The President’s Corner
by Clay
Bowlby
April 11th –15th I attended the C.W.A. District 7 Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The first two days were used for the traditional speeches from local politicians and union officials. We attended four different workshops on different issues involving the operation of the Local. The last two days we spent on the impending contract negotiations and the issues which we wanted to move forward in bargaining. As you can imagine, the different Locals had varying ideas on what are the most pressing issues for this contract.
I believe that Local 7804 was well represented by V.P. Dennis Garrett, Sec./Treas. Randy Grams and myself. Although we did not get all of our items moved to the priority status, we were in the majority on several important items that will greatly help our local. More importantly, we were able to work with the other Locals in the State and across the district to gain consensus on the upcoming bargaining session.
Now the real work begins, and our bargaining team has their work cut out for them. They will need our support. Unfortunately at this writing we have not reached an agreement with the Company to open bargaining early. It is not off the table but it is getting late and there are problems with differences between the Company and Union. So please continue to prepare for a strike; better to be prepared than to be sorry.
Stories in this issue:
On a different issue, the sale of Qwest/Dex is in trouble in the State of Washington. The staff of the Utilities and Transportation Commission has made public their recommendation that the U.T.C. oppose the sale. They have gone as far to say that the state would be better off letting Qwest go into bankruptcy than to allow the sale to go through. This is a reckless and irresponsible position on the part of the staff. The Dex sale is a critical part of the company avoiding default on loans and ultimately bankruptcy. The financial stability of the company is paramount to maintaining jobs, wages, pensions and health care coverage for all of Qwest’s. current employees and all of our retirees. The Wash./N. Idaho State Council is partnering with Qwest to try and push through the sale of Dex.
We will be asking for your help. In the near future we will send you information and be asking that you write letters to certain key elected officials. This is an important request and the large number of letters will make a difference. Remember that the job you save could be your own. Already, Executive board member Jake Williams and I have secured the support of U.S. Congressman Adam Smith, and State Rep. Steve Conway has agreed to talk with us. We are making progress ,but, again, we need your help and support. Please take the time to write at least one e-mail or letter. You will be the difference in this battle.
Lastly, please find the seniority list that is enclosed for your information. Many of you have requested this information, and we are happy to make it available for you. If there is other information you would like please contact your steward, and if appropriate we will make it available for you.
In unionism,
Clay Bowlby
Pres. C.W.A. Local 7804
Secretary’s Report
By Randy Grams
I would like to furnish the membership with some useful information in this edition of our newsletter. I have several items from the District 7 Conference worth relaying to you.
Qwest early bargaining will begin May 5. Normal expiration August 16.
Avaya bargaining will begin May 6, expiration May 31. We are expecting new guidelines from Qwest concerning Customer Premise Access, for our outside techs.
Due to heightened security, customers may ask for your company ID while you work in their business. If they ask for your vehicle keys or wish to hold your drivers license, we view those as unreasonable requests. Notify your supervisor immediately in these kinds of situations!
Qwest is using Peoplesoft to compute your 401-K and payroll. It is not working correctly for those on a scheduled Sunday. Time worked is shown as premium rather than regular and it won’t deduct your allotment or the matching money. Qwest says they are in the process of fixing it (or catch up). It is up to you to check on it to make sure it is right!
WOW! “Where’s Our Work”. Have you noticed our work volumes have dropped drastically? This was the theme of a ten to fifteen minute Powerpoint presentation at the District 7 Conference. Telecom has taken a huge hit. We are suffering large amounts of line loss. We are being impacted by wireless, broadband companies, and CLEC’s. Cable modems have impacted the sale of DSL. Broadband companies are placing new networks everywhere. We need to be talking to the technicians in the cable and broadband environment. Most of them are non union. We need to educate them and get them to organize. We can’t stand by and let the industry standards we have spent years in gaining be eroded. We need to bring the others up to our standards of wages, benefits, and working conditions. We will try to mobilize around this going forward.
The Web Site (www.cwalocal7804.org) We have made some additions to our web site. The member’s only area will be working by early May. This will be a password protected site containing useful information for our union member. There is a code word in this newsletter, you will need to call the union office @572-7804 (Monday through Friday 8:30 to 12:30) and give Pam, the office secretary your name. She will ask you for the code word, if you give her the correct one she will tell you your username and password. Also, we have installed a new e-mail system. If you choose to receive news on bargaining or other important issues, e-mails will be broadcast to all at the same time. You have the option to remove your name at any time you like. I think this will be a very useful tool if you, the members choose to participate. I encourage all of you to do that.
I have inserted a member database seniority list in this edition. This is a general purpose mailing for your interest only for some of the curious out there. Additionally, I am posting by job title what we have in the Qwest bargaining unit as of last month.
The April interest rate in the Qwest pension plan was 4.89%. They are updated each month on the CWA District 7 web site, which is linked from our web site.
The Annual Summer Picnic. Sunday August 17th, Tacoma Sportsman Club, put this on your calendar. We will be sending another notice as the time approaches.
Other coming events. Workers Memorial Day May 28th. CWA 65th National Convention, Chicago, August 25, 26. District 7 Leadership School, University of Iowa, Iowa City week of September 14th. Please contact me if your have questions, or catch me at the Trafton A garage at 8 a.m
Randy Grams, Secretary-Treasurer
The Birth of Labor Day
Pullman, Illinois was a company town, founded in 1880 by George Pullman, president of the railroad sleeping car company. Pullman designed and built the town to stand as a utopian workers' community insulated from the moral (and political) seductions of nearby Chicago.
The town was strictly, almost feudally, organized: row houses for the assembly and craft workers; modest Victorians for the managers; and a luxurious hotel where Pullman himself lived and where visiting customers, suppliers, and salesman would lodge while in town
Its residents all worked for the Pullman company, their paychecks drawn from Pullman bank, and their rent, set by Pullman, deducted automatically from their weekly paychecks. The town, and the company, operated smoothly and successfully for more than a decade.
But in 1893, the Pullman company was caught in the nationwide economic depression. Orders for railroad sleeping cars declined, and George Pullman was forced to lay off hundreds of employees. Those who remained endured wage cuts, even while rents in Pullman remained consistent. Take-home paychecks plummeted.
And so the employees walked out, demanding lower rents and higher pay. The American Railway Union, led by a young Eugene V. Debs, came to the cause of the striking workers, and railroad workers across the nation boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars. Rioting, pillaging, and burning of railroad cars soon ensued; mobs of non-union workers joined in.
The strike instantly became a national issue. President Grover Cleveland, faced with nervous railroad executives and interrupted mail trains, declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike. Violence erupted, and two men were killed when U.S. deputy marshals fired on protesters in Kensington, near Chicago, but the strike was doomed.
On August 3, 1894, the strike was declared over. Debs went to prison, his ARU was disbanded, and Pullman employees henceforth signed a pledge that they would never again unionize. Aside from the already existing American Federation of Labor and the various railroad brotherhoods, industrial workers' unions were effectively stamped out and remained so until the Great Depression.
It was not the last time Debs would find himself behind bars, either. Campaigning from his jail cell, Debs would later win almost a million votes for the Socialist ticket in the 1920 presidential race.
In an attempt to appease the nation's workers, Labor Day is born
The movement for a national Labor Day had been growing for some time. In September 1892, union workers in New York City took an unpaid day off and marched around Union Square in support of the holiday. But now, protests against President Cleveland's harsh methods made the appeasement of the nation's workers a top political priority. In the immediate wake of the strike, legislation was rushed unanimously through both houses of Congress, and the bill arrived on President Cleveland's desk just six days after his troops had broken the Pullman strike. 1894 was an election year. President Cleveland seized the chance at conciliation, and Labor Day was born. He was not reelected.
In 1898, Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, called it "the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed...that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it."
Labor Day:a good-bye to summer
Almost a century since Gompers spoke those words, though, Labor Day is seen as the last long weekend of summer rather than a day for political organizing. In 1995, less than 15 percent of American workers belonged to unions, down from a high in the 1950's of nearly 50 percent, though nearly all have benefited from the victories of the Labor movement.
And everyone who can takes a vacation on the first Monday of September. Friends and families gather, and clog the highways, and the picnic grounds, and their own backyards -- and bid farewell to summer.
New Updates to the Site
There are some new features available on our website located at http://www.cwalocal7804.org. A new password-protected members section provides news updates and a message board. You can request to be added to an email notification list. Also, the site has been redesigned with a clearer layout, new news and safety article archives and news from the main CWA site. Soon to come: searchable news and safety archives.
To access the members section: call the Local with the secret password from this newsletter. You will be given your username and password. Go to http://www.cwalocal7804.org. Click on the “Members Only Area” link (the lock and key). Type in your username and password in the prompt provided.
Ideas for the site? Features you are looking for? Send an email to sitesuggestions@cwalocal7804.org
A Short Labor History Biography
Conboy, Sara Agnes McLaughlin (1870-1928), labor leader.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 3, 1870, Sara McLaughlin went to work in a candy factory at age 11. Over the next several years she worked in a button factory and then in various carpet mills, becoming a skilled weaver. She also married Joseph P. Conboy, who died two years after their marriage. Her success in leading the employees of the Roxbury mill where she worked in a strike for higher wages and union recognition thrust her into a position of prominence in labor circles. She became an organizer for the United Textile Workers of America. She proved a highly effective fund-raiser and lobbyist on behalf of legislation protecting women and children in factories
Conboy was the only woman at a conference on labor called by President Woodrow Wilson in 1918, and in 1920 she was given by her colleagues unique honor of representing the American Federation of Labor at the conference of the British Trades Union Congress in Portsmouth, England.
Known as "Aunt Sara" to thousands of the men and women she worked with and for, Conboy was among the first women to achieve a position of influence in the highest levels of organized labor. She died in Brooklyn, New York, on January 7, 1928.
Copyright © 1999 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc
Good and Welfare:
Anniversaries: MAY: Jim Ensey, 35 years; Bruce Summers, 30 ; Keith McClements, 25; Jay Peers, 20. JUNE: Gary Disch, 30; Randy Grams, 30; Jim Reynolds, 25; Larry Gillen, 25; Eddie Stratton, 25; Leamay Heib, 25; Greg Steckler, 20
Retirees : Robert Popek; James Sholseth; Harry Partl.
President Clay Bowlby shares a laugh and offers well wishes to retiree Bruce Larson upon his retirement after his many years of service to the “phone factory.” Bruce accepted VSPP in September, but was honored and given a check by the Union at April’s meeting