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Wash Post Mailers Battle Takebacks, Discrimination
CWA mailers at the Washington Post are reaching out to labor activists, political leaders and the general public in a fight against contract takeback demands and discriminatory treatment of mostly minority workers in the job title of utility mailer.
In talks that have stretched out for 10 months since their contract expired, Post management is still demanding that the 350 mailers and helpers work an extra five hours a week for straight time, instead of the time-and-a-half they've been receiving, give up their paid wash-up time, and accept bonuses in lieu of a first-year wage increase, followed by paltry wage increases in future years.
CWA is also charging discrimination against the 120 utility mailers, who work side by side with journeyman mailers and perform the same work, but for half the pay - $11.50 an hour. The utility mailers, who are 85 percent African-American or Hispanic, are stuck at the bottom, with no career path to become journeymen. And they would only get a wage increase if they give up their ITU-CWA pension benefit, the Post insists.
"It's unconscionable that the Post, which is quite profitable, maintains a class of working poor who can't even afford to pay the 30 percent premium cost to get health care, and have to work second jobs," said CWA President Morton Bahr. Bahr personally joined negotiations on Feb. 26, along with Executive Vice President Larry Cohen. Newspaper Guild-CWA President Linda Foley also attended to show the support of the Post's editorial and advertising staff.
Bahr warned Post negotiators that if talks aren't resolved soon the company will provoke "a war of attrition," with the full resources of CWA behind the workers in a corporate campaign directed at the various entities of the Washington Post Co.
CWA this week mounted an electronic activist campaign that in just a few days has sent several hundred protest emails to the Post's publisher and CEO (go to ga.cwa-union.org to participate).
The union also ran recent newspaper ads in the Wall Street Journal and in Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, exposing the Post's treatment of the mailers.
In talks that have stretched out for 10 months since their contract expired, Post management is still demanding that the 350 mailers and helpers work an extra five hours a week for straight time, instead of the time-and-a-half they've been receiving, give up their paid wash-up time, and accept bonuses in lieu of a first-year wage increase, followed by paltry wage increases in future years.
CWA is also charging discrimination against the 120 utility mailers, who work side by side with journeyman mailers and perform the same work, but for half the pay - $11.50 an hour. The utility mailers, who are 85 percent African-American or Hispanic, are stuck at the bottom, with no career path to become journeymen. And they would only get a wage increase if they give up their ITU-CWA pension benefit, the Post insists.
"It's unconscionable that the Post, which is quite profitable, maintains a class of working poor who can't even afford to pay the 30 percent premium cost to get health care, and have to work second jobs," said CWA President Morton Bahr. Bahr personally joined negotiations on Feb. 26, along with Executive Vice President Larry Cohen. Newspaper Guild-CWA President Linda Foley also attended to show the support of the Post's editorial and advertising staff.
Bahr warned Post negotiators that if talks aren't resolved soon the company will provoke "a war of attrition," with the full resources of CWA behind the workers in a corporate campaign directed at the various entities of the Washington Post Co.
CWA this week mounted an electronic activist campaign that in just a few days has sent several hundred protest emails to the Post's publisher and CEO (go to ga.cwa-union.org to participate).
The union also ran recent newspaper ads in the Wall Street Journal and in Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, exposing the Post's treatment of the mailers.