• CWA Reaches Tentative Agreement at AT&T Midwest
• 1,500 Rally in Arkansas for Employee Free Choice
• Labor Unity Group Meets with President Obama
• Local 2336 Members Get Justice, Finally
• CWA Everyday Hero: AT&T Tech Puts CPR Training to Work 

CWA Reaches Tentative Agreement at AT&T Midwest

Members of CWA Locals 6300 and 4217 and IBEWers leaflet outside Major League Baseball's All-Star game in St. Louis.

CWA District 4 and AT&T have reached a tentative three-year agreement covering nearly 20,000 members at AT&T Midwest. 

The proposed agreement includes pay and pension band increases in each contract year and addresses cost of living adjustments. Changes to the health care plan increase some of out-of-pocket costs, but new company-funded health care initiatives and wage increases will result in overall improvement to members' standard of living by thousands of dollars each year, the District 4 bargaining committee said.

The tentative settlement includes new job transfer opportunities and other employment security gains, and expands earnings and job opportunities for some sales workers and premises technicians, who install AT&T services at customers' homes.

CWA District 4 Vice President Seth Rosen said, "During these very tough times in the Midwest, middle-class workers can use some good news.  I am pleased to have reached an agreement that achieves our key goals."

Now, the fight continues at AT&T East, AT&T Southwest, AT&T West, AT&T Legacy T and other AT&T units where negotiations are continuing, and at AT&T Southeast where bargaining resumes July 20, said CWA President Larry Cohen.

"We will stand one day longer, until we get the quality agreements all of our members deserve and we're determined to maintain members' standard of living and quality health care," he said.

The details of the District 4 tentative settlement are available at http://district4.cwa-union.org/bargaining. Ratification materials and information will go out to District 4 members shortly.

1,500 Rally in Arkansas for Employee Free Choice

Union, religious and community activists rally for Employee Free Choice in Little Rock.

Under a scorching sun, CWAers joined with 1,500 union activists in Arkansas to rally for Employee Free Choice.

The day started early, at Fort Smith, where CWA Secretary-Treasurer Jeff Rechenbach lead faith, civil rights and union activists in an early morning rally.

That group traveled two hours to Little Rock where they met up with union activists and supporters from across the state. Outside Central High School, they remembered the courage of the Little Rock 9 who brought about the school's integration. Then, led by a delegation of ministers, the crowd marched to the state capitol.

There, union leaders, local elected officials, clergy and others called on Senators Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor to support working families and the Employee Free Choice Act.

CWA Sec.-Treas. Rechenbach at Little Rock rally.

Rechenbach condemned the hypocrisy and lies of the multi-million-dollar campaign being waged by the Chamber of Commerce. "It is never enough for some of these greediest in our nation," he said. "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 – not their bosses -- are being given the option of deciding if they want a vote."

CWA District 6 Vice President Andy Milburn was also on hand, along with members and officers of every Arkansas local.

Labor Unity Group Meets with President Obama

Click on the above to watch CWA Pres. Larry Cohen's appearance on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

CWA President Larry Cohen and 10 other labor leaders met with President Barack Obama at the White House this week as efforts to pass Employee Free Choice and health care reform heat up. 

The White House scheduled the meeting with the National Labor Coordinating Committee which is working to unify the labor movement.

"We appreciated the opportunity to meet with President Obama to discuss what we need to do to achieve Employee Free Choice and real health care reform," Cohen said.

That evening, Cohen went head-to-head with the Chamber of Commerce on the "Newshour with Jim Lehrer" program about Employee Free Choice.

Cohen stressed that Employee Free Choice and workers' bargaining rights are "the way to bring back the middle class in this country. It's no different than 75 years ago when John Maynard Keynes, the greatest economist of that time, wrote to President Roosevelt and said, 'I regard the expansion of collective bargaining as essential.'

"When we're cutting and cutting and cutting jobs, pay and benefits, there's no way we ever get out of a recession," Cohen said. "Workers themselves can help lift the economy, by having a seat at the bargaining table where they can meet with management and work together on a better future."

Local 2336 Members Get Justice, Finally

A decade after Verizon stopped paying members of CWA Local 2336 for additional work they did in the company's Corporate Mail Group, the U.S. Court of Appeals reinstated an arbitration award that gave the voice mail clerks retroactive pay.

Now, it's up to Verizon to do the right thing and accept this decision instead of trying to overturn arbitration awards, said CWA District 2 Vice President Ron Collins.

Way back in 1997 Verizon started assigning workers in the Corporate Mail Group extra duties and initially paid them for that work. But before 2000, Verizon stopped paying for the extra work and CWA filed a grievance in 2001.

An arbitrator found that Verizon had violated the contract and a second arbitrator found that workers were due a wage increase plus retroactive pay back to 2001.

Verizon appealed, and a District Court overturned the award, accusing the arbitrator of applying "his own brand of industrial justice." The Appeals Court disagreed and reinstated the arbitrator's decision and award.

CWA Everyday Hero: AT&T Tech Puts CPR Training to Work 

CWA Local 6139 member Bobby Click, right, is honored by the Acadian ambulance service in Texas for saving the life of a 3-year-old girl.

Bobby Click was fixing a phone line in a Vidor, Texas, back yard on a sweltering June afternoon when he heard a commotion coming from the family's above-ground pool. A little girl, black and blue in the face and not breathing, had been pulled from the water.

In a split-second, Click threw off his tools and ran toward the girl and the hysterical adults holding her. The CPR training he gets every three years from AT&T kicked into high gear.

"I can't remember everything that happened," Click, a member of CWA Local 6139, said. "It was so emotional. I know I grabbed her and I laid her on the ground and I started CPR."

Meanwhile, fellow technicians and Local 6139 members, Mark Ferguson and David Clifton, called 911 and helped keep the homeowner and neighbors calm. "Just as the ambulance arrived, she began to cry, and that's what I was hoping for," Click said.

Medics told him and the child's mother that the little girl wouldn't have lived if someone hadn't immediately given her CPR. "If you had asked me, how do you do CPR on a child, I probably couldn't have told you," he said. "But it all came back to me. Training gives you the courage to act."

It also helped him stay calm -- until it was all done. Then "I was shaking all over," he said. "I drove to my daughter's home right down the street because I just had to hug my two little granddaughters," who are 1 and 2 years old.

Click, a technician for 33 years with AT&T, received an award from the local ambulance service, Acadian, at a ceremony that included the girl and her family.

He's uncomfortable being called a "hero" but is happy to speak out to persuade others to learn CPR. "I'm just a person God was able to put in that situation," he said. "It's blessed me probably as much as that family, to be able to do something like that. I think everyone should know how to do what I did."