Thank you for the confidence you have shown in me by electing me as Secretary-Treasurer of our great union. There are a number of people that I would like to acknowledge, some here and some no longer with us. First, my wife Karen, my daughter Kirsten and her husband Ryan, and two of my sisters, Debbi and Karen.
I am thrilled that they were all able to be here to share this moment with me.
I also want to thank my colleagues on the Board and the senior leadership staff of CWA, George Kohl, Yvette Herrera and Ed Sabol. They have played an instrumental role in my growth as an officer of this union. Teri Pluta, our director of Telecom, for her work in helping to coordinate our telecom work. And to my administrative support, Yvette Taylor, who has been a wonderful asset to me and to our union.
To our President, Larry Cohen, with our adjoining offices, every day of the past three years has been a learning experience for me. Larry is always thinking five or six steps ahead, while most of us are lucky to know what to do next.
And, I know I thanked Barbara last night, but this time on the record in the convention minutes, it has been an honor for me to, quite literally, follow Barbara's career. Twenty-seven years ago when I was first appointed to the staff of CWA, I moved into the office in Cleveland that had just been rendered vacant with Barbara's promotion to be an assistant to President Watts.
Now 27 years later, I will once again follow that path and move into the office she is vacating to enter retirement. I am sure Barbara is tired of hearing every introduction of her including the phrase breaking the glass ceiling, with the implication that her career has been a guide for women in the trade union movement, when in reality it can be a guide, and has been for me, a guide for all of us.
Thanks to all of you for allowing me to take on this new task.
And, finally to four men who have played a critical role in my life and who are not with me today except in spirit. My father, whose birthday it is today, he would have been 79. My good friends and mentors, Bob Johnson and T.O. Moses, who I am sure are arguing over Notre Dame and LSU football right now. And finally, my buddy Sal LaCause, who is in a hospital right now in Cleveland battling cancer. I love you, Sal, and I wish you were here. All four of them have had left an indelible mark on my life and I am sorry they cannot be here to share this moment.
I am looking forward to the challenges this new position carries with it, and am ever mindful of the responsibility that comes with it as well. Thank you.
As I look ahead to this new assignment as Secretary-Treasurer, it also has been a time for some personal reflection. I found myself thinking back to my first impressions of the labor movement. As you might expect being from the Midwest, my impressions were dramatically influenced by the Auto Workers and Steelworkers. It was their struggles that first caught my attention − strikes at the Chevy plant where my uncle worked or at U.S. Steel where so many of our neighbors worked are still fresh in my memory. It is those memories which make our new alliance with these two giants of the labor movement so personally exciting for me.
As you hear Larry describe yesterday the commitment of our unions working collaboratively together has the chance to direct not only the outcome of our elections this November, but to also change the course of our movement.
But as I reflected back, there were several moments in our lives when we can remember exactly what we were doing when we found out some earth shattering news: the assassination of President Kennedy and later his brother Bobby, Neil Armstrong stepping out onto the surface of the moon, and the planes hitting the World Trade Center and Pentagon. And, I can still remember my mother coming in to tell me that Dr. King had been assassinated.
And, I can recall from the news reports at the time that Dr. King was in Memphis to support striking garbage workers, a fact which means more to me today than it did back then. At 14, I was already aware of the call of social justice through the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement of the time, but to be truthful, I didn't make the connection between civil rights and workers' rights.
Today I know that one of the greatest insurance policies for the protection of civil rights is a union contract. And so it is that today, arguably the most important piece of civil rights legislation in a generation has to be the Employee Free Choice Act.
Union contracts have been the great leveler of economic injustice, and access to a union contract should be the principle upon which our desperately needed economic revival is built upon.
And, so it is today in CWA that we, all of us in this room, have an opportunity to change the course of our nation. A window has been opened for us, and it will be up to us as leaders in this movement to crawl through that opening and force the window wide open, letting in the fresh air of economic justice to the lungs working families. But to force that change, we are going to have to be smart and creative.
I was waiting for a plane in Washington a couple of months ago. And there was a corporate executive loudly talking on his cell phone so everyone in the area knew just how important he was. Sitting next to him was a CWA flight attendant on her way home waiting for the flight to be announced as ready to board.
The corporate executive gets off his phone and is trying to strike up a conversation and asks the flight attendant if she would like to play a little game. Well, she is tired and just wants to take a nap, so she politely declines and tries to catch a few winks. The corporate executive persisted saying, "Oh, this will be fun. I will ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me $5. Then you ask me one, and if I don't know the answer, I will pay you $500."
That caught the flight attendant's attention and, to keep him quiet, she agreed to play the game. The corporate executive asked the first question. "What's the distance from the earth to the moon?" The flight attendant didn't say a word, reached into her purse, pulled out a five‑dollar bill, and handed it to the corporate executive.
Now it was her turn. She asked the corporate executive, "What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four?"
The corporate executive used his laptop, searching for any references. He looked on the Net, Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and even the Library of Congress. He contacted his head of corporate research – all searching for the answer but to no avail.
He finally gave up. He woke the flight attendant up and handed her $500. She took the $500 and went back to sleep. The corporate executive was going nuts not knowing the answer. He woke her up and asked, "Well, so what goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four?"
The flight attendant reaches into her purse, handed the corporate executive $5. While I may not be as clever as our flight attendant was, it is exactly that kind of creative approach that we need to take on the challenges we face as leaders in this union. And exactly the kind of creative approaches I hope to bring to the office of Secretary-Treasurer.
CWA has incredible resources at its disposal, from the grassroots right up to the President. We have a smart, well-educated and engaged membership. We have the beginnings of a Steward's Army, or maybe a more descriptive title would be an activist's army, an activist's army that is helping us build rank-and-file power.
As a result of the unprecedented decision you made two years ago to create the Strategic Industry Fund, CWA is now investing more in the training and education of our members than any other union in the labor movement. Other unions may be spending more on golf shirts, race cars and TV ads, but in CWA we have made a conscious effort to invest in our members − helping them to get the bigger picture to understand the challenges that we face in our industries and in the movement that we are pushing.
In CWA we have a democracy that is unsurpassed in the labor movement. Our members and rank-and-file leaders are more engaged in the decisions of our union than they have been at any time in our past, right down to whether or not we should have endorsed early in the Presidential primaries.
Our staff has a breadth and depth of knowledge that any union would be envious of. They come from every walk of life and form an incredible pool of talent to help build and promote the programs of the union and provide leadership and guidance for our locals.
Financially, after a rough start three years ago when we were 28 million dollars in the red, we have now reversed that tide. We have controlled our expenses and we have dealt with our debt. Each month, we balance the CWA checkbook like it was one of us and like we would have to do with our own household.
When we look at the financial assets of this union, it is impressive as well:
Members' Relief Fund. . . . . . . over $425 million
Strategic Industry Funds . . . . . over $35 million
Defense Fund . . . . . . . . . . . . . over $13 million
COPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $3.5 million
Building Equity . . . . . . . . . . . $40 million
In addition, CWA members each year contribute nearly $250 million in dues money with approximately $150 million distributed to local unions and the remaining $100 million handled by CWA nationally between the Districts, Sector Divisions and Headquarters.
Now, that all may sound like a lot of money, but consider that last year alone the advertising budget for AT&T was 3.3 Billion dollars; the budget at Verizon was 2.9 Billion dollars; and Time Warner spent 3.1 Billion dollars on advertising. In that view, our funds seem rather insignificant.
And so it is that we must, in addition to being careful guardians of our resources, we must be creative in our approaches to the challenges laid before us. Our new Executive Vice President is not particularly fond of sports analogies, so I will ask her to forgive me on this one. If we were a football team and had the greatest running back of all time on our side − I'm from Cleveland and my favorite player was always Jim Brown. So let's say I'm Jim Brown, but the only play that we called from Jim Brown was a run up the middle. Well, we will lose every game.
If the other team knows what you are going to do every time you approach the line of scrimmage, they are not only going to be able to stop you, but they will throw even Jim Brown for a loss most times as well.
In the face of the anti-worker forces in our nation, we have to devise strategies that not only protect the jobs our current members do, but strategies that also insure that the work of the future is done by CWA members. And at times, that will force us to confront tough choices. We cannot simply circle the wagons and hope that the other side will run out of arrows.
I have been around here now long enough to know that the officers of this union, the staff of this union and the local leaders like yourself are equal to that challenge. It will take work though, work to educate our members to the challenge ahead, work to mobilize them, to energize them and to get them to think about the way that we confront these challenges.
I look forward to having the office of Secretary-Treasurer play an even greater role in this work we face. Gathering input from local leaders like all of you in this hall and jointly figuring out with the President, Executive Vice President and our Executive Board strategies that give us the chance to put even more collective bargaining power in the hands of our members.
And so as President Cohen charged us with yesterday, I imagine a United States where like in Canada 1 in 3 citizens is a union member or countries in Europe where over half the working population belong to a union.
What kind of health care plan would we have in that environment? Would our trade policy be designed to promote the shipping of American jobs overseas? Would corporations get better treatment in bankruptcy than a family overwhelmed by unpaid medical bills?
If there is a single key to our legislative agenda, it has to be turning the 50-year tide that has been drowning the labor movement. With a more robust and strong movement, our legislative and bargaining issues would have real solutions.
The reality is we are on the edge of Armageddon for the labor movement. Under the Bush Administration, we have seen the pace of assaults on the rights of workers increased to an unprecedented level.
The Bush NLRB has undermined voluntary card check. Earlier this year in District 1, a majority of 44 AT&T wireless technicians in New York City achieved recognition through card check. After the union win was certified, 15 of the workers or 30 percent supposedly demanded a vote, and in line with the decision by the Bush NLRB at Dana Corp. in an attempt to kill voluntary card check agreements, a vote was scheduled.
I am pleased to tell you that in the election 29 voted for the union and 7 voted against it. That is MORE members voted for CWA than had even signed cards, and obviously more than half of the 15 that signed cards saying they were unhappy with the card check must have decided the union is a good thing in their workplace.
Last year, that same Bush NLRB reclassified literally millions of workers in the Kentucky River decision, which by the way does not involve Kentucky or a river. The decision allows employers to classify, almost at will, workers like nurses as supervisors and thereby ineligible for coverage under the National Labor Relations Act.
Bush courts are a disaster for working families as well. Just ask Lilly Ledbetter. Lilly was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire and Rubber, but don't hold it against her that she was a supervisor. When she was ready to retire, she received an anonymous letter letting her know that as the only woman supervisor in that plant she was earning over $500 a month less than the lowest paid of any of her male counterparts.
Lilly complained. She simply wanted the difference in back pay. But the company refused and Lilly was forced to go to court. A jury awarded Lilly $223,776 in back pay and more than $3 million in punitive damages. But hold on.
Along comes the Bush Supreme Court, you know the one that appointed him President. But now new and improved with the addition of two Bush appointments is even more conservative.
In a 5 to 4 ruling, they decided that if Lilly had a problem she should have let her employer know within 180 days of the first occurrence. In other words she had to complain 20 years before she actually found out that she was being paid less than her counterparts. Welcome to Bush World, Lilly!
But we cannot lay the blame for our woes strictly on the doorstep of the Bush Administration. The decline of the labor movement has been slow, steady and sure over a number of years.
And, so it is in this climate that CWA under President Cohen's leadership that we have pushed forward the Employee Free Choice Act. Two years ago no one was talking about EFCA, not Congress, not the AFL-CIO, not Change to Win, not anyone, but CWA.
Larry made the passage of EFCA a legislative priority and we have not rested since. Because of our efforts, we passed the Employee Free Choice Act in the House of Representatives by a substantial margin, including the support of all but two Democrats and 13 Republicans.
Over in the Senate, the going has been tougher. Because of arcane rules which allow a minority to control the Senate, we need 60 votes in order to just be able to talk about EFCA in that chamber. Forty-one senators can effectively block the will of the majority. And worse yet, in that chamber the two Republican senators from Wyoming − no offense Wyoming − representing 500,000 citizens have exactly the same vote and same power as two senators supporting the Employee Free Choice Act from California representing over 36 million Americans or two senators from New York representing 20 million Americans.
In the Senate we did manage to get a majority, 50 votes to 49 for cloture, but it is clear we have an uphill climb to get to the magic number of 60 to overcome a Republican filibuster.
Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act will be dependent on three things:
Building our majorities in the House of Representatives;
Picking up a number of critical Senate seats, ideally enough to get to 60 votes;
And finally, most significantly, we need to elect a worker-friendly President.
So, November 4th may well be described as our showdown with the future. It will be win or go home. All of us will need to rally for the survival of our movement.
There is an awful lot of misinformation being spread already about what the Employee Free Choice Act is. They are already running TV spots. So, let me take a few moments and describe the three principle elements of it.
First, it will give employees − not employers − the option of electing to be represented by a union through a show of cards or card check. The card would clearly state they are waiving an election and want to join a union. No different than signing a card to join the Republican Party or the NRA.
Despite what the Chamber of Commerce or the Club for Growth might tell people, it does not eliminate the option of workers having an election. Instead, it gives them a choice. If they want an election they can have it. If they want to be recognized by a majority show of interest, then that is their choice, not anyone else's and certainly not their bosses.
Second, and in my mind just as important as the first, is arbitration to settle first contract disputes.
If today you somehow, under our screwed up system, manage to win a representation election, the odds are still against you that you will ever reach agreement on a first contract. The Employee Free Choice Act provides for first contract mediation and arbitration to resolve that.
Finally, it would increase the penalties for companies that break the law to try and stop their workers from joining a union, including triple damages for back pay awards and a $20,000 fine for each violation of the law.
But employee choice is not the only legislative priority of CWA. We have four key issues that we are focused on with the right to collective bargaining only being the first. The others are health care, jobs and trade policies and retirement security. Now if we are smart, some of these can be dealt with simultaneously. We could actually fix our health care crisis with a tax on imported goods, like every other industrial nation.
Victory in November would the first opportunity since 1993 for addressing the need for real health care reform in our nation. In the most far reaching Strategic Industry project to date, under the leadership of Executive Vice President Annie Hill, we have trained over 120 activists in a variety of Congressional Districts around the country who will in turn educate and engage our members in the debate over fixing our broken health care system.
How many people here today have health care at least in part paid for by your employer? Show of hands.
Well the McCain solution to the health care crisis is to create tax free accounts and subsidies for the uninsured then go out and buy health insurance. That's right − an incentive for a family working two jobs to make ends meet. A family barely able to afford a roof over their heads or food on their table, if they can somehow find a way to shell out over a $1,000 a month for health insurance, then they will get a tax break for that. Congratulations.
So, where will the money for the tax credits and subsidies come from? From each of you that put your hands up. Senator McCain's plan will tax you on the value of the collectively bargained health care plan that your employer provides. So, let's say you are provided $12,000 in health care benefits. Then you're going to pay taxes on that $12,000 in benefits.
In other words, make tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans permanent and put a brand new tax on middle-class Americans. All this plan is, is a way for Senator McCain to say he has a health care plan. It is not a real solution and he knows it and so should our members.
Just once before I retire I want to be able to go into a negotiation where our members' health care, whether active or retired, is not on the line. Rising health care costs have been the silent killer of our contracts, draining money from wages, pensions and other benefits, just to hang on to some semblance of our health care protection.
And let's face it: as with the crisis we have in negotiating over health care at the bargaining table, if we can solve that problem, dealing with the issue of retirement security just became a whole lot more manageable.
The bottom line, if we are not successful in getting a President who will sign the Employee Free Choice Act into law, there may not be enough of us left to make another run at it 4 or 8 years from now to help make a difference.
Nothing we will do in the next 5 months will be more important than seeing to it that we have a chance to pass employee free choice. And, you can feel the tension from the Right as they see the tide turning against them. But they will not go quietly. They will use every device they know to try and divide us, to get workers to vote against their very interests by using gay marriage, guns, or by using God.
Already we have been bombarded with one Internet rumor after another about Senator Obama, some distortions, but mostly just outright lies. But I doubt you see much about John McCain's famous temper. His fuse is so short that one of his Republican colleagues, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, commented, "The thought of his being President sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper, and he worries me."
And we will see endless clips of Reverend Wright, but how many of you here have heard of Richard Quinn? He was John McCain's key strategist in South Carolina the first time he ran for President. Quinn also ran the Senate campaign of Klan leader David Duke and in his magazine sold tee shirts celebrating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Or, how about McCain's aggressive pursuit of an endorsement of Reverend − and I use that title under protest − Reverend John Hagee. Hagee insisted that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights.
And we certainly don't hear about the fact that John McCain voted at least 8 times against increasing the minimum wage, while insisting that the problem in the home mortgage crisis could be solved if people would just get a second job or cancel a vacation.
If we do our work, we can accomplish our goals, not just in our lifetime, but in the next two years. My mentor in District 4, Bob Johnson, was fond of the Chinese proverb that said the journey of a million miles begins with a single step.
I would submit to you, that with the foresight that you demonstrated in passing Ready for the Future, and in adopting our Strategic Industry Funds, we are now a thousand miles down that journey of a million.
We still have a long way to go, but we can march on in the confidence that these changes, that others might have only dreamt of, could become a reality if we commit to doing everything possible to build a political movement that is committed to our fundamental principles of collective bargaining, health care reform, retirement security and trade laws that work for American workers instead of against them.
So, let me close this morning by going back to where I started this all at. It was on a cold February morning back in 1968. A heavy rain was falling and two garbage workers in Memphis, Tennessee, who had been denied the right to join a union were going out on their first morning run. Echol Cole and Robert Walker were black and so they were not allowed to ride in the cab of the truck. To keep out of the rain like most of the black garbage workers in Memphis, they rode in the drum in the back, that huge gaping mouth that ate all of the city's garbage. They were huddled down and surrounded by the smells of every kind imaginable, and probably many we can't imagine.
Somehow, and it was probably an accident, the ram was activated, and literally in a matter of seconds the two men were crushed to death. Not a single city official attended their funeral, and their families were given a month's pay and a check for $500.
So that's what the strike that pulled Dr. King to Memphis was about. It wasn't higher wages, a better health care plan or even more vacation, it was about dignity. It was about respect. And isn't that, after all, what pulled each of us in this room to this calling?
Let's go from here and let's commit to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Let's do it for our sons; let's do it for our daughters; and let's do it for our grandchildren and our great grandchildren. And let's do it for Echol Cole and Robert Walker.
Thank you again for the trust and confidence that you have shown in me by electing me as your Secretary-Treasurer. I will work hard to keep that trust with you and for the members who make up this great union with us.
