The rise of the telecommunications workers union in America

TWA

We tend to think of labor unions as a thing of the past. Not, of course, that workers no longer need protection. But since the beginning of the first Reagan administration, we have become used to workers' rights being chipped - and sometimes hacked - away by the powerful interests of capital. (The same powerful interests, of course, that unions were designed to fight against). The overall percentage of workers who belong to unions has been falling for generations, in part because of Reagan-era legal decisions that lessened the power of unions and in part because of globalization and a shift away (in the United States and in othe First World countries) from the heavy-industrial jobs that have tended to be the most heavily unionized, as Boeri (2001) notes.

But even as heavy industry is losing jobs and unions are losing those same workers, in other parts of the economy unions are gaining new members and new strengths. The Telecommunications Workers of America, the focus of this paper, is one of these relatively new unions that helps its members to meet the challenges of a workplace in which jobs leak daily overseas (encouraged by the process of globalization) and in which the same high-tech tools that allow workers to do their jobs are often used to spy on them.

The same demands that were once made of employers by steel workers are now made by telecommunications workers: Decent pay, safe working conditions, basic respect, non-discriminatory policies. The fact that unions are springing up in new fields is an indicator that workers continue to need the protections offered by organization.

History of the Union

The history of the Telecommunications Worker of America cannot be told apart from the history of labor unions as a whole. Unions began springing up in Britain, Europe and the United States during the 19th century as organizations of the workers in different trades or different workplaces. In each case, workers came together to use the power of collective action and collective bargaining to negotiate improvements in a number of working conditions - including pay but also safety, benefits, and status.

The history of unions in the United States is actually a fairly sporadic one, as Smith and Molloy (2003) note, with different unions in different fields rising and falling in strength until they have reached the current lows now being seen. The trajectory of union membership and union political power (the two are certainly related, although not in a simple one-to-one way) has not been one-way, with first a quick rise and then a precipitous fall of membership. Even now, as suggested above, as the future of organized labor looks grim in many parts of the United States, it is being strengthened by unions that are taking hold within service, light industrial and professional ranks - all arenas of society that had traditionally been more resistant to (and even hostile to) union organization.

The Communications Workers of America, as a union, has a history typical of other labor unions in the United States in that it has absorbed a number of other unions along the way: The current union is in fact very much an amalgam of previous unions. While it was not until 1947 that "a truly national union, the Communications Workers of America came into being," the roots of the union lie in the first decades of the 20th century with the beginnings of the establishment of the modern communications infrastructure.

Unionization of the telephone industry during the first three decades of this century was confined to a few scattered pockets of organized workers. The first union to attempt to organize telephone workers -- the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) achieved limited success during these years. These early organizing efforts did not include women who worked in the telephone industry. It was not until 1912 that the IBEW accepted telephone operators -- generally women -- as members. In 1919, IBEW's telephone department claimed 200 telephone locals with 20,000 members (http://www.cwa-union.org/about/history.asp).

The first decades of unionization in this field were troubled: The industry was nationalized during World War I and so unions were illegal until 1923; in the years after that AT&T (which held an almost perfect monopoly in the growing field of telecommunications, in no small part because of federal government decisions that favored the company) pushed its workers into company-affiliated associations that had few of the advantages for workers of true unions. The communications workers made no-strike pledges during World War II, and so it was not until the years right after World War II that the shape of the modern union began to emerge.

Membership and Structure

Headquartered in Washington DC (with a number of regional offices across the country), CWA represents close to three-quarters of a million workers in both the public and private spheres and is the nation's largest communications and media union.

These workers - many of whom are in high-tech information technology fields - work in a number of different industries and professions, including "telecommunications, broadcasting, cable TV, journalism, publishing, electronics and general manufacturing... airline customer service, government service, health care, education and other fields" (http://www.cwa-union.org/about/profile_history.asp).

Members belong to about 1200 locals in the United States (including Puerto Rico) and Canada and have entered into over 2000 collective bargaining agreements, a number of which include progressive benefits such as education programs and child and family care provisions. CWA workers are employed by AT&T, GTE, the baby Bells, Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs, General Electric, NBC, ABC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, U.S. Airways and the University of California system.

The union's structure is summarized in the below chart:

CWA Organizational Structure (1938-Present)

National Assembly

Convention

Executive Board

Affiliated Organizations

39 Divisions

Eleven Districts*

Eight Districts

Chartered Locals

When CWA changed to a two-level structure, eleven Districts were created (9 geographic Districts and Western Electric Sales and Western Electric Installations). In 1953, Districts 10 and 11 were dissolved. Consolidation was completed in 1986 when Districts 5 and 8 were dissolved. http://www.cwa-union.org/about/history.asp

Effect on Non-Union Companies

While a number of communications workers are unionized, many are not, with the result that the effect of the union on non-unionized workers is attenuated. Riccucci argue that unions such as the TWA have generally improved working conditions (including salary but more obviously in other arenas) of non-union members. The presence of a strong union in a field overall has beneficial effects both for the union and for other workers. Because union workers are forced to compete with non-union workers they are challenged to maintain a high level of productivity.

The courts have in recent years limited the power of unions to run "closed shops" and the TWA abides by these rulings. However, they do actively attempt to bring other workers into the union by holding informational pickets in various sites, including other companies and at technical conventions.

I've spent a lot of time recruiting and sometimes, I have to admit, it can be pretty discouraging because you get a lot of, "Why do I need a union?" And, you know, you're tempted to say to them, "You idiot, everyone needs a union."

But yelling at people is not how you get them on your side. You get them on your side by showing them how a union helps them with everything from job security to childcare.

A understand that people have the right to join a union or not. And I understand that for a lot of people their image of a union is Teamsters bashing people over the head. And I understand that maybe a lot of people want to end up in management themselves and so their loyalties are already with the management and not with the other workers.

But I also know - from my own experience - that my life is better as a union member than it was without the union. I'm not paid to go around and recruit and say the union is a good thing. I'm doing this because I believe that it is the truth. And I think that when I talk to people that they can hear that in my voice.

Elections and Collective Bargaining

The TWA elects officers in much the way that other unions do. The top officers are all elected to three-year terms:

The President, Executive Vice President and Secretary-Treasurer of the Union shall be elected separately by secret ballot of the delegates to the Convention following nominations made from the floor of the Convention. Beginning with the election of 1996 the term of office shall be three years or until their successors have been duly elected and qualified, except for the term of office of an Executive Vice President added by the Convention during a non-election year, such term of office shall expire at the same time as the terms of office of the other officers. For the 1992 Convention the Officers' term shall be extended for one year to the regular elections held at the 1996 Convention (http://ns1.cwa-union.org/cgi-bin/om_isapi.dll?clientID=733090&infobase=constit.nfo&softpage=Browse_Frame_Pg42).

The locals also hold elections that are governed both by the union's laws and those of the United States and Canada:

Locals shall adopt Bylaws or Rules to govern the nomination and election of officers, members of a governing body, delegates and alternate delegates; the appointment, selection or election of stewards and committee members; and the filling of vacancies. Locals shall select an election committee which shall conduct all elections and referenda in accordance with the Constitution, Local Bylaws or Rules, and Federal or Provincial Law. All questions concerning the conduct and challenge of elections shall be determined by the election committee subject to the right of appeal to the governing body and membership of the Local. The election committee shall tally the ballots in all elections and notify the membership of its tentative certification of the results. Absent a challenge to the election, the tentative certification shall become final ten days thereafter.

The union member interviewed for this project said that one of TWA's strengths is the fact that locals (along with individual members) have more say in the setting union-wide policy than in the case with many other large unions.

Of course, every union has reasons for doing things the way that it does, and I'm not sitting here trying to criticize the way that other unions run their organizations. But for myself - and speaking as someone who has been involved with the union at both the national and the union level - I am glad that each one of the locals has an important amount of say.

I think that there would be no way that we could be such a strong union if we didn't have such a relatively non-hierarchical approach to the process because there are so many different kinds of workers in the TWA. If we had some sort of central committee trying to represent the needs of all the different locals without really including them - it would be a disaster. Or maybe not a disaster, but a very weak union compared to what it is today.

Collective Bargaining and Negotiations

One of the primary functions of the TWA is to negotiate contracts for its members - just as one of the most important tasks for the members is carefully to consider and to ratify (or decline) those contracts, as described below:

Any contract entered into through collective bargaining, or otherwise dealing with wages, hours, terms of employment or other conditions of employment shall be subject to ratification by secret ballot of the members affected if the delegates to an International Convention representing such members, or representatives at a Bargaining Council meeting, or the members themselves determine ratification to be desirable. Procedures for ratification shall be established by each Bargaining Council, or by the Executive Board for those contracts for which a Bargaining Council has not been established (http://ns1.cwa-union.org/cgi-bin/om_isapi.dll?clientID=733090&infobase=constit.nfo&softpage=Browse_Frame_Pg42).

The shop steward interviewed stressed the fact that while "people think that unions are really just about negotiations and strikes when we don't get what we want" they are in fact more fundamentally about "everyday working conditions." union - it is really about solidarity. It doesn't mean going in and breaking heads. It means that they're always someone there to hold your hand, to guard your back - to laugh and cry with you.