• CWA Phone Blitz Starts July 27 for Health Care Reform
• D3, AT&T Southeast Resume Negotiations
• Employee Free Choice Talks Continue
• West Virginia Leaders Want Full Review of Verizon Telecom Deal
• How Did Your Senator Vote? New Website Tells You in an Instant
• TNG Activism Helped Launch Cronkite's Extraordinary Career</:?ƅ>

CWA Phone Blitz Starts July 27 for Health Care Reform

Monday, July 27 kicks off CWA's biggest week of action yet for health care reform. It starts with a phone blitz by CWA members and activists to Capitol Hill as the House prepares to vote on America's Affordable Health Choices Act.

The bill, H.R. 3200, was crafted by three House committees: Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Education and Labor. The full House is expected to vote before the August recess. The bill, H.R. 3200, is the piece of legislation that has emerged so far from Capitol Hill that best responds to CWA's priorities for reform:

• All employers required to contribute to their employees' coverage.
• A public insurance plan option.
• Protections for retirees, including pre-Medicare retirees.
• No taxes on employer-paid benefits for working and middle class families.

Members of CWA Local 2100 stand up for health care reform.

CWA's legislative and political action teams and health care coordinators are organizing at worksites and recruiting volunteers to make the calls. Using cell phones and an 800 number, CWAers will be meeting in break and lunch rooms, at membership and retiree meetings, at garages before heading out to work and lots of other locations to make the calls to urge their  congressional representatives to pass the bill without weakening amendments. 

Meanwhile, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has passed its version of health care reform, and another bill is pending in the Finance Committee. Stay tuned for email messages from CWA about this action.

D3, AT&T Southeast Resume Negotiations

Throughout District 3, CWAers rallied outside AT&T locations for a fair contract. Members of Local 3122 walked the line in Miami.

Atlanta, Columbia, S.C., Nashville, Tenn., Miami, Birmingham, Ala. — pick a community in District 3 and CWAers were there this week, leafleting outside AT&T locations as bargaining for a new contract resumed July 20.

Early negotiations got underway in February, but critical issues of healthcare, wages, pensions and retiree benefits remain to be resolved.  The contract covering about 35,000 CWAers expires at midnight, Saturday night, Aug. 8.

Negotiations also are continuing for new contracts covering nearly 70,000 CWA-represented workers in other AT&T regions. They include East and Yellow Pages, (CWA District 1), West (CWA District 9), Southwest (District 6) and Legacy T (CWA ComTech unit) and District 3's AT&T Advertising Solutions unit. CWA has reached a tentative agreement with AT&T Midwest, covering nearly 20,000 workers.

Members of Local 3204 in Atlanta, with supporters from the state AFL-CIO and other unions, rallied outside AT&T's offices.

Employee Free Choice Talks Continue

There's been a lot of speculation lately about the Employee Free Choice Act, but one thing is clear: there will be strong labor law reform this year. As we have said from Day One, workers in the United States must have the right to form a union and bargain without having to fight their employers. Talks to hammer out a strong, effective bill are continuing in the U.S. Senate; no final decisions have been made.

"We are committed, and our allies in the Senate are committed, to restoring the right of workers to bargain collectively and organize without being bullied and threatened by their employers," CWA President Larry Cohen said.

As the debate continues, a new report from researchers at the University of California-Berkeley, illustrates why the Employee Free Choice Act is so important. "Family-Friendly Workplaces: Do Unions Make a Difference?" shows how unions help workers achieve a better work-life balance with better health care benefits and paid leave.

"In most areas, unionized workers receive more generous family-friendly benefits than their non-union counterparts," the authors state, adding that unions also make sure their members better understand their benefits and how they can use such important programs as the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Click here for more information about the study and a link to the full report.

West Virginia Leaders Want Full Review of Verizon Telecom Deal

West Virginia House Speaker Richard Thompson and 30 other members of the House of Delegates want a full review of the proposed sale of landlines by Verizon to Frontier Communications.

The elected officials called on the Public Service Commission to reject the "fast track" review Verizon and Frontier want and instead make sure that West Virginians can see how this deal will affect them. CWA is calling the sale bad news for workers, consumers and communities.

Verizon wants to sell its landlines to Frontier for $3.3 billion in cash plus another $5.3 billion in Frontier stock that will go to Verizon shareholders. The deal is structured so that Verizon can avoid paying taxes on the deal, using a tax loophole known as the reverse Morris Trust. 

So far, these deals haven't worked out so well for consumers. Fairpoint, the company that bought Verizon's lines in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont is on the rocks, Hawaiian Telecom, which bought Verizon's operations in 2005, filed for bankruptcy, as did Idearc, the Yellow Pages company that Verizon spun off.

How Did Your Senator Vote? New Website Tells You in an Instant

Want to keep tabs on how your U.S. senators and representative voted on a particular issue? The AFL-CIO makes it fast and easy with a new online voting record database.

Go to www.aflcio.org/issues/legislativealert/votes, enter your address and zip code, and you'll get a record of every vote your representatives in Congress have cast on working family issues since 2000.

TNG Activism Helped Launch Cronkite's Extraordinary Career

Walter Cronkite was a union man. From his high school days when he learned about TNG-CWA founder Heywood Broun, to his election as strike committee chairman at United Press International in 1939, and throughout his legendary career, Cronkite kept up his strong support for the labor movement, until his death last week at age 92. 

In 2004, Cronkite recounted stories of his early days at the TNG-CWA annual Freedom Awards event. Video of his speech is available at www.newsguild.org. "I can't tell you how honored I am that you would invite me here to be with 'my' folks," he said.