NABET-CWA 3rd Triennial Conference: Unions Face Many Challenges
Oct 12, 2011
Sector President James C. Joyce and Vice President Charles Braico Re-elected to Lead Charge
NABET-CWA leaders and delegates met in Las Vegas to review the past three years since their last meeting and search for answers to the formidable challenges facing today’s labor movement. The conference, held July 7-9, 2011, brought 42 NABET delegates together to discuss a host of issues, including the current political climate, training, organizing, health and safety, and to hold Sector elections for President and Vice President. This was the last “triennial” conference, as future conferences will now be held every four years.
In keeping with conference tradition, Las Vegas local, Danny Thompson, Secretary-Treasurer of the Nevada State AFL-CIO, welcomed the delegates to the city, which boasts Union representation in every hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, but one.
Thompson said organized labor is going to be tasked with changing things for working people.
“We Must Stand United”
Sector President James C. Joyce, who was re-elected on the last day of the conference to a four-year term, officially opened the conference by reflecting on the changes since the Union met in 2008.
“Since we last met three years ago, organized labor and our Sector has faced unprecedented attacks on our jobs, on our benefits, and on the laws which have been in place for decades to protect our rights. Together, at this conference, and when we go back to our Locals to service our members, we must stand united against these attacks, and we must constantly adapt so that we have the tools necessary to face these challenges.
While we have had success in the past in rolling out new programs for training, like BURST, and in utilizing CWA resources like the Strategic Industry Funds, the Defense Fund, and Local Political Action Teams, we cannot rest on our laurels. It is up to every Local leader, delegate, staff representative, and Sector Officer in this room today to leave this Conference charged with the resolve to fight one day longer than our foes.”
Joyce, and re-elected Sector Vice President Charles Braico, will now serve four-year terms, which coincide with the new conference schedule. Joyce was elected over challengers Leroy Jackson, a former Local 53 President and former member of NABET-CWA’s Executive Council, and Local 21 President William Lambdin. Braico won his election over Region 5 RVP Louis Gabriele.
CWA Membership Loss, Budget Cuts
Jeff Rechenbach, who was CWA’s Secretary-Treasurer at the time of the conference, explained CWA’s finances, which have been hurt with the loss of 75,000 members – or 10% of the Union – in the last year. The membership loss – partially attributable to early retirements and corporate downsizing – also means a loss of income for the Union.
CWA’s budget is $30 million less than it was four years ago. In response, CWA is “leading by example,” according to former CWA Executive Vice President and current Secretary-Treasurer Annie Hill, by implementing a hiring freeze, merging districts and headquarters departments, eliminating the Executive Vice President position, eliminating jobs through attrition and early retirement, and leasing space in its Washington headquarters building. CWA’s staff union also agreed to pension and health care cuts. And, CWA will hold a convention every two years instead of annually, starting with its next convention in 2013.
Larry Cohen, CWA President, spoke passionately of the struggles facing the labor movement, saying, “There isn’t a single piece of the labor system that we’ve inherited that isn’t broken right now.” Cohen pointed to the CNN case, bargaining at NBC and ABC as proof that “things aren’t working, despite the fact that those on the NLRB are perfect for the job.”
Cohen questioned how to tap into the “young energy” that is needed to change the movement. “Internal change is necessary on defense (bargaining) and offense (organizing) to bring back our rights at work.”
Bargaining Challenges
NABET-CWA staff representatives and the Union’s legal counsel made up a panel that discussed bargaining challenges facing the Sector and Locals, which included training, jurisdiction, the NLRB and the FCC.
Training continues to be a major focus of the Union to prepare its members for the inevitable changes that are coming to the industry. There is concern over members who are refusing training opportunities and expecting that everything will remain the same. “The lifelong jobs aren’t around anymore, and you can’t hide behind seniority,” said NABET-CWA Staff Representative Carrie Biggs-Adams. Adams warned against “letting management justify that your job isn’t important.”
Jurisdiction
What is important for members is to gain a multitude of skills in order to remain competitive in today’s work environment. As an example, NABET-CWA Staff Representative Lou Fallot pointed to the emergence of multi-media journalist/”octopus” jobs, such as the “Content Producer” jobs that the Union is fighting at NBC.
“The first ‘sting’ – the beginning of this union-busting – was at CNN,” said Fallot. “And now more companies are trying to consolidate jobs.”
“When the company changes job titles, it changes jurisdiction,” said NABET-CWA Outside Counsel Judiann Chariter. “At NBC, the company claims that the CP job isn’t a part of the bargaining unit because the job has a new title.”
“Those have been our jobs for 80 years,” said Fallot. “But the company says we will never have a Master Agreement unless the Content Producer position is agreed to.” NBC asserted that the job should be excluded from the bargaining unit. AFTRA is claiming jurisdiction over the jobs and currently represents the CPs in Washington, D.C.; however, these workers lost seniority and don’t get overtime or penalty pay.
National Labor Relations Board
The NLRB is a political animal, says NABET-CWA Staff Representative William Murray. Though the Board is “getting better,” Murray said we are still making up for eight years of bad decisions under the Bush Administration when “two votes was a majority of five.”
The Board faces a 600-decision backlog since cases were brought to the courts because of the “broken” NLRB. The slow decision-making process at the NLRB has an immediate impact on everything the Union does. Union members are left with fewer remedies and must mobilize to help their cause.
“The NLRB is one tool,” said Biggs-Adams. “We can’t rely on the Board to save us. We must continue to mobilize and keep members connected to the goal.”
NABET-CWA has seen positive developments from the NLRB recently, such as its ruling against Cleveland’s WKYC-TV, where the Board upheld NABET-CWA’s appeal over the Gannett station’s refusal to deduct dues from members’ paychecks.
A recent Boeing case has made the NLRB a target of Republican lawmakers, who want to cut the Board’s funding. In April, the NLRB issued a complaint against Boeing after workers in Washington state went on strike and the company retaliated by opening a new production line in right-to-work South Carolina. The NLRB said a company can’t threaten workers’ right to strike.
Federal Communications Commission
Another place where political pressure works, said Murray, is the FCC, which is looking at the consolidation of media organizations and is supposed to come up with new rules regarding “localism.” With some local newsrooms left empty and competing stations airing the same newscast, there are serious anti-trust concerns in local television. The FCC’s Future of Media report says these stations need to serve communities better by showing a diversity of viewpoints and airing local content. Free Press, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to reform the media, debuted an interactive map in August that shows nearly 100 markets where two or more stations merged their news operations covertly under “resource-sharing agreements” (www.savethenews.org/ changethechannels). NABET urges members to report such operations at its stations.
Strategic Industry Fund
In order to build the Union – and power – NABET-CWA locals are encouraged to use the CWA Strategic Industry Fund. The fund’s focus is on new organizing campaigns and training programs that increase bargaining power. With a current balance of $55 million, the SIF will distribute $20/member to the national Union and each local that contributes to the Fund ($.50 per member per month) for the next two years. To date, the SIF has given $6 million to local unions to supplement the unions’ organizing initiatives.
CWA Defense Fund Available for Local Campaigns
“Funds are available to help with local projects that have a well-thought-out plan with a budget,” according to William Wachenschwanz, RVP6 and Local 42 President, whose local received $50,000 from the CWA Defense Fund in May to assist mobilization efforts in its ongoing dispute with WKYC-TV. The station implemented its final contract offer in January 2010, ignoring a binding contract with its 54-member NABET unit. The allocation will allow the Local to be reimbursed for mobilization expenses, such as paying for advertisements in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and for a corporate campaign against WKYC and its parent company, Gannett.
The CWA Defense Fund allocated another $50,000 to NABET-CWA Local 54 in San Diego. The unit of engineers, technicians, directors, photographers, editors and artists has been trying to negotiate a fair contract with McGraw-Hill’s KGTV Channel 10 since January 2006. This is the third grant that the Local has received from the Fund since the start of mobilization, in addition to $20,000 from NABET. The money will be used to expand the “Turn Off 10 News” portion of the campaign and will keep Local 54’s mobilization fully funded through 2012.
NABET-CWA Local 54 President Dennis Csillag said the fund has helped tremendously in its 10NewsUnfair campaign. Thanks to live shot disruptions, handbilling, etc., KGTV has fallen from the Number 1 station to Number 5, according to Csillag. “10NewsUnfair has become a bigger brand than 10News,” he said.
Health and Safety
CWA’s Health and Safety Director, Dave LeGrande, announced the creation of a unique new partnership between CWA and the United Steelworkers (USW) that will enable to the two Unions to work closely together on training and education, as well as on grant proposals, legislative issues and with federal health and safety organizations. This national program will be overseen by the CWA Executive Board’s Health and Safety Committee, which Sector President Joyce chairs. The program recently received a five-year, $7 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Studies that provides for 12 trainers to conduct training on workplace ergonomics, hazardous materials, etc.
NABET-CWA Locals were urged to send attendees to one of the Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health Regional Conferences in September sponsored by CWA and USW in Atlanta and Phoenix, to help develop strategies to improve day-to-day member working conditions as well as expand workplace safety and health activities. Grant funds also help to support the Locals to help financially compensate members for time lost when training.
LeGrande encouraged members to take part in the training program, “A Union approach to Occupational Safety and Health,” because the data collected will impact members’ work and is an opportunity for them to learn about their OSHA rights. For example, NABET-CWA members are covered under OSHA even if they are working outside of the U.S. When Local 16 members were assigned to cover the Japanese earthquake, the Union asked ABC and NBC whether the workers were provided OSHA protections and asked for monitoring data, as there was a concern about asbestos contamination. The companies said they aren’t sure they needed to provide that information.
“Our members are facing the same safety hazards after natural disasters as the local population,” Joyce said. He also reviewed several accidents involving NABET members that have changed the safety culture at the stations where they occurred.
Political Action
“We’ve had more coverage and discussion about collective bargaining this year than we’ve had in years because of the battle in Wisconsin,” said Annie Hill, the former Executive Vice President of CWA and current CWA Secretary-Treasurer, as she spoke to delegates about the 2010 elections and the resulting vote by the Wisconsin Senate to strip bargaining rights from public workers.
“The public was disappointed in the lack of change after the 2008 election,” she said. In order to fight those that are pushing an agenda that harms working families, Unions need to start reaching out to other progressive groups, like the Sierra Club, every CWA local should have a coordinator for its Legislative PAC, and members need to write letters and make phone calls to their lawmakers.
“Ten to 15 calls can make a huge difference to a lawmaker,” Hill said. “And a letter shows that someone is concerned enough to take the time to sit down and write.”
Hill then presented a certificate to NABET-CWA Local 51 President Kevin Wilson for “Thirty years of uncompromising commitment to NABET-CWA.”
Resolutions
Conference delegates passed 20 resolutions to honor, thank and support the many people and entities that work to help the Union’s efforts, and in support of issues central to the Union’s goals, including resolutions to:
• Honor the service and dedication to the Union of former Sector President John S. Clark, Local 11 President Ed McEwan, former NABET International President Tim O’Sullivan, and former Local 41 President Ray Taylor.
• Support full funding of Public Broadcasting and NPR.
• Encourage all working families to buy Union-made American products to support good-paying jobs that help rebuild America.
• Urge all members of NABET-CWA to visit www.10newsunfair.com and mail KGTV management to demand that they negotiate fairly with members of Local 54.
• Continue to be resolute, vocal and supportive in addressing all Daily Hire issues, including their rights and benefits as Union members and to involve them in the day-to-day operations of the Union, including urging them to run for elected office.
• Support the Union’s efforts to achieve true campaign finance reform by enacting public financing of election laws.
• Condemn the anti-labor laws passed in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, Indiana and New Mexico, and urges members across the country to support NABET-CWA members and union activists in the affected states to repeal those anti-worker laws.
• Encourage members to become more politically active to counter the hundreds of millions spent by big business, because while they may have the money, the people, the members have the votes.
By-Laws
The By-Laws Committee, chaired by Roy Schrodt, Local 25 President, compiled and evaluated the amendments submitted by locals and the Sector Executive Council, many of which were language alterations made to further clarify the existing provisions.
A By-Law change was passed that added to the Sector President’s authority and responsibilities, stating, “he shall perform all the duties incident to the office of Sector President and those of a CWA Vice President.”
Reflecting technology’s emergence in voting, By-Laws were passed that allow for electronic balloting for constituency votes and Union officer elections, with the prior approval of the Sector Executive Council.
The By-Laws no longer require that the office of NABET-CWA’s headquarters be located at CWA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Changes were made to the reimbursement of costs incurred by members attending Union business meetings, which are now subject to the approval of the Sector Executive Council, and based on a four-year cumulative total instead of a three-year average.
NABET News - Fall 2011