Home > Issues > Civil Rights > Committee on Equity (COE) Convention Reports

Report of the National Committee on Equity To the 62nd Annual Convention The mission of the Committee on Equity The mission of the National Committee on Equity is to develop and promote the CWA Civil Rights program. Our vision is to build a union where members of all cultures, religions, sexual orientations, gender, disabilities, ages and nationalities feel welcomed, respected and heard; and where the leadership reflects the diversity of our membership. The CWA Civil Rights program is supported and implemented by thousands of grass roots activist. If you are one of theses activist we urge you to join our CWA Civil Rights activist network. The Committee on Equity report describes seven key issues which the committee is focusing on this year and which we hope you will support. CWA Civil Rights Logo The rich and moving colors of the CWA Civil Rights logo represents movement among people of all cultures. Where everyone is lifted up, not because of the color of our skin, gender, religion or sexual orientation but because of our humanity and passion for justice. Where worlds and communities separate, move together as one voice for a common cause. Hate Crimes in Cyberspace Modern telecommunications knows no bounds and has few limits. One of the dangers that this presents is that hatemongers are no longer separated, they can hold hate rallies nightly. Hate groups are taking advantage of the expansion of cable television and the Internet, spreading their message to millions. Hundreds of million of pages have been created on the World Wide Web by various hate groups including the KKK, skinhead, religious sects, anti-gay, radical political and anti-government organizations. In 1995, former KKK leader Don Black established Stormfront, the first white supremacist site on the World Wide Web. Since then the number of hateful Web sites has increased exponentially, hundreds of bigoted sites promoting a variety of philosophies, such as anti semitism, and racism have joined Stormfront. In September 1999 the Senate Judiciary Commission held a hearing on hate speech on the Internet. The first person ever to be prosecuted federally for Internet hate speech was a former student of the University of California, Richard Machado. Machado was convicted in February 1998 for sending a racially derogatory Email to 60 Asians at the University of California. In the Email Machado accused Asians of being responsible for all of the crimes committed on campus and further threatened to make it his life's career to kill every one of them personally, he signed it " Asian Hater". Machado's one-year sentence was the maximum the US District Judge could have handed down. While the issue involving First Amendment Rights and the Internet are being debated, there are ways that each of us can handle hate on the Internet. Expose the site. When you run across a hate site, report it to the webmasters ISP, or the server of the webpage. Support sites, which are making an effort to bring, hate sites to light. Report hate sites to these webmasters as well. Use intelligent search engines, which screen sites for you. If the site is threatening to you or others, report it to local or federal authorities. Get to know ISP's which permit hate sites and avoid using them. Try Internet filters to prevent children from unknowingly accessing hate sites. Equal Compensation The fear of being fired, evicted from their homes, or even arrested for being gay in many states is still a stark reality for hundreds of thousands of gay people. Negative stereotyping and hateful condemnations from right-wing, politicians and conservative religious leaders continue to foster a climate of violence towards gays worldwide. All these issues cry out for redress. There is certainly much to do before gay people achieve equality at home and in the workplace. However, at the core of the labor movement is its struggle for economic justice. Economic justice and social equality are inextricably linked. CWA and the American Labor Movement have a moral imperative to pursue economic equality for all union members and indeed, for all workers. Domestic partner benefits (DPB's) are an important piece of the equality puzzle. There are still discriminatory taxation policies in place, which have rendered DPB's a burden for those who need them most. This form of government-sanctioned discrimination creates disparities in total compensation for millions of American workers. CWA and the labor movement should encourage elected officials to eliminate these inequities through legislation. In the meant time, we should take steps to educate our members about these issues and negotiate appropriate solutions with our employers. Until equal compensation is achieved in all workplaces, economic justice will not be realized. Voter Registration For CWA members and for workers everywhere, the stakes are high this year. This year's elections will determine the direction of government policy for the next four years and beyond. These elections are about the future... our future. We must pledge ourselves to do all the work necessary to elect President Al Gore. At the same time, we must double our efforts to make sure that every CWA member and members of their family are registered to vote. Why don't people register to Vote? Non-voters don't recognize the impact of elections on issues they care about. People want more information from trusted sources, more than the 20-second spots they get from candidates. The single most powerful component in moving someone from non-voting to voting is when they are asked by someone they know (friend, colleague, family member, union or church member, etc.). To help increase voter participation within our union, we hereby encourage the following three point plan: Have voter registration information available at all local gatherings (i.e. union meeting, local picnics). Join with other community groups to help with community registration. Develop a mobilization strategy to help register members at work locations. School Vouchers The right to get a good education for every child is a struggle that has been hard fought both in the labor and Civil Rights arena. Don't let the pretty package, that is called "School Vouchers" fool you. The truth is that this scheme diverts public tax dollars to private schools and is another attack on public education that abandons and disenfranchises poor and urban schools. Taking money out of the public school system sets back the work of educators to improve on the system that serves so many, for the sake of just a few. Vouchers don't guarantee school choice, it is the private school, not the parents who decides who can attend. Vouchers don't erase many of the restrictive admission standards, such as academic, religion, sex or disability factors. Vouchers don't provide for accountability in the areas of accreditation, curriculum, employee standards or evaluation of student's progress. School Vouchers do not cover all private school expenses, including application fees, books, travel, or extra curricula activities. Low and some middle income families cannot afford these and their children are unable to participate. We must protect our democratic vision and the basic Civil Rights that we have fought long and hard for. School Vouchers are a diversion away from of the real issues facing public education such as, quality professional teachers, class size, outdated buildings, textbooks, inequitable funding and little or no access to the information super highway. The National Committee on Equity encourages the CWA leadership and local union to support a school wide reform program that will address the real issues in public education. CWA locals can: Form coalitions with other organizations and groups and call for joint action. Determine where your state legislation stands and take appropriate action to defeat or repeal voucher initiatives. Keep in mind that; grass roots lobbyists play the most important role in shaping legislation that affects America education. Navajo Communications Navajo Communications is the Local Telephone company on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico. The company has about 120 non-management workers. About half are Installers and Technicians working in the field or in central offices in mostly rural areas. There are 5 to 10 workers reporting to each garage in Window Rock, Tupa City, Kayenta, Chin Le, Fort Defiance, Shiprock and Zuni. The remainder of the workforce; Service Reps, Operators, Dispatchers and other technical and clerical personnel are in Saint Michael. The workforce is 100% Navajo. The Navajo Nation is one of the poorest communities in the country, only about 40% of the population have telephone service. All Navajo Communications employees are required to have and pay for telephone service. In the mid to late 80's the Nation sold the company to Citizens Communications and CWA helped the workers organize and won the election. After several months of bargaining, a strike vote was taken. 100% of the workers voted to strike, but that still didn't move the company. Shortly after that, the group decertified. CWA made no other organizing attempts until mid 1997 and in March 1998, another election was held. From the time the petition was filed to the day of the election, citizens management conducted an intense anti union campaign and CWA lost. However the local organizer stayed in touch with committee members and the workers now feel it is time to try again to get a union. After assessing previous campaigns, Local organizers determined that this time the campaign must have strong community support. It was further determined that several Civil Rights issues exist: Pay for Navajo Citizens employees is considerably less than Citizens unionized mostly white workforce Citizens voluntarily recognized the union in newly acquired telephone systems and negotiated contracts, (with CWA in some cases) but will not even agree to be neutral at Navajo Communications. Citizens is investing millions of dollars to upgrade the telephone systems off the Nation, but the network on the reservation is antiquated and in bad condition. The National Committee on Equity recognizes that workers, with our help organize themselves. However, the committee urges the CWA leadership to continue their efforts to bring justice to the workers at Navajo Communications. Voting Rights Act Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, at the height of the civil rights movement in the South; a movement committed to securing equal voting rights for African Americans. The action came immediately after one of the most important events of that movement, a clash between black civil rights marchers and white police in Selma, Alabama. The marchers were starting a 50-mile walk to the state capital, in Montgomery, to demand equal rights in voting, when police used violence to disperse them. What happened that day in Selma shocked the nation and led President Johnson to call for immediate passage of a strong federal voting rights law. The Voting Rights Act bans all kinds of racial discrimination in voting. The Voting Rights Act is a permanent federal law and does not have an expiration date. Moreover, the equal right to vote regardless of race or color is protected by the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which has been part of our law since the end of the Civil War. For years, many states had laws on their books that served only to prevent minority citizens from voting. Some of these laws required people to take a reading test or interpret some passage out of the Constitution in order to vote, or required people registering to vote to bring someone already registered who would vouch for their "good character." Blacks who attempted to register to vote or to organize or assist others to register to vote risked losing their jobs, their homes, and even their lives. To combat these situations Congress included in the Voting Rights Act, a permanent provision banning racial discrimination, with provisions containing extraordinary remedies that applied to certain areas of the nation. These special provisions or Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act were intended to be of limited duration and apply to Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and parts of Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, and North Carolina. The provision requires these states to submit any voting changes, (location of a polling place, changing an elected position to an appointive one, changing the existing voting system, etc). to the U.S. Attorney General. The Department of Justice reviews these changes and determines if they dilute or weaken the voting strength of minority voters. If so, the Department can refuse to "pre-clear" the change. These provisions are now scheduled to expire in 2007. We urge all locals to educate members on the real intent of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and address any attempts to have this section expire in 2007. Immigration Immigrants have played an important role in building democratic institutions. The current system of immigration enforcement in the U.S. is broken. The system not only has failed to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants into this county, it also has led to discrimination and does not punish employers who exploit undocumented workers, thus denying labor rights for all workers. Employers have used the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and the creation of the I-9 employment verification form to screen employees who they believe are not desirable. An immigration system should prevent employer discrimination against individuals who look or sound foreign. Workplace immigration laws should protect all workers and hold employers accountable for criminal activity, such as massive illegal importation of workers, or the use of undocumented workers to break laws governing workplace safety, wages or the freedom to choose a union. The AFL-CIO, has called for another general amnesty for some or all of those currently in the U.S. illegally which is part of resolution 17-Defending the Rights of Immigrant Workers and the right to organize. The National Committee on Equity urges the CWA leadership to continue their support of the AFL-CIO resolution. Respectfully Submitted, Margaret Henderson, Chair President, CWA Local 4310 Gwendolyn Richardson Member At Large, CWA Local 1180 Terry L. Schildt Member, CWA Local 2150 Elizabeth S. Roberson 1st Executive Vice President, CWA Local 3106 Linda Gray Vice President, CWA Local 6507 Marlene E. Orozco Member, CWA Local 7777 Karen Kimbell-Hanson Area Vice President, CWA Local 9588 Beverly A. Davis Executive Vice President, CWA Local 13500