Let me start this afternoon by bringing you greetings from President Cohen and Executive Vice President Hill and Vice President Louise Caddell who is in the hospital fighting pneumonia.
Thank you Sue for that warm introduction, I would expect nothing less from a former cheesehead. And thank you Paul and Valeri for putting together this convention and inviting me to be a part of it.
2009 so far, has been a year like no other for all of us in the labor movement. I have been a CWA member for 38 years now and on the staff for over 28 of those years. This is a moment in time like no other I have seen and no other we are likely to see.
Our economic condition is dealing all of us a crushing blow. Internally at CWA, we have lost over 20,000 members since the first of the year. Whether through retirements or layoffs, these are jobs that won’t be replaced. And it translates to all of us, locals and the National Union alike, to having to do more with less. And as Paul described earlier, your Local has done an outstanding job of balancing your budget in these difficult times. Despite this, the 2009/2010 budget for CWA nationally is balanced with no call for an increase in our rate of dues. I can tell you there are no easy answers to this hopefully temporary condition we find ourselves in.
On the national scene, our economy …thanks to the past 8 years … is in a shambles. And now, the worst job in the circus is left to us, cleaning up after the elephants.
I read the other day where George Bush was named by a poll of historians as one of the ten worst Presidents of all time. Now on the plus side, he was named the second best President of all time named George Bush.
We are in a stew unlike anything we have ever tasted. In a time of war and with our bridges collapsing and levees failing, we got tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans. We have failed trade policies which don’t protect the work we do here in this nation. Quite simply, we make less and less in the United States all the time. And deregulation has again reared its ugly head, not enough to ruin our telecommunications, trucking and airline industries, the next catastrophe has come in the world of banking. We find capitalist bankers now worshiping at the altar of socialism, begging for their bailouts so they can pay their inflated salaries and undeserved bonuses.
Didn’t you love that? In the midst of the bailout, the head of AIG was telling Congress that paying the bonuses was a contractual obligation! But somehow UAW or CWA contracts aren’t viewed as obligations. I love hearing the right say, oh - but the amount of the bonuses is miniscule in the bigger scheme. Well here is a news flash for you, in the average American built car, the cost of labor is less than 10% of the price and yet the wages, benefits and pensions of workers who build those cars are under attack. Who is the real villain here? Clearly, it is incredibly greedy and incompetent corporate management.
But we have created a culture that looks for the shortcut to getting wealthy. We put the spotlight on the wizards of Wall Street, we tune in to see who Donald Trump will fire next and we enviously peek into the homes of the so called Housewives of who knows where.
Last month, the New York Times reported the collective salaries of the top 25 hedge fund managers in 2008. You remember 2008, the year of the largest market crash since 1929. Well the top 25 fund managers last year earned, rather were paid, $11.6 billion dollars in salaries and bonuses for an average salary of nearly half a billion dollars each. Oh, and by the way, thanks to a nice little tax break they will pay 15% in taxes on that money, a lower rate than anyone in this room.
To show just how out of whack our economic system is all you have to do is look at how the wealthiest 400 Americans are getting by. In 1982, the top 400 had an average wealth of $620 million, over half a billion dollars! By 1995, that figure had doubled from $620 million to $1.2 billion and now in 2009, the top 400 average over $3.9 billion, and that is after the stock market crash! To put it in perspective, the average individual in the top 400 could write a twenty million dollar check to each delegate, alternate and guest in this hall and still be worth over 3 billion dollars! It is no wonder they will do anything to keep workers from getting a voice.
So what can we do in the face of all of this?
Our efforts should be focused, as Paul and Valeri indicated earlier, on two initiatives - Health Care Reform and the Employee Free Choice Act.
Time and time again over the past decade, we have wound up at the bargaining table with the scepter of health insurance costs hanging over our heads. No one has been immune to it, from our largest employers right here at Qwest to our smallest. We have been engaged in a life and death struggle, to protect our members access to health care. To be sure - it has caused us to make tough, and at times unpopular decisions, but decisions that had to be made and decisions that fell to each of you as leaders of this union to help make and implement.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. In 1987, before the attempts by President Clinton to reform health insurance, the United States spent 11% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care costs (GDP is basically everything we make & produce). Today, we spend more than 16% and the next highest nation spends 10%. If we do nothing, it will increase to 20% by 2017. Today, Americans spend more on health care than they do for housing. Costs are increasing 5 times faster than wages or inflation.
Now critics may say, well we have the best health care in the world! Really? Then why is our life expectancy shorter than the rest of the industrialized world? Or why is our infant mortality rate higher than 40 other nations including Cuba and Taiwan?
I am hopeful that with a new Congress and a new President, we can accomplish that goal that has eluded us since 1948. You can be sure it won’t be easy. Opponents continue to try and divert working families from the real issues, much as they did back in 1992 when President Clinton tried to pass health care reform, with their Harry & Louise commercials.
Let’s examine some of those claims being made today for a moment.
No, despite Sarah Palin’s claims, Obama does not want to kill Grandma. There are no death panels in any of the bills before Congress.
And speaking of Grandma, Sarah Palin became one a few months back, and I actually did feel sorry for the former Vice Presidential candidate’s family with all of the attention on the birth of her new grandchild, maybe because I was about to become a grandparent for the first time as well. But, in the course of all the hoopla, her daughter, Bristol Palin said in an interview a month or so ago that “A year ago (she) never would have thought (she) would become a mom or that (her) mom would be a vice presidential candidate.” If you look deeper though, you can see in both cases, it was because some guy failed to take the proper precautions. And she says she is opposed to killing old people, but she single-handedly killed John McCain’s campaign for president.
But back to the list of falsehoods about health insurance reform:
None of the bills will pay for abortions despite some claims to the contrary.
None of the bills include funding for ACORN.
Obama will not ban private insurance; hopefully, he will make it more competitive!
None of the bills will have the government rationing health care. If anyone is rationing care today it is our current health insurance companies.
You will hear the other side tell us that health care decisions should be made by doctors and patients, not the government. But we know better, we know health care decisions aren’t made by doctors, patients and the government, but by insurance companies. Which as we know are a lot like hospital gowns, chances are your ass isn’t covered.
So what exactly are we looking for in terms of health insurance reform? At CWA, as Valeri shared earlier, we have carved out what we feel are the 4 key ingredients to reform our broken system.
First, all employers must cover their workers, whether by providing insurance or by paying into a larger coverage pool;
Second, cover retirees who aren’t yet eligible for Medicare;
Third, provide a choice between public and private plans;
And finally, don’t tax the benefits of those who already have coverage.
CWA has put together a structure with the help of our Strategic Industry Fund to make health care reform a reality. But it will take, as President Cohen says, “getting our employers off our backs in this fight and by our sides!” Companies like Qwest that provide health insurance need to step up and join in the reform effort. We could make no finer tribute to Senator Kennedy then by passing health insurance reform in the months ahead.
The solution for rebuilding economic balance in our Country has to be passage of the Employee Free Choice Act! As President Obama said, “I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem, to me; it is part of the solution.” He went on to say, "We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests because we know that you cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement. When workers are prospering, they buy products that make businesses prosper. We can be competitive and lean and mean and still create a situation where workers are thriving in this Country."
The Employee Free Choice Act is really a very simple piece of legislation. It does 3 things:
First, it lets workers decide it they want to form a union by conducting a vote or by simply signing up on cards. Right now that is in the law, but it is the boss that gets to decide how the union is recognized not the workers. That’s wrong and Employee Free Choice fixes it.
Second, it says that after a union is recognized the company can’t just stall the negotiations for a first contract. If after 90 days both parties can’t agree, then the outstanding issues are given to an arbitrator to decide.
And finally, it would establish substantial fines for an employer firing a worker for union activity. Currently, the fine is back pay less anything you earned and a notice on the bulletin board that they won’t do it again. This would correct that.
Today the deck is clearly stacked against us. Opponents of Employee Free Choice will tell you they are against it because unions will intimidate workers into signing cards. The facts though are quite different.
We don’t yet have the final figures for 2008, but in 2007, according to the Bush NLRB, nearly 30,000 workers suffered illegal EMPLOYER retaliation for exercising their rights at work.
And what of UNION intimidation? I went to a study conducted by the anti-union Human Resource Policy Associates for the answers. After all, they aren’t likely to slant the story our way are they? Well, it seems there have been 42 clear cases of union misconduct in signing union authorization cards. Oh, and one more thing, that number 42, well 42 is the number of cases that have occurred since the inception of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. It seems clear to me who the real thugs are here!
As with the health insurance debate, we continue to hear falsehoods about what the Employee Free Choice Act does or doesn’t do, but the biggest lie being perpetrated by corporate America and the Chamber of Commerce is that it will take away the right of a worker to vote on whether or not they want a union. That is, in the language of the Old West, pure bullshit!
So who are some of the big corporate heads promoting these lies? No surprise, the CEO of Wal-Mart, Lee Scott, who made it clear this isn’t about worker’s rights, it is about power when he said, “We like driving the car and we’re not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us.” Well, slide over Lee - we have other plans for where this car is headed.
Or, the President of McDonald’s who urged his 2,400 franchise holders to write Congress to oppose Employee Free Choice.
Any gamblers in the house? On your next trip to Vegas you might want to remember what Sheldon Adelson had to say about the Employee Free Choice Act. Adelson who owns the Sands and Venetian casinos told The Wall Street Journal the bill was “one of the two fundamental threats to society.” (The other, he said, was radical Islam.)
Or, the one that hurts me the most, the founder of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus, who said about the possibility of the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, “This is the demise of civilization. This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I’m watching this happen and I don’t believe it.” He went on further to say that any corporate CEO that didn’t contribute to the efforts to defeat Free Choice should, and I am again quoting, “be shot!” The folks at Lowe’s just got a new customer.
And how about Bank of America’s CEO, Ken Lewis, who after taking bailout money proceeded to fight the Employee Free Choice Act. Lewis said it was in the “best interest of the company” to oppose Free Choice! Really? An internal Bank of America memo said the passage would result in and I am quoting, “increased spending power of lower income consumers would be a de facto wage and benefit increase.” And I guess raising wages and benefits for consumers to pump money back into our failing economy would be a bad thing?!? And just for the record, CitiBank also took $50 billion in bailout money and has proceeded to sponsor conference calls against Employee Free Choice, as well.
All of these naysayers claim they are only looking out for the “democratic” rights of poor downtrodden workers. Well let’s look at some of the realities around those claims.
If they love democracy, well then explain why during the run-up to the election, the union is not allowed to campaign on the company's property? This means not only the workplace but company-owned property such as parking lots. Meanwhile, the company is free to campaign anywhere it wants and can paper the workplace with anti-union messages.
Imagine an election for governor of Arizona where one candidate is allowed to wander freely across the state talking to voters, while the other candidate and their campaign is banned from Arizona and can only stand in Mexico hoping to speak to voters as they cross the border.
Oh, and while the company has full access to the list of eligible voters, the union only has access to the list in the closing days. How can you communicate a winning message when you don't even know who to communicate with?
Meanwhile the company holds "captive audience meetings" sessions at the workplace which workers must attend, often with their direct supervisors. The workers are shown videos about the "evils of unions" and are told that it is in their best interest to vote against the union.
According to one study, during more than 90% of the organizing efforts companies held group anti-union meetings and 78% of the time employees were forced to attend one-on-one meetings with their supervisors.
The union, which has no access to the company's property and no list of eligible voters until the very end, must figure out any way possible to communicate its message with potential voters.
As we all know, companies fire union supporters and claim they are being fired for other reasons since it is illegal to fire or even threaten to fire workers for supporting unions. One quarter of union organizing drives lead to employee firing and one out of every five workers who openly support a union are fired. It can take years of hearings to have these workers reinstated and the penalties companies face are minimal.
At an organizing drive at a Rite Aid distribution center in Southern California, the company dismissed more than 100 union supporters. After being threatened with legal action, the company rehired a few workers and posted a notice saying it wouldn't engage in illegal anti-union activities. Imagine the chilling effect it would have on a political campaign if voters knew that for supporting a certain candidate they could lose their jobs.
And in this “democracy” that employers are so fond of, elections are held on company property and workers are forced to pass lines of company managers to get to the place where they cast their votes. Picture a political campaign with the polling places all in one candidate's campaign headquarters and voters are surrounded by the candidate's fiercest partisans who happened, in this case, to also be their bosses!
Despite all of the above, if the workers are successful and win a union representation election, the employer can delay actually sitting down and negotiating a contract for months, then put so many roadblocks in the way, that it can become almost impossible to get a contract. And this is exactly what happens 40% of the time.
So today in Washington, a multi million dollar effort is well underway to defeat Employee Free Choice. This effort led by the Chamber of Commerce, yes, the same Chamber of Commerce that in the past has opposed OSHA and SCHIP (the children’s health care bill); the same Chamber of Commerce that fought against the Family Medical Leave Act and said maternity leave benefits shouldn’t be paid because, “Pregnancy is voluntary.”; the same Chamber of Commerce that kept the minimum wage frozen for more than 10 years;
And, the same Chamber of Commerce that opposed the extension of unemployment benefits.
So it comes as no surprise that they are, once again, on the wrong side of the angels. Corporate America will stop at nothing in their efforts to hang on to what they have, power in the workplace. Power that has delivered them incredible wealth, wealth they didn’t work for, but that they will do everything possible to hold onto and accumulate more of it.
It is never enough for some of these greediest in our nation. They wave the flag and cry crocodile tears over the alleged loss of democratic principles, which of course, is in and of itself an outright lie. As all of us know, no one’s right to a vote is being taken away. Rather, workers are being given the option of deciding if they want one - - not the bosses.
So while corporate America pretends to tout democracy, we know better. This is nothing but democracy hypocrisy on their part.
And if the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable and the Club for Growth are truly concerned about democracy in the workplace, then I know they will be interested in the results of a quick little survey I want to do of people in this room.
Anyone here from Frontier or Windstream? Do you get to vote on how many weeks of vacation you get?
Anybody here from AT&T Wireless? Do they let you vote on what your health care will be at AT&T?
I think you have some Avaya in the local. Are you able to vote on how much your pension is at Avaya?
I know we have a bunch here from Qwest. When was the last time you got to vote on what the salaries and wages of everyone at Qwest would be?
And one final question for all of you, in the places where you work, whether it is Avaya, or Frontier, or Windstream, or AT&T, or Qwest, or anywhere else in this country, do any of you in this room get to vote for who your bosses are? I mean, after all, isn’t that the foundation of a democracy?!? All of you get to decide whether or not Paul is the President of 7019. If they really truly cared about democracy and weren’t just out to hobble the labor movement, wouldn’t they be championing elections for the CEO right on the shop floor?
The Employee Free Choice Act will strengthen America's middle class by making it easier for workers to join together and bargain with their employers for better pay, benefits and working conditions. And at the end of the day, that is what this struggle is about - the bosses have it and they want to keep it. A union is the only way to get a better split on the wealth that any corporation produces.
As you know the same forces in Congress who claim the Act will destroy democracy and majority rule, those same forces have promised to filibuster the Act when it comes to the floor of the Senate. So it will take 60 votes out of 100 to make Employee Free Choice the law of the land. So in the final insult to democratic principles, principles which state in every other venue that majority rules, for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, we need to round up not 51 votes out of 100, but 60.
But all hope is not lost, there are other paths we are exploring to make the Employee Free Choice Act the law of the land. So imagine now if you will, it is autumn and there is a signing ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House. President Obama, with Larry Cohen looking over his shoulder, is putting his signature on the Employee Free Choice Act. Are we, as a union, ready for what happens next?
I can tell you this much, every other major union in the US is putting together their plans for a post Employee Free Choice world. Are we ready to organize the ComCast’s of the world? ComCast is now the third largest residential phone service provider in the country with half a million more voice customers than Qwest. What about the T-Mobile or the Verizon Wireless workers - - will another union be interested in them?
Imagine how different our negotiations at Qwest would be if we represented a majority of the cable TV workers in our nation, or if all wireless workers were CWA members not just those at AT&T. It changes the dynamic at the bargaining table in ways that harken back to the pre-divestiture days when nearly all workers in our industry were organized.
We can do this. It is no longer a pipe dream. With the leadership that Local 7019 has always provided within CWA, you can again show the way to make this happen.
If I can leave you with one thought, it is to take some time over the next few days to let your imagination run. Let it take you to a place where your Local has a renewed strength at the bargaining table, where 7019 has unmatched political clout and where we have a membership that once again has a powerful and dominant voice on the job. Together, we can make that happen.
Thank you for inviting me here and offering me the chance to share my thoughts with you.
