CWA Local 9510's News Blog

Link: http://action.cwa-union.org/salsa/track.jsp?v=2&c=4tqp7hc3bOqOfiQIcsLBONXcRSG%2FeA3e

The fight for workers' rights continues to rage all across the United States. Saturday 70,000 turned out in Madison and tens of thousands more across the USA.
Friday, I joined with thousands of CWA activists and other unionists and allies who rallied in Trenton in the rain to stand in solidarity with workers in Wisconsin, and send a message to NJ Governor Chris Christie that his Wall Street cronies have created the financial mess and not the working families of NJ.
What began in Wisconsin and Ohio has spread like wildfire to every corner of the USA. In state after state, workers are standing up to disgraceful attempts to strip us of our fundamental collective bargaining and organizing rights.
This movement is building quickly, so on Wednesday CWA is holding another national Union Hall phone call for our members and activists throughout the country.
Sign up and join us now!
www.CWA-Action.org
Last week, more than 5,000 participants joined our first-ever national Union Hall call. It featured local reports from CWA activists from Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida, and Tennessee. We talked about the importance of bringing our fight back for collective bargaining into our workplaces and pointed to resources on the web at www.cwa-union.org/workers-rights.
We made it clear that this fight is happening all over the United States -- and that wherever workers' rights are being threatened, CWA members have answered the call.
In New York and North Carolina, in California and Colorado, in Iowa and Alaska and Washington State, thousands of our brothers and sisters have attended rallies in defense of our right to organize. View our running list of local rallies to find one near you.
And on Friday, CWA members across the country wore Wisconsin red in solidarity with all workers whose rights are being attacked by conservative lawmakers and the Big Businesses that line their pockets. Check out our photo gallery of CWA members wearing red.
We are mobilizing across the country like I've never seen before. As I said on last week's call, "This is the dawn of a new movement. This is an awakening."
I hope you'll join us Wednesday and continue to be part of it.
In Unity,
Larry Cohen

>>> Candice Johnson 02/22/2011 1:25 PM >>>
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-02-22-poll-public-unions-wisconsin_N.htm

Poll: 61% oppose limiting union bargaining powerBy Dennis Cauchon (
http://content.usatoday.com/topics/reporter/Dennis+Cauchon ), USA
TODAY

The public strongly opposes laws taking away the collective bargaining
power of public employee unions as a way to ease state financial
troubles, according to a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll.

The poll found that 61% would oppose a law in their state similar to
one being considered in Wisconsin, compared with 33% who would favor
such a law.

Ohioand several other states that have new Republican (
http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Organizations/Political+Bodies/Republican+Party
) governors and legislative majorities are considering laws that would
reduce the power of government employee unions to bargain over benefits
and work rules.

Wisconsinis the first state to consider the limits, prompting protests
that have closed schools and drawn tens of thousands of protesters to
the state Capitol in Madison.

The poll results suggest how politically difficult it is to solve
budget shortfalls. The survey found that people believe budget problems
in their state are real but strongly oppose tax hikes to solve them.
Americans are split on whether to cut state service s to balance
budgets.

The survey of 1,000 adults was taken Monday night. It has a margin of
error of 4%.
Key results:
* 71% oppose increasing sales, income or other taxes while 27% are in
favor that approach.
* 53% oppose reducing pay or benefits for government workers while
44% are in favor.
* 48% opposed reducing or eliminating government programs while 47%
were in favor of cuts.

Despite the opposition to reducing spending or raising taxes, those
surveyed agreed overwhelmingly that their state faces a budget crisis.
Sixty-four percent said their state was in financial crisis while only
5% said it wasn't. The rest were unsure.

The poll found people divided on whether public employee unions are a
good thing.
Candice Johnson
CWA Communications Director

Repost from Jim W. CWA District 9

The fight in Wisconsin is not about the state being broke and it is certainly not about "greedy union members" wanting to keep cushy pay, benefits and retirements better than "the rest of the country" receive. This is about working people, the core of this country, fighting for the right to bargain collectively and have a voice where they work. This fight is spreading to other states, NY, NJ, PA, IN, OH, MI, IL, FL, just to name a few. This fight is about an all out effort to by the right wing to break us once and for all. This fight is being financed by corporate interest in this country and being orchestrated by the politicians they have bought, and the fight must spread from the public sector to the private sector.

An ALL stewards call is being set up nationwide for tentatively 430 pst this Wed 2-23; details will follow.

In the meantime. we are quickly looking to see how best to put resources into the fight. I have asked Seth Rosen and HQ's to let me know of any meaningful work for which I can supply staff and I'll let you know what requests I receive. Until then I would ask that if you have resources, money in particular, that you consider helping locals already on the ground in the key states with LTW to get acticivists out into the community. I advise you not to throw money at trave l to the states in flux etc at this point and until we can make sure that the efforts and work that will be done justify the expense.

Your staff will all be contacting you to discuss things that we can do over the coming days. You can start with this:

1. Begin organizing "mass starts" at large public worksites where workers can briefly addressed and show solidarity

2. Wear Wisconsin Red everyday you can; not just Thursdays

3. Attend tomorrow evenings 530 pm solidarity reality at the capitol in Sacramento

4. EDUCATE YOUR MEMBERS ON WHAT IS AT STAKE.

More to follow...

Jim Weitkamp

California’s big phone companies could face future penalties, if they don’t fix home telephone outages quicker.

A State Senate panel grilled the heads of AT&T and Verizon about why thousands of customers lost their landline service during December’s heavy rains and why it took up to a month to restore service to homes and businesses.

“The service outages experienced in Southern California, were caused by significant heavy rainfall,” AT&T VP Bill Chubb told a special hearing on the outages, held in downtown Los Angeles.

But NBCLA has learned that AT&T and Verizon’s poor service records began long before the heavy December rains.

Evidence we obtained show both companies have often been slow to fix phone outages, and that situation just became worse when heavy rains hit our area.

The reason appears to be twofold: AT&T and Verizon both have networks of old cables and wires that technicians say should have been replaced years ago, and now fail during rains. Also, both companies have significantly cut their workforces, which repair landline service.

At Friday’s special hearing, politicians and customers demanded more information about the recent massive outages.

“We all need some explanations about why this happened and how it will be prevented from ever happening again, said Dick Jalkut, CEO of TelePacific, a company that provides AT&T and Verizon service to small businesses, many of which lost their landlines during the busy holiday season.

But documents NBCLA obtained show repair delays have been a problem for the two phone companies during all of 2010, even the dry months.

Both phone companies have made a promise to the California Public Utilities Commission, that when there’s an outage, they’ll restore service within 24 hours.
Records provided to us by a State Senate committee, show that Verizon and AT&T failed to meet that throughout 2009.

In some months, AT&T on-time record for repairing outages was less than 40%.

“There are simply not enough technicians to restore service in a timely manner,” said Jim Weitkamp, of the Communications Workers of America, which represents technicians at both companies.

At the hearing, both Verizon and AT&T pledged to do full review of the outages to find ways of avoiding a future service disaster.

“We are very concerned about what can we do now to learn from this experience, said AT&T’s Bill Chubb.

If the phone companies don’t come up with plans to provide better landline repair service, they could face fines.

Later this month, the head of the Public Utilities Commission will report to the legislature, about the possibility of reinstating automatic fines if the phone companies don’t meet their service goals.

Until 2009, the PUC would fine landline service providers if they weren’t providing quick repair service.

Full Article

The state senate hearings Fri were like us running back a kick off for a touchdown! It's ok to be jubilant, but we've still got four quarters of ball ahead of us. (ok, no more I promise).

This was collective action at it's best; every single telco local from Bakerssfield to the Mexican border had folks out there making our case to the public. Under Kenny williams' leadership 9510 brought two van loads of people all on their own time to work with us and I know many of you were also on your own time. i was especially gratified to see the member who brought his young daughter to see the process - this is how we build the movement.

Our tech witnesses, Dan Rodriguez, 9423, Bill Garden 9573/9400 and Dave Flores, 9505 were superb. They worked long late hours with us to prepare their testimony and what they said was the most compelling, no bullshit, no phony statistical testimony of the day.

I also want to thank everyone of my staff that dropped what they were doing to focus on this; you just don't know, sometimes, the hours they put in. This is CWA firing on all cylinders; we've had tremendous help from headquarters staff as well and Alex
Rooker was key in helping us pull this together.

We've received great press and TV coverage; we've shared some of it in separate emails and will provide more as we get it. The tech that filmed the proceedings for KNBC was also one of our members

We have much left to do ; I refer you back to my 1-28 update email for the next steps of the overall strategy, and we will be adjusting and refining what we do as we go along.

TO ALL OF THE NON TELCO LOCALS-THIS IS NOT JUST A TELEPHONE FIGHT- THIS IS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF COMMUNICATIONS FOR ALL CALIFORNIANS. OUR LEGACY MEMBERS ARE AT STAKE BUT SO ARE EVERY SINGLE MEMBER OF YOUR LOCAL AND THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS THAT RELY ON QUALITY HIGH SPEED COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS.

Our next step is to follow up with every legislator that has opened their door to us on these issues. All of LPATer's will be engaged but we are going to need othe people to meet in the feild; let us know who you can supply to help and we will put them to work.

Everybody have a great Sunday and enjoy the game...

Jim Weitkamp

Think "no" means "no"?

Well, 173 members of Congress don't.

A far-reaching anti-choice bill, introduced by Republican Chris Smith and supported by 173 members of the House, includes a provision that could redefine rape and set women's rights back by decades.1

Right now, federal dollars can't be used for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the woman's life is in danger.

But according to the New York Times, the Smith bill would narrow that use to "cases of 'forcible' rape but not statutory or coerced rape."2 This could mean cases where women are "drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with limited mental capacity, and many date rapes" would no longer count as rape.3

As far too many women know, bruises and broken bones do not define rape—a lack of consent does. The Smith bill is scary. And with 173 supporters it already has a frightening chance of passage—unless the public speaks up right away with an outcry that can't be ignored.

Can you sign the petition to Congress today, demanding they oppose the sexist, anti-choice Smith bill?

The petition says: "Bruises and broken bones do not define rape—a lack of consent does. Stand up and oppose the dangerous GOP legislation to redefine rape."

Federal funds are already severely restricted when it comes to reproductive rights and women's health care, a situation that ends up hurting lower-income women in particular, who tend to use federally-funded ser vices more often than wealthy women. The last thing we ought to be doing is legislating to make these laws more stringent.

In addition, the Smith bill is full of dangerous anti-choice provisions as well as the rape redefinition. Called "Stupak on Steroids" by NARAL Pro-Choice America in reference to Rep. Bart Stupak's failed attempt to push stringent restrictions on insur ance coverage for abortion during the health care debate, it would "force millions of American families to pay more taxes if their health plan covers abortion care, jeopardizing abortion coverage in the private market."4

The Smith bill is just the first of many attacks on women's rights to come in the new GOP-controlled House.5 If it moves forward, it would set an incredibly dangerous precedent for GOP action in the House for the next two years.

Can you sign the petition asking Congress to denounce the Smith bill to redefine rape? Click here:
http://pol.moveon.org/smithbill/?id=25981-9298445-Z2lmKwx&t=5

Thanks for all you do.
–Kat, Eli, Milan, Carrie, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. "The House GOP's Plan to Redefine Rape," Mother Jones, January 28, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205936&id=25981-9298445-Z2lmKwx&t=6

"Stupak on Steroids," The Hill, January 25, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205938&id=25981-9298445-Z2lmKwx&t=7

2. "The Two Abortion Wars: A Highly Intrusive Federal Bill," New York Times, January 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/opinion/30sun1.html

3. "The House GOP's Plan to Redefine Rape," Mother Jones, January 28, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205936&id=25981-9298445-Z2lmKwx&t=8

4. "Stupak on Steroids," The Hill, January 25, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205938&id=25981-9298445-Z2lmKwx&t=9

5. Ibid.