Working Together: Building a Union that Can Lead the Way

Larry Cohen
CWA President

Delegates to last year's convention challenged CWA to imagine and create an even stronger union as we look to the huge challenges facing CWA and the labor movement today.

In "Resolution #1 — Ready for the Future," the delegates urged creative and visionary thinking. They called for us to seek the collective wisdom of CWA at every level, within every district and sector. And they mandated the Executive Board to prepare a Strategic Plan for the Future for action at this year's convention.

This program is truly historic, and your officers have made it our top priority. We have undergone an amazing process of democratic discussion and grassroots debate. Thousands of members, stewards, and local officers have participated in special meetings and conferences and have posted ideas on the Ready for the Future website.

The Board met and repeatedly reviewed these suggestions for change and new directions. We debated many ideas among ourselves, sometimes heatedly. In the end we came to unanimous agreement on the proposals that are described in this issue of CWA News.

I'm convinced that we — and I mean all of us, together — have met the delegates' challenge of looking at ourselves realistically and thinking boldly. As a result, this generation of CWA leaders has an opportunity to transform our union at a truly critical time.

Our goal is "Stronger Bargaining Power," and that is the bottom line in this strategic plan. For CWA and other unions across America, the weakening of workers' bargaining and organizing rights has put us squarely on the defensive as management attacks our jobs, our health benefits and our retirement security.

The U.S. labor movement is in crisis. With less than 8 percent of the private sector organized today, unions are losing the ability to set and maintain decent wage and benefit standards or to spearhead the progressive reforms and laws that have been our movement's legacy over the years.

In CWA we've seen our own bargaining power threatened or weakened in virtually every sector. Telecom bargaining used to produce higher living standards — now we mostly defend the standards that we have. The cable industry is growing and viciously opposes collective bargaining and organizing.

Relentless outsourcing has reduced union representation at GE by IUE-CWA and others from 35 percent in 1980 to 15 percent today. Likewise, our media and printing sector members are losing bargaining clout through the consolidation of media empires.

Workers without union representation are even worse off with no voice or means to fight back.

The proposal to create a Strategic Industry Fund is the boldest and most crucial of the 11 points in the Board's proposed plan. This fund will allow us to mount sustained, multi-faceted campaigns to fight for good jobs and build our power in our key industries and sectors.

Most importantly, a Strategic Industry Fund will give us the ability to play offense, not just defense. We need to take the fight to our employers all year round, every day, and not just dig foxholes for ourselves at contract time.

Our plan also calls for building and training a force of 50,000 stewards and activists to help drive our strategic campaigns and lead mobilizations for such crucial political goals as a national health care solution. We can augment that stewards' army by doing more to reach out and tap the energies of CWA retirees, who also have a direct stake in the assault on our health and retirement security.

In this way, we are emphasizing the potential strength and power of CWA at the grassroots. There are many examples of things that CWA does well in the areas of organizing, bargaining mobilizations, political and legislative efforts. A common denominator in all of them is involvement by member activists and volunteers in our communities. Our goal must be to build upon these examples and intensify that activism.

I believe we are at a turning point today for CWA — a point where we have a critical choice between operating in a mostly reactive, defensive mode or choosing to create a dynamic union.

We can take a lesson from other unions that remained passive and defensive and have gone into steady decline, in some cases disappearing altogether. We must never let that happen to CWA.

Instead we can choose to be bold, creative and aggressive in fighting back against the forces that threaten our members' jobs and security and our union itself. In our early years, in the 1940s and '50s, CWA rode in the jet stream of the giants of that era — the Mine Workers, Electrical Workers, Steelworkers and UAW. CWA must now lead and inspire a resurgent labor movement for the 21st Century.