Well as most of you have probably already heard, the new contract has been voted down by the CWA membership. While no specific numbers have been released regarding the vote district wide, it seems that most locals voted no overall. Here in my neck of the woods CWA 7777 the vote was something like 58% against 42% for. Actually fairly significant when you consider most contracts are ratified in the 80 for 20 against range.
So where does this leave us and Qwest? Seems like no man’s land. I don’t know if the union had a plan for this, it doesn’t sound like it as nobody I’ve talked to knows anything about anything. Will it mean a strike? Will CWA members be willing to strike Qwest with a still significant portion of the membership voting for the contract. This is why you strike when the contract is up, when you have a strike vote approval of 95%+ backing up your leaders. Do a strike on Qwest now, and it will be difficult to truly be united.
Really what it speaks to in my mind is what a poor contract the negotiating committee came back to the membership with. What exactly were are these people thinking when they brought this back to the membership. Huge increases in health care premiums are not acceptable, especially when Verizon settles a week before us with a contract that preserved fully paid health benefits. Those disappeared 3 years ago here at Qwest with “enrollment fees.”
Didn’t the negotiating committee think we would stand together. They bought Qwest’s cry wolf call again, and wimped out right before the DNC, the point in time we had the most power right before the 2008 conventions.
So what are your thoughts? Should we go back to the table and tweak this deal, or should it be ripped apart and started again from square one? All I know is that Qwest got over on CWA this time, not the members but the leadership. They were able to save face before both national conventions, and now have the union split between the members and the so-called “leadership” of CWA.
