CWA Executive Board Sets Action Plan on Health Care, Elects D7 VP

CWA's Executive Board this week outlined a CWA action plan to fight efforts in Congress to tax employer health care plans and to win the real health care reform union members need, including an employer mandate.

Here's a summary of board action:

CWA President Larry Cohen swears in Mary Taylor as District 7 Vice President.

Taylor Becomes New D7 VP on Retirement of Louise Caddell
The Board elected Mary Taylor as District 7 Vice President following the September 22 retirement of Louise Caddell. Taylor has a long record of service to CWA in Minnesota, most recently as assistant to Caddell who was elected District 7 vice president in 2008.

Caddell has been an outstanding leader and has spent a lifetime in service to CWA members in two districts and the Communications and Technologies sector, said CWA President Larry Cohen.

Action Plan to Fight Taxation of Health Care and Win Real Reform
The Executive Board adopted a three-part action plan that is critical in the fight to kill the proposed tax on health care. "Taxing health care would be a disaster for CWA members and retirees and we will go all out to make sure that the Senate hears our voice," Cohen said.

Here's what we'll do:

• Directly meet and engage with senators who are the key players in reconciling differences in the various legislative proposals on health care reform. This includes the Senate Finance Committee which is working on a bill with many bad proposals for working families, the Senate HELP Committee (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) and the leaders of the three House committees and the House leadership on H.R. 3200, which best meets CWA's priorities for real reform. 
  
   
• CWAers must be actively involved in getting our message to members of Congress through meetings, personal letters and other communications. More than 100 CWA activists will be dedicated to coordinating leafleting at worksites, collecting letters for senators and making sure our voice is heard at political meetings.
  
   
• CWA employers must join us in the fight to defeat any effort to tax health care plans. "We are asking CWA employers to get by our side in this critical fight," Cohen said.

Organizing
CWA has one of the union movement's most exciting and active organizing programs going. Our organizing campaign at Delta Airlines is the largest organizing effort underway in the United States. This drive among 20,000 flight attendants will determine whether 7,000 flight attendants at the former Northwest Airlines will get to keep their 60-year history of bargaining rights or lose them as a result of arbitrary election rules in the airline industry. In another exciting campaign, in Suffolk County, N.Y., CWA organizers are working with more than 8,000 county workers. 

The board also discussed the need to ramp up quickly in training new organizers who will be very busy once the Employee Free Choice Act passes. The board is exploring a Strategic Industries Fund program to help train the organizers CWA will need. "CWA organizers are extremely busy right now and are doing terrific work. We need to increase our numbers in ongoing organizing campaigns and also need to be ready for the boom in organizing that will follow passage of the Employee Free Choice Act," said Seth Rosen, CWA District 4 vice president and chair of the Organizing Committee.  

The board also reviewed other organizing plans in the airlines, telecom and public sectors.

Employee Free Choice
The board renewed CWA's commitment to passing the Employee Free Choice Act by November after Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick named Paul Kirk to fill the seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy until a January special election. Efforts to firm up the votes of those senators who haven't fully committed to the bill are continuing, with the goal of assuring the support of at least 60 senators who will vote for cloture and allow the bill to move to the Senate floor for a final vote.