North Carolina CWA Customer Service Members Build Power

It's a challenging time to work in customer service. Customer service representatives are facing the threat of big corporations offshoring and outsourcing jobs, pressure from monitoring and metrics, and much more.

To address these issues, CWA's Political Department and Customer Service Department partnered to train 23 CWA members last week in Greensboro, N.C., in what is the first-ever Customer Service Political Activist Program training. The goal of the pilot program is to help customer service members become activists who are armed with political education, leadership development, and action plans to build worker political power in North Carolina.

The program will establish a statewide customer service committee in North Carolina focused on engaging customer service members in political, legislative, and organizing fights in the state.

Nathalyn Bladen, a passenger service agent at American Airlines and a member of CWA Local 3642 said that as part of the training, which focused on the 40-year class war that's been waged against workers, "We began to realize the extent of how politicians have created our current problems. Once you know, you become responsible. And now we know. Now we have the responsibility to step up and drive change."

The work is supported by CWA's Customer Service Growth Fund and Political Department Growth Fund.

Twenty-three CWA customer service members last week gathered in Greensboro, N.C., for the first-ever Customer Service Political Activist Program training.