Well the official numbers came out today on how CWA workers felt about the tentative agreement between Qwest and the CWA “leadership.” Apparently 2/3rds of the members said “thanks but no thanks” to huge increases in health care costs and meager raises in an inflationary economy.
Obviously this isn’t rocket science, but CWA leaders don’t seem to understand how much they were played by the Qwest negotiating team. Fortunately CWA district 7 members, while not rocket scientists either, were smart enough to recognize the crap sandwich their so-called “negotiating team” was trying to serve up to the members.
The latest is that union leaders want you to call the local to let them know what your “problem” is with the contract. That way they can have a conference call tonight and figure out what they are going to do about this mess. Ridiculous. How much more out of touch can they be?
No need to call you local union hall and tell them what your “problem” is with the contract. Just tell them to read the piece of paper its written on and think about it for 10 seconds. Givebacks and nothing given back to CWA workers, thats the problem with the contract. Again, its not rocket science.
The CWA negotiating team and union leaders have just been slapped in the face by the members. Time to get back to the table and bargain for us, not for Qwest.
I attended the local meeting last night. We had a good discussion on what our local wanted our president to discuss on the conference call. Health care unchanged, Cost of living increases, QJD.
I believe all the locals need to be far more involved in this discussion. It seems that while we all work for a communication company, we are very poor at our profession. This is an extremely important time in our lives. I cant belive that leadership doesnt understand what the issues are. It would be nice to hear from other locals so that we cant truly be a organized group of workers with one very loud voice. Besides talking with coworkers is there something else we should be doing.
Qwest negotiating team and union leaders will have a tough time.How do you bargain for Value,thats what we need as employees.Maybe it should have started a little sooner. In thirty years i’ve never seen such a let down from both parties. Take care of your retirees. They took care of us. Tech in Salt Lake City.
Does the CWA “Leadership” want 3 reasons from us why we said no?
Why? Are you democratically challenged?
Are you as out of touch as a CEO?
Get back in that room and stop this nonsense.
Finally TRY and bargain something with some real GAINS.
These “every three year gifts” to the company are pathetic.
So, if the bargaining committee was really interested in why we didn’t like the Tenative agreement, why did I only get two responses from the entire bargaining committee? They had asked for input and I e-mailed every single bargaining agent, specific items in the contract, and language that I thought should be removed or added into the contract. I got one snappy, rude one sentence response from the head honcho, and one civil but (your’e crazy if you think you’ll get any of those items) response.
What kind of bargaining team do we have anyway. Are they really THAT out of touch with the union members???
Shari,
I fear we may be in even more trouble. With all of this Wall street stuff crashing down, all Qwest has to do is say they don’t have the money. They will threaten huge layoffs, and the union will have to bow. Our team had a chance to play hardball right before the DNC, but they were either too scared to do so, or didnt want to embarrass the Democrats when they came to town.
I’m proud the members stood up and said “NO” but our leaders played our cards wrong, and now we have nothing in the face of the economy.
My fear is that this is a horrible time to strike. There is no way we will be portrayed in a positive light if we strike tonight. The DOW is down 1200 points in the last two days. I do see the need for a more positive contract. However, we missed the boat when the RNC and DNC were in major Qwest cities and the stock was at $4.00.
This may be a great time to strike. People are sensative to executive excesses and mismanagement. Both are highly prevalent in Qwest management culture. If the CWA was smart they could issue press releases outlining these issues and gain community support.
We are unnecessarily monitored and scrutanized by management on a daily basis. Hi tech/hi cost toys to track and monitor the working class has never turned a profit for this company, yet they insist on treating its employees as their worst enemy. Now, you have for the first time in 40+ years a rejection of a contract.
If you think that it would be difficult for employees to make their case to the public, wait and see how Wall Street reacts to a failed company with a labor dispute. Bankruptcy would be emminant for Qwest.
I agree with Mike that in light of the current economic status of the nation it’s a bad time to strike. I strongly feel the CWA Union has set up Qwest employees and all families associated to fail miserably. And the CWA has been a “pawn” to the Qwest corporate monster.
I do think the Qwest employees have failed to “voice” that the CWA has not acted in good faith, in the best interests and welfare of it’s fellow brothers and sisters that financially support the CWA. There is some serious act of “corruption” in part of the higher levels within the CWA and they should be ashamed they have destroyed the reputation and morale of what the CWA and Union workers have been working so hard to establish the last 35 years.
The CWA failed to unite and stand up to Qwest during the Democratic and Republican conventions. Instead the CWA “higher ups” folded and has been “influenced and rumored to have been paid off” to silence the CWA right before the conventions. Do you realize the CEO of Qwest received a $17 million dollar salary in 8 months of non-productive work…has a private Qwest paid jet plane so his wife and daughter can go shopping…his multi-million dollar home was bought by Qwest and recently sold at a lost of $1.8 million dollars…not to mention his home, vehicles, food, utilities,etc…is all paid for by the hard work of Qwest employees…not to mention his Golden Parachute of 15 million dollars plus once he gets the Qwest stock low enough to sell. I am thinking a lot of Qwest workers jobs could have been saved and families fed it it wasn’t for his outrageous compensation and perks. Corporate Greed + Corrupt CWA Union = LOST JOBS! Voice your opinion!!
Brian J.
Agree with you on what you have said about CWA leaders. It seems that we had a golden opportunity to really get something done this time around with the timing of the DNC. Unfortunately the CWA is of course part of the AFL-CIO, thus is basically an arm of the Democratic Party. With the DNC convention starting days after contract expiration, it seems like the “fix” was in from the start.
This is not meant to be a political blog, but I had to shake my head in disappointment when I received a letter in the mail from the local today. It was a rundown of who they are endorsing in this year’s election. EVERY SINGLE RECOMMENDATION in the Presedential, House, Senate, state house, and state senate races was marked Democrat. Now I fully understand that the Union and the Democrats are tied at the hip, and that the CWA and AFL-CIO donates millions to Democrats, but it is hilarious that they don’t even make an attempt to appear somewhat even handed in their election endorsements.
here we are 12 hours after the “tentative agreement” announced, and the usual propaganda that we are getting a wonderful deal and little or no info about the bill of goods being delivered this time around.
There is no mention of the issues such as STD time off being reduced to 70% pay from full pay. For those of you who don’t know what this means, the next time you’re out sick longer than 5 days, you go into Short Term Benefits.(hospitalization, recoup, etc.) They tried to sneak this into the last proposal along with the other slap in the face… no holiday pay if you’re sick day B-4 or after holiday. C’mon CWA, give us the info directly so we don’t have to guess what’s up…..
As far as the CEO’s pay, that isn’t even the issue. The bastard’s at the top will continue to rape their company’s and care less about who works for them and how long it really takes to do the work they want done to keep this company running. When I called our Local’s hotline to get an update, they advised that we will have paper in hand with the tentative agreement by 10-15-08. CWA must have learned from the last “TA” that waiting for what seemed like weeks to see what they bargained for was not acceptable by the members. This union has lost a lot of it steam over the past years
I am facing dismissal next month for my QJD results. Our supervisor has no field experience. His manager has no field experience, nor does her manager.We are being being managed with a “carrot or the stick”, fear and intimidation style. I’m one of many in my shop voting no for the many reasons discussed here, least of which is the so called pay “increase”. There’s a feeling around here that the upper ranks of the CWA are completely disconnected from what is really going on. Is this what our retirees fought for? Is this what we deserve? Is this what the bargaining committee is saying to us? If I end up losing my job because my QJD is low, is that respect? 11 years down the crapper for a company that doesn’t value what I do for them everyday. I’m 40 years old with bills and a family to support, and I still say the CWA can do better for us. If not, good luck to us all.
So what is new? It is the same old song and dance that we have heard for years. The company says it can’t afford anything and we have to pay for our own healthcare and CWA pats them on the back and says “Awwww, that’s ok. We won’t do anything to hurt you just do what you think you can and we’ll be alright”. I haven’t seen CWA really fight for us since the strike in ’83. After divestiture it was like CWA became a department of the Telephone company. I’ll have 39 years next year and have been thru 2 strikes. Nobody likes to strike, but by gosh sometimes you have to, to protect your interests. This contract is a joke and isn’t worth the paper it is written on. The CWA “bargainers” are so far out in left field they can see the DNC from there. And they are asking us what is wrong with the contract? If it had been me, I would have been too ashamed to put my name on something as rotten and bad for the workers as this piece of…..oh well you know what I mean. It amazes me that Qwest makes billions of dollars off of our work, pays out hundreds of millions in corporate salaries, corporate incentives and money to the shareholders and can’t even show any appreciation to the people who really make it happen. CWA shot us right between the eyes when they didn’t call a strike before the DNC. Now we have NO leverage, NO representation, NO recourse but to say “thank you sir, may I have a little more?”. I am glad I am close to retirement, but then after I retire, I’m still gonna get hosed by the company that I have worked and slaved for. One can only hope and pray that we get bought by a REAL company that will at least make us feel like we are worth something. There is nothing we can do now, but I hope CWA realizes that the way to get our money is not to keep messing around with our contracts and not fighting for the people that pay their salaries.