The Midwest division of Communications Workers of America and AT&T have reached a tentative contract agreement. The former contract expired April 4, but CWA members had decided then that no contract would be agreed upon until all divisions had a contract that was acceptable in all regions of the nation.
Corporate bosses are aggressively pushing the CWA and other major unions against the wall. There has been a great fear in the national CWA leadership that AT&T was prepared for a national strike and that the union did not feel strong enough to sustain a prolonged strike. Under those circumstances, there was considerable anxiety that AT&T would feel emboldened enough to not enter into contract negotiations either on a national or regional level.
The problems facing the CWA, while not identical, are similar to those facing the UAW and most of organized labor. Absent a national, unified fightback strategy among all the unions that could bring the bosses to their knees, each union feels especially vulnerable and makes concession after concession.
Workers in East (District 1), West (District 9), Southwest (District 6) and Legacy T (Comtech unit) have been working under expired contracts since April 4. Illinois and northwestern Indiana employees with the IBEW Core Wireline contracts expired June 27. The Core Wireline contracts in the southeast region (District 3) expire Aug. 8.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson knows that, with the economy in the tank, thousands of jobs being flushed daily and unemployment numbers rising, workers are afraid to lose the jobs that they have. The bosses figure that the 9.4 percent unemployment rate guarantees that there will be people desperate enough to cross the picket line. AT&T has been long planning for management and other non-union employees to sustain operations through a strike.
The Day newspaper July 26 issue quotes Connecticut, District 1, CWA Local 1298 President Bill Henderson as saying: “[N]egotiations are not going well, we feel what they signed for in District 4 is not what we want to accept here in Connecticut. It doesn’t meet the job protections that we have here in Connecticut”
The proposal in the Midwest includes a 3 percent pay raise in each of the first two years and a 2.75 percent increase in the third, coupled with cost-of-living adjustments. However, it also requires more out-of-pocket health care costs from employees, which are a paycut in disguise.
AT&T is trying to use union-busting tactics and worker harassment to weaken the solidarity of the workers. The workers who keep AT&T functioning understand that it is their training and experience that keep the communications systems operating for all of us.
Capitalism is a crime. The capitalist system sustains the greedy corporate bosses like Randall Stephenson. It allows one man to steal $18 million in perks and pay from workers who are struggling to put food on the table for their families.
The labor movement, if it unites as one force, has the power to bring capitalist production to a screeching halt. Labor has this power. A counter-attack is needed—not by one union but by all or most of labor. Preparation for this must begin now.
