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communications workers of america
On Labor Day, Champions of Working Class Vow to Defeat Trump
"The facts are clear: Democrats are the party of labor, and the Biden-Harris administration has been the most pro-labor administration in our lifetime," said a pair of supporters.
Sep 02, 2024
With the Labor Day holiday as a backdrop, U.S. union leaders on Monday reiterated their message that a Democratic administration led by Vice President Kamala Harris would offer far better policies for workers than a Republican one with former President Donald Trump at the helm.
Echoing Harris' resonant "We are not going back" campaign slogan, Communications Workers of America president Claude Cummings Jr. said that "we are not going back because we have the opportunity to elect Kamala Harris, a true champion for working people, who has a vision for the future where we all have more control over our own lives, not less."
"Last month, as our members at AT&T Southeast were preparing to go on strike, Donald Trump laughed with notorious union buster Elon Musk about firing striking workers," he continued. "Today that would be illegal, but if he's elected president, Trump will have the plan and the power to take us back to a time when it wasn't."
"Donald Trump's allies, including many people he appointed to serve in his administration, want to take us back to the days before the NLRA," he contended, referring to the landmark National Labor Relations Act signed into law by Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935. "Their dangerous, extremist agenda, detailed in a handbook known as Project 2025, calls for increasing corporate control over workers. They want to appoint [National Labor Relations Board] members who will stop enforcing large parts of the NLRA, including the ban on company unions."
Harris, who was in Detroit Monday, said: "On Labor Day, we honor workers, unions, and the entire labor movement fighting for fair wages, good benefits, and safer working conditions for all. As president, I will always stand with workers, because when unions are strong, the middle class is strong. And when the middle class is strong, America is strong."
In her second annual "State of the Unions" address, Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest federation of unions, highlighted the importance of organized labor in November's election. Shuler noted that 1 in 5 voters in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and, Minnesota is a union member, and that recent polling shows Harris with a 15-point lead over Trump among union voters.
"Union workers are growing our power in this country in a way that we haven't seen in a generation. In November, that power could win the election for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz," she said, referring to the Minnesota governor who is the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
"We can run up the margins where it counts," Shuler added. "When you ask a union member who their most trusted source in the world is on politics, it's not their friends, family, or loved ones—it's their fellow union member. There is no question that the road to the White House runs through America's union halls."
While numerous unions have endorsed Harris, Trump has struggled in his efforts to court organized labor, despite strong support among rank-and-file workers. Last week, members of the International Association of Fire Fighters booed GOP vice presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio after he claimed that he was part of the"most pro-worker Republican ticket in history."
While support for unions in the United States is at a seven-decade high, union membership remains at an all-time low, the result of more than a century of efforts by capitalist interests and the politicians they influence to weaken organized labor. One way they've done this is by McCarthyite purges of communists and socialists, traditionally the strongest champions for working people, from union ranks.
Today, labor leaders overwhelmingly concur which of the two major parties offers workers a better deal—even as it attacks democracy by fighting to exclude pro-worker competitors to its left.
"The facts are clear: Democrats are the party of labor, and the Biden-Harris administration has been the most pro-labor administration in our lifetime," Service Employees International Union president April Verrett and Democracy Alliance president Pamela Shifman said in an opinion piece published by The Hill on Monday.
"As we look ahead, the choice we face in this election couldn't be more stark," they wrote. "One path leads to a brighter, more inclusive future for all workers—a future where economic, gender, and racial justice go hand in hand. The other path seeks to turn back the clock, dismantling the progress we've made and putting corporate interests ahead of working families."
Civil rights icon Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers union with Cesar Chavez—the late grandfather of Harris' campaign manager—in 1962, on Monday published a Univisionopinion piece in which she argued that "this election marks a pivotal moment in our history."
"Each of us will have a choice to make about which direction we want our country to go," she said. "Donald Trump despises Latinos, workers, and immigrants and wants to turn back the clock to a time before many of us had full rights and freedoms, when the rich did well while the middle class was left behind. We cannot go back!"
"I choose to go forward, into the future," Huerta continued. "A future that makes room for all Latino families. A future where our middle class is strong, our freedoms are secure, and our democracy is sound. That's what Vice President Harris is fighting for. And that's why I'm all-in to elect Vice President Harris the next president of the United States... ¡Sí se puede!"
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Verizon Accused of Deceiving Customers as Historic Strike Perseveres
Verizon's fiber-optic cable policy proves 'only profits—not customer service—motivates this company,' says union
May 03, 2016
Three weeks after roughly 40,000 Verizon workers began a historic work stoppage to protest the telecom company's "corporate greed," the union behind the strike joined public interest groups in charging Verizon with "systematically deceiving customers" as part of its push to transfer users from copper telephone wires to fiber service.
The informal complaint (pdf) to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was filed Tuesday by Common Cause, Public Knowledge, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and several other groups.
It charges that the internal Verizon policy known as "Fiber Is the Only Fix" both deceives customers and constitutes "unjust and unreasonable practices" that violate federal law. It also alleges that Verizon has given retail customers as little as 15 days' notice before ending their copper service when FCC rules say they must be given at least 90 days' notice.
A press statement from CWA explained:
When a "Fiber is the Only Fix" customer calls in with trouble on their line--such as no dial tone or noise on the line--Verizon creates a "ghost" service order to transfer the customer to fiber service. The service order is called a "ghost" service order because the customer is not told about it.
Verizon then dispatches a technician on the ghost service order. The technician is instructed not to discuss the purpose of the dispatch prior to arriving at the customer's location. At that time, the technician informs the customer that Verizon no longer repairs copper lines, and the customer must upgrade to fiber. If the customer does not want to upgrade to fiber, Verizon will not allow the technician to repair the copper line and advises the customer that Verizon will disconnect the line.
A Verizon official confirmed to the New York Times that "the company writes up a 'ghost' service order to switch a customer's service before it sends a technician to investigate a problem. The company even uses a ghost icon that resembles a character in the Pac-Man video games to indicate that the company hopes to make the switch."
Tuesday's complaint is the latest salvo in the public relations campaign against Verizon, which is accused of shipping jobs overseas, strong-arming organized labor, and failing to provide high-quality service.
"By instituting this reprehensible policy to deceive customers, Verizon executives proved that only profits--not customer service--motivate this company," said CWA president Chris Shelton, referring to Fiber is the Only Fix.
"Verizon executives violated the law and are forcing our members to join in a program they strongly object to," Shelton said. "With this complaint filed today at the FCC, we are standing up for our customers, just as we are standing up for them every day on picket lines from Massachusetts to Virginia."
Last week, YouGov's Brand Index indicated that as a result of the strike, "consumer perception of the telecom giant has fallen to a three-year low," as TIME magazine reported.
The deterioration in service has become so significant that New York State's Public Service Commission has convened a formal hearing to investigate problems across that state. At the same time, Pennsylvania and New Jersey regulators have launched similar inquiries into Verizon's operations in recent weeks.
Last week, Verizon announced that the company has put its "last, best and final offer" on the table to members of the CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).
Unfortunately, said CWA, the company's "last and best" was little more than the "same old bullshit."
Organizers have announced that Thursday, May 5 will be a national day of action supporting the striking workers.
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This Stoppage Won't Stop: Verizon Strike Continues as Talks Fall Through
"Workers are sticking together and standing up for their families and to protect all middle class jobs against excess corporate greed."
Apr 15, 2016
Verizon workers entered day three of their massive strike against the telecommunications giant on Friday, as job negotiations reportedly continued to fall short.
As workers kept up coordinated marches, rallies, and picket lines up and down the East Coast, support for their actions kept growing and Verizon's stock dropped four percent since last week as "concerns over the strike's impact started becoming more real," InvestorPlace wrote.
From the ground, the workers said they had been waiting for more than 10 months for Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam to address their needs. Unions "are ready and eager to get back to the bargaining table if Verizon executives are ready to get serious about negotiations," they said in a statement. "Until then, Verizon workers are sticking together and standing up for their families and to protect all middle class jobs against excess corporate greed."
The strike also comes at a pivotal moment as economic inequality takes the stage in mainstream discourse. Writing atThe New Republic on Friday, journalist David Dayen notes, "The Verizon case incorporates big themes in the economy--outsourcing, monopolies, automation, and inequality, to name a few."
Dayen writes:
[The strike] reflects the gradual thinning out of good-paying, middle-class U.S. jobs. And in this election year, it forces politicians to choose--not just between labor and management, but between a future of shared prosperity for workers and one in which a lot of low-paid service employees cater to the bidding of the ultra-rich.
That includes politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, both of whom joined the workers' picket line in New York ahead of their debate on Thursday. But McAdam reserved all his vitriol for Sanders alone, writing in a LinkedIn post that the Vermont senator's "uninformed views are, in a word, contemptible," a charge that was echoed by General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt.
Sanders responded by tweeting, "I don't want the support of McAdam, Immelt and their friends in the billionaire class. I welcome their contempt."
He followed that up with an explicit demand during the debate for McAdam to negotiate with Verizon workers, telling moderator Wolf Blitzer, "This gentleman makes $18 million a year in salary.... This gentleman is now negotiating to take away health care benefits of Verizon workers, outsource call center jobs to the Philippines, and trying to create a situation where workers will lose their jobs. He is not investing in the way he should in inner cities in America."
As McAdam held out, union officials refused to back down.
"Verizon workers and customers are extremely frustrated that company executives are not more serious about bargaining," said Ed Mooney, vice president of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 2-13. "Today, CWA and IBEW [International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers] met with Verizon to discuss the contract covering workers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, D.C., Virginia, and West Virginia, but after 30 minutes and more demands to devastate workers' jobs, company executives left for the weekend."
"Workers already have put hundreds of millions of dollars in healthcare cost savings at the table," Mooney said. "We simply cannot compromise on contract changes that would ship more work overseas and have our families separated for months at a time."
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