CWA Will Fight for Jobs, Health Care in 2004 SBC Bargaining

CWA’s SBC bargaining council met Dec. 2-3 in Palm Springs, Calif., to plan for 2004 negotiations, including specific goals on maintaining job security and our comprehensive health care coverage, protecting retiree health care benefits and funding and improving pensions for both active and retired members.

This will be a CWA union-wide effort, with solidarity actions and a coordinated campaign to show SBC that we are united and determined to win a fair agreement. SBC has already told us that it wants to cut health care costs – shorthand for cost shifting. SBC locals – and all of CWA – will be a part of the fight that protects our quality health care and helps us win the contract we deserve.

Local union officers take up SBC bargaining issues.

Contracts covering nearly 102,000 SBC workers in four districts expire in early April. Bargaining is expected to get underway in mid-February. The units are SBC Midwest (formerly Ameritech), District 4; SBC Southwest (formerly Southwestern Bell), District 6; SBC West (formerly Pacific Bell), District 9; and SBC East (formerly Southern New England Telephone), District 1.

Employment security means access to the jobs of the future, and SBC has bundled local service with long distance, Cingular wireless and DSL. In the near future, it will add satellite television from its partner, Echostar. SBC locals pledged to fight for access to all of this work in this round of negotiations. Other critical job security issues will be:

* End subcontracting of our work and the substitution of temporary for permanent employment.

* Eliminate the movement of our work to management.

* Access to new jobs as they are created.

* And improved voluntary transfer rights to work in all aspects of telecommunications.

Benefit improvements should include:

* Removing Medicare Part B reimbursement caps for retirees and spouses, both present and future.

* Increasing union oversight and authority over our health care plans.

* Increasing pensions and ensuring the value of the lump sum pension choice.

CWA President Morton Bahr, Executive Vice President Larry Cohen, Vice Presidents Jeff Rechenbach, District 4; Andy Milburn, District 6; and Tony Bixler, District 9, attended the session. Representing District 1 was Chris Shelton, assistant to Vice President Larry Mancino.
 

Bahr said this round of bargaining “is about creating union jobs for the future” and stressed that “bringing back work into the company for our members must be our highest priority.” Cohen echoed that goal stressing that “our members are determined to do the jobs of the future regardless of how the technology changes or how SBC structures the work.”
 

Other key bargaining goals include:

* on mandatory overtime, marketing quotas and harsh adherence policies.
 

* Increasing pensions and ensuring the value of the lump sum Pension Choice