"A company with $6.5 billion in revenue and $6 million from the recent rate hike in Utica alone isn't a company that should be complaining that it can't afford to give its workers a 401(k) and a pension plan, something every other Time Warner employee has," said Local 1126 President Michael Garry. "But because we chose to be union members, they've refused to give us any retirement benefits." Their previous 401(k) and pension plans were frozen when the former owner, Adelphia, went bankrupt.

Add to that, he said, the fact that the 35 Utica workers haven't had any raises in four years -- the last year and a half under Time Warner ownership. Though the cable company has changed hands a number of times, the workers have had a union contract for 35 years and were in talks with Adelphia when Time Warner took over.

The workers, the only unionized Time Warner workers in upstate New York, overwhelmingly voted to keep their union after a decertification attempt last fall. A federal mediator is now involved after the company's 18-month's long refusal to budge at the bargaining table.

The local is using a creative approach to get its message across to the media.  It tried to place a paid TV ad on Time Warner's network, and when the ad was turned down, workers used the censorship issue to attract coverage by local broadcast stations in Binghamton, which aired the spot for free as part of their news reports.  In one broadcast report, Mayor Matt Ryan said of Time Warner, "They're dead wrong in trying to bust this union."