CWA Newsletter, Thursday, December 11, 2014

8/10/2019 CWA Newsletter, Thursday, December 11, 2014

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December 11, 2014

Want to be in next week's CWA Newsletter? Send your stories and [email protected]@CWANews. Follow the latest developmentsatwww.resistancegrowing.org.

Judge Finds Cablevision and CEO Dolan Guilty of Illegal Actions T-Mobile Workers' Message Resonates at Global Union World Meeting Congress Set to Cave in to Even More Big Money in Politics Organizing Update

Help Striking FairPoint Families This Holiday Season Protests Beset TPPNegotiations CWA Commends Confirmationof Lauren McFerran to NLRB Supreme Court Denies Amazon Warehouse Workers Pay for Security

Screening Standing Strong at Verizon, Then and Now

Judge Finds Cablevision and CEO Dolan Guiltyof Illegal Actions

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A Federal Administrative Law Judge ruled late last week that Cablevision andits CEO James Dolan broke multiple labor laws in an attempt to stop workersin Brooklyn and the Bronx from unionizing.

CWA will now begin the process to get New York City to bring the corporationinto compliance with its cable franchise and, if necessary, declare it in defaultof the franchise for violations of the labor rights provisions of the agreement.

The franchise requires the company to comply with Federal labor law.

The ruling stemmed from charges that two separate National Labor RelationsBoard regional offices authorized against the company in April 2013: inBrooklyn, for illegally firing 22 workers, bargaining in bad faith, and spying onworkers, and in the Bronx, for illegally intimidating, harassing and essentiallybribing workers during a union representation election.
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"Finally, the NLRB has spoken in an unprecedented 300 page decision thatoutlines the deliberate law breaking of James Dolan. In any other jurisdictionhe would face arrest," CWA President Larry Cohen said. "Yet, based on hispast behavior, Mr. Dolan likely believes his personal fortune and familycontrol of Cablevision will allow him and Cablevision to avoid any real

penalties. Since the trial, Jim Dolan and Cablevision have escalated theirattacks on their employees and their union. The NLRB needs to takeimmediate action. The City and State of New York need to treat Cablevisionand all Dolan family controlled entities like the major law breaker that isdocumented extensively in this decision."

The long-awaited decision is a major boost to the Brooklyn Cablevisionworkers' campaign for a fair and just contract. The decision comes after a trialconcluded in December of 2013. Just last month, the NLRB issued a thirdsweeping federal complaint against Cablevision, including citing Dolanspecifically, for new violations of federal labor laws at its Brooklyn unit.

Cablevision was charged with illegally firing Jerome Thompson, a pro-unionworker, conducting an illegal sham poll of workers following CEO JamesDolan's in-person visit designed to intimidate employees with a highlyprejudicial speech, and illegally implementing changes in working conditionswithout bargaining with CWA. A trial on these charges is expected to beginshortly and CWA is confident that Cablevision will be found guilty of thesecharges as well.

T-Mobile Workers' Message Resonates atGlobal Union World Meeting

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The struggle by T-Mobile US workers for a voice in the workplace foundstrong support among delegates to the UNI World Congress in Cape Town,South Africa, this week, CWA President Larry Cohen said.
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CWA President Larry Cohen and ver.di leader Lothar Schrder talk T-Mobile.

Below: ver.di members in Germany show support for their U.S. colleagues at T-Mobile.

Cohen presented a video demonstrating the partnership between T-MobileUS activists and members of ver.di, the union that represents workers atDeutsche Telekom (DT), the German corporation and parent company ofTMUS. Cohen was joined in the presentation by Lothar Schrder, deputychairman of the supervisory board of DT and a ver.di leader.

See the video here.

"The video we've just seen documents a new standard of international

solidarity," Cohen said. "ver.di has been amazing. The solidarity has beenspectacular and goes deeper than the bond between Lothar and I. ver.di andCWA created TU, which is a true partnership. Our TU members belong bothto ver.di and CWA."

More than 2,000 labor leaders from around the world came to the UNI GlobalCongress in Cape Town on the 20th anniversary of South Africa's emergencefrom the apartheid regime that saw that nation's leaders like Nelson Mandela
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jailed and the black population disenfranchised. UNI Global Union is a globalfederation that represents more than 20 million workers from over 900 servicesector unions worldwide.

T-Mobile call-center supervisors harass workers in the United States for

daring to organize their workplaces, including summary firings and repeatedcaptive audience interrogations. The German government is the largestshareholder in DT, which holds a 67% stake in T-Mobile. DT's workforce inGermany and the rest of Europe have bargaining rights.

Schrder pointed to solidarity as one of the main reasons for joining with T-Mobile US workers. But he said an equally important reason is that if theDeutsche Telekom corporation is a well-oiled machine, with workers asindispensable components in how it functions, then the virulent anti-laborpractices of its U.S. subsidiary T-Mobile are a defect in that machine.

"T-Mobile's labor relations disrupt that model. ver.di does not want DeutscheTelekom or other German companies to import the American model ofdisposable workers back to Germany," Schrder said.

Congress Set to Cave in to Even More BigMoney in Politics

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CWA issued this statement on the CROmnibus spending bill beingconsidered by the House and Senate:

As we mark the 66th anniversary of International Human Rights Day,Congress is taking up an omnibus spending bill that includes a bigcave-in to big money in politics. International Human Rights Day waslaunched by Eleanor Roosevelt in the UN in 1948, but now we arewitnessing U.S. politics bought and sold by billionaires.

The CROmnibus spending bill is a travesty that, if adopted, will weakenour democracy. It would increase by tenfold the limits on an individual'scontribution to a national political party every year to $324,000 andexpand the corrupting role of big money in our election process. Thatcould give even greater control over our democracy to the wealthiest ofthe 1 percent.
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we joined that movement."

A growing wave of retail workers is looking for bargaining rights to make realchanges on the job. Hundreds of Verizon Wireless workers are building themovement online too, through Facebook and other social media.

"We welcome the Everett retail store workers to our union family. All of us arestronger when we stand together," said Chris Shelton, CWA District 1 vicepresident.

Just as in Brooklyn, and for more than a decade nationwide, Verizon Wirelessmanagement put extreme pressure on the Everett workers in an effort toblock the vote for CWA representation. There were countless one-on-onecaptive audience meetings, where managers forced workers to listen to one-sided attacks on union representation.

VZW has done everything possible to prevent Wireless workers from joiningthe 40,000 Verizon Communications workers, 80 Verizon Wirelesstechnicians and nearly 70 Verizon Wireless workers who have CWArepresentation. Today's vote shows that Verizon Wireless's wall of resistanceto workers' bargaining rights is crumbling.

###

NABET-CWA Wins NLRB Election for Workers in Congress

Technicians and other workers at the U.S. House of Representatives

Recording Studio have voted to join NABET-CWA. Fighting against a viciousanti-union campaign by management in the election that the National LaborRelations Board ran last week, the National Association of BroadcastEmployees and Technicians-Communications Workers of America won 11 ofthe 19 votes that workers cast.

NABET-CWA will represent the 24 workers in the unit in contract negotiationswith their employer, Maslow Media Group. Workers in the unit do the sametype of work as 45 NABET-CWA members who work in the House RecordingStudio and are employees of the U.S. Government.

Tyrone Riggs, who lost his job at CNN 11 years ago, led the campaign withNABET-CWA staff Representative Carrie Biggs-Adams, and Local 52031Local President Rich McDermott.

Help Striking FairPoint Families This Holiday


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Season

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Soon, 1,800 CWA and IBEW members will be entering the ninth week of theirstrike at FairPoint Communications locations in Maine, New Hampshire andVermont. Let's make sure these valiant union members, who had the courageto strike, can provide for their families this holiday season.

FairPoint, New England's largest telecommunications company, unilaterallyimposed a contract that ended restrictions on subcontracting andoutsourcing, froze pensions, increased health care costs for active workersand cut retiree health care, added a two-tier wage plan with big pay cuts fornew hires and other cuts that forced workers to walk out.

While CWA's Members' Relief Fund covers 215 striking members, the 1,500striking IBEW members have no strike fund.

Make a donation to the IBEW-CWA Solidarity Fund by clicking here. Yoursupport will help them continue to stand up to corporate greed.

A strike can be especially hard on the children of the striking parents, whohave already begun to tell their kids that Christmas is going to be muchsmaller this year. So CWA Local 1400 has compiled a wish list of gifts for thechildren of its members in three states. There are hundreds of items to

choose from, from diapers to gift cards to toys.Click here to see the list andhelpmake the holiday season brighter for the children of these strikingworkers.

Lastly, if you live near one of the many strike lines throughout New England,please come show your support. Hold a sign, bring some coffee or order afew pizzas for workers standing out in the cold! IBEW and CWA are alsoasking for people to drop off gift cards to local grocery stores and gasstations.

We can't allow our brothers and sisters to be starved or frozen back to work.

This holiday season, please stand with workers fighting for a fair contract.

To learn more and stay up to date on the strike, visit Fairness at FairPointonFacebook.
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Protests Beset TPP Negotiations

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CWAers joined hundreds of activists from labor, environmental, consumer,human rights, public health, Internet freedom, faith and family farm groups ina week of protests outside the office of the United States TradeRepresentative against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal undernegotiation inside.

Activists in Washington, DC, protest outside TPP negotiations.

CWA Senior Director George Kohl said the protesters are not against tradebut they are against the secrecy that has cloaked the TPP negotiations fromthe beginning and against some of the terms that have been leaked so far.They deserve to know what deal the negotiators are trying to reach.

"We are fighting against old trade policy that literally guarantees corporateprofits at the expense of working families in all nations," Kohl said. "In theweeks ahead, we will mobilize like never before against Fast Track
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member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Her seat on the five-member board ensures current NLRB policy will carry onfor the next two years and that the board will continue to meet itsresponsibilities under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). McFerran, as

a labor counsel to Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and the Senate Health,Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has extensive knowledge of laborand employment law.

CWA President Larry Cohen said, "It is unfortunate that the nomination ofanother highly qualified candidate, former Member Sharon Block, did notproceed despite a positive vote of the HELP committee before the Senateelection recess. Soon-to-be Majority Leader McConnell, in his initial meetingwith the president, demanded Block's withdrawal even though he did nothave the votes to block her confirmation and at least one Republican on thecommittee had voted for her. The president agreed; we should all view that

as a wake-up call for attacks on workers' rights in the next Congress.

"The anti-worker ideological bent exhibited by the new Senate majority iswithout precedent since the passage of the NLRA 80 years ago. Workingpeople now are on notice that Senator McConnell will be aiming at workers'rights as a core part of his leadership, and with the full support andencouragement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It is up to the rest of us,not just labor, to support workers' rights as we build a movement foreconomic justice and democracy."

Supreme Court Denies Amazon WarehouseWorkers Pay for Security Screening

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In a 9-0 vote, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday morning that employers don'thave to pay their employees for the time they spend waiting in line for

security checkpoints at the end of their shifts.

The central question was simply, "Is this work?" Every day, Amazonwarehouse workers line up for an airport-style security check for as long as25 minutes without pay, so that they can be searched for stolen goods

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the mandatory screening process is nota "principal activity" of jobs in the warehouse under the Fair Labor Standards
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Act and therefore is not subject to compensation. In doing so, the SupremeCourt reverses a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that foundscreenings were actually vital to workers' jobs both for themselves and theirbosses and should be compensated.

CWA has been a longtime supporter of Amazon warehouse workers, both inthe U.S. and Germany. In February, CWAers and other activists ralliedoutside Amazon's worldwide headquarters in Seattle to show their solidaritywith German Amazon workers who have been carrying out rolling strikessince May 2013 to push Amazon to negotiate with the German union ver.di.

This week more than 500 German workers at two Amazon warehouses wenton strike again to protest their pay and working conditions. Read more here.

Standing Strong at Verizon, Then and Now

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CWAers from Local 1101, 1102, 1103, 1104, 1105, 1106, 1108, 1109 and 1120 filled the streetsoutside Verizon headquarters in New York City, marking the 25th anniversary of the return to workfollowing a 17-week strike in 1989 at NYNEX, the corporation that became Verizon. In 2015, workers atVerizon East are bargaining for a new contract.
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CWA Newsletter, Thursday, December 11, 2014