With President Biden, CWAers Have a Seat at the Table

As all of us in the labor movement know, if you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu. For decades, corporate-backed politicians have traded away our jobs for corporate profits, and we were on the menu.

When Joe Biden was running for president, he talked a lot about his vision for restoring the American middle class. He promised to be the most pro-worker and pro-union president in American history. Since taking office, he has made good on that promise. One very visible way was by joining members of the United Auto Workers on their picket line while they were on strike against the Big Three auto companies. Joe Biden was the first sitting president to ever join a picket line.

Joining a picket line is an impressive show of solidarity, but a lot of what makes the Biden Administration unique has happened away from the cameras. Time and again, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and members of their administration have invited union members—including CWA members—to share their expertise and advise them on the best way to create good union jobs.

With Joe Biden in office, we finally have a seat at the table.

Tech workers Jenn Chow, Autumn Mitchell, and Alex Speidel, who organized their workplaces to join CWA, met with President Biden, Vice President Harris, and other key administration officials to share their experiences and advocate for stronger rules to protect our organizing and bargaining rights as part of the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment. “Everybody is entitled to be treated with dignity,” President Biden said during one of the meetings. “And as my dad used to say, sometimes you have to demand it if you don’t get it. And the way to demand it is you organize.”

CWA Local 7212 member and splicing technician Jeremy Przybilla demonstrated proper fiber splicing techniques at the White House Talent Pipeline Challenge, an event designed to promote labor-management partnerships for training.

Vice President Kamala Harris met with CWA Local 7304 members who make electric buses when she visited a New Flyer bus facility in St. Cloud, Minn., to learn how renewable energy manufacturing can support family-sustaining jobs in communities across our country. “Electric buses are key to the future of public transportation in America—which is why, since taking office, together with Democrats and Republicans, we have invested over $5.5 billion to put thousands of new electric transit buses on the streets of our nation," Vice President Harris told the crowd. “And we've also done that to create jobs—so people can have decent work hours and have good-paying union jobs.”

CWA Local 3519 Vice President Ylonda Sherrod testified at a White House meeting about the impact of automated monitoring software on customer service representatives’ jobs. “I think AI could be great for helping workers with simple tasks, but without the use of human creativity, it won’t be able to do the more complicated tasks that are usually needed to truly help the customers,” Sherrod said. “It is unfair that AI is being used to replace the invaluable experience of human workers. It’s even worse that us workers are basically training our replacements and being asked to help the creators make these systems better at doing our job.”

CODE-CWA members Briana Thomas and Mohammad Saman shared their experiences winning union representation with President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), along with other administration officials, at a White House roundtable. “Workers in the video game industry care deeply about our work, and a union contract gives us the leverage to negotiate to make this a sustainable career,” Saman told the group.

Over a dozen members of CWA’s Broadband Brigade met with senior Biden Administration leadership to provide feedback on the best way for officials to ensure that federal broadband infrastructure funding goes to companies that employ well-trained union workers and not low-road contractors. “I wasn’t sure if they’d really be interested in what we had to say,” said CWA Local 4108 member Marty Szeliga. “I thought it might be some phony political photo op. But we were there for over three hours, and they really listened to us.”

CWA President Claude Cummings Jr., CWA Local 3642 member Sebrenda Clifton, AFA-CWA International Vice President Keturah Johnson, and AFA-CWA Frontier Airlines MEC Secretary-Treasurer Toi Scott joined Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Sue and other senior members of the Biden Administration at a Black Labor Leaders Roundtable designed to amplify the voices of Black workers and labor leaders and share information about the benefits of union membership. “Through my union, I have experienced firsthand the power of collective bargaining, the protection of worker rights, and the tangible benefits that come with it,” said Clifton, a Trained Observer and Travel Professional at American Airlines.

Fast Facts

The Biden Administration:

• Allowed Medicare to directly negotiate to lower the price of the highest cost prescription drugs and capped the cost of insulin for seniors at $35 per month, helping save millions of seniors over $1,200 per year.
• Prioritized the creation of good jobs by including the first ever labor rights protections as part of over $40 billion in broadband infrastructure investments.
• Fought to  keep hundreds of thousands of state and local employees, flight attendants and passenger service agents on the job during the COVID crisis.
• Provided support to protect over 10,000 CWA members whose pension funds had been in danger of insolvency.
• Strengthened Buy American rules and closed loopholes to create good union manufacturing jobs here in the U.S.

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