A Special Membership Meeting has been requested and a General Membership Meeting will be held.
When: Tuesday, June 14th at 5:30 PM
Where: New York Sheraton Hotel, 7th Avenue and 52nd Street.
The agenda will include a report on mobilization and bargaining at Verizon and Liberty Health Care.
A large turnout is expected and identification will be checked at the door. Please bring your CWA membership card or your employee ID or photo ID.
We look forward to seeing you at the meeting.
Chief Steward Billy Cordova, pictured third from the left
Billy Cordova is a Chief Steward in Southern Manhattan. Earlier this year, Billy sent out an email looking for support on a project very close to his heart, “The Foundation’s annual Walk for Epilepsy”. Please read the emails below, including the one stating the great results of his labor. Billy is at it again, this time for a fund raiser for Diabetes. Read the email and please join in to support the cause!
1st email:
To My Family, Friends, Co-workers, Email buds, Union Brothers & Sisters…
I wanted to let you know that on Sunday, March 27, I will be in Washington, D.C. for the Epilepsy Foundation’s annual National Walk for Epilepsy. As many of you are aware, my oldest daughter, Dania, has Epilepsy.
This past year has had its ups and downs. Dania was doing well in the beginning of 2010. She had begun receiving a new medication and was finally improving. But as usually happens with many epileptics, the new meds eventually ceased providing her with optimum results and she began to regress by having ‘auras’, which are an uneasy sense (sometimes physical), that something is about to happen. At a minimum, these auras produce extreme fear. But more often, they lead to a full physical seizure.
As you can imagine, this has been an emotional year for Dania and our family. From medication adjustments, to discussions about another brain surgery. Fortunately, the surgery discussion was tabled, at least for now. On the flip side, this has also been another year of Dania demonstrating her bravery. Given her challenges, Dania once again has proven her tenacity and strength to overcome. She has just completed her graduate studies and earned her Masters’ Degree in Urban Management and Policy. You can imagine how proud we are of her. Now, she is looking for a full time job! We are hoping this will be a turning point for her.
Epilepsy is often a lifelong illness and, while we don’t know what the future will bring, we do know that the Epilepsy Foundation has provided support, education and, more importantly hope to epileptics and their families stricken with its debilitating effects.
My family is participating in the annual Epilepsy walk and we are asking for your support. Our goal is to surpass the amount we collected last year, $7100. We know we can do it with your generosity.
Thanks in advance for your support. I’ll e-mail you about my progress!
Sincerely,
Bill Cordova
2nd email:
The Cordova Crusaders are humbled by the support we received from our dear friends, family and co-workers. With your help we were able to surpass our fundraising goals ($7000.00 we collected close to $7500.00) and assist the Epilepsy Foundation in their quest towards advancing research and developing new medications. Thank you for your generosity, good wishes and, especially for your prayers for Dania. Dania has added an attachment that includes a few pictures and some words of appreciation.
With love and gratitude,
Bill
P.S. Dania has been stable for 3 months. Please keep her in your prayers.
Letter from Dania:
To All of Our Supporters:
I want to thank all of you for your generous support this year helping the Cordova Crusaders to achieve and far surpass our original goal for the 2011 Walk for Epilepsy. This year, thanks to your support, we raised over $7,000!!!!
My family and I are extremely grateful and are already looking forward to next year’s walk. This year we were joined by family and friends and we hope we can get others to join our team in the future!!
It is through support like yours that epilepsy will continue to receive the attention and awareness to bring us closer to a cure!!
Thank you!
Dania
Billy is at it again!
3rd email:
Dear Union Brothers, Sisters, Friends and Family:
On Sunday June 5, 2011, I will be riding in the annual ‘Tour de Cure’ Bike Ride which is a fund raiser for Diabetes. I am looking for riders to join my team, click the link — Team Cordova. If you want to join me or if you know someone who does please let me know.
In past years I ran in memory of my Dad who suffered with the diabetes for many years. This year I am still riding in memory of my dad, but I’m also riding for friends and family who I’ve learn in this past year also have diabetes. I’m riding for Juliette Hogarty, Ryan Keys, Richie Drummond, Freddy Alvarado, and Christina Boas. I’m also riding for friends, family and co-workers who have suffered from diabetes silently.
With your support, there’s hope! Diabetes can take an enormous emotional and physical toll on people with diabetes and their families. My dad lost both his legs to this crippling illness which was devastating to all of us. You can help us stop diabetes by joining my ‘Team Cordova‘ and raising funds to help the American Diabetes Association provide community-base education programs, protect the rights of people with diabetes and fund critical research for a cure.
Chief Steward Billy Cordova with his daughters Dania and Larissa and his wife Ada.
Please contact me for more information or visit our Team Web page using the link below. Thank you in advance for any help and support you can provide.
Link to web page Team Cordova
Together we can stop diabetes. One mile at a time.
Sincerely,
Bill Cordova
917-597-0600
bill.cordova@ymail.com
Washington, D.C. — The merger of AT&T and T-Mobile will create as many as 96,000 new, quality jobs, accelerate broadband build out, and improve wireless communications and innovation, the Communications Workers of America said today in a filing submitted to the Federal Communications Commission.
On Quality Jobs
A new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the merger will create about 12,000 quality jobs per billion dollars invested in a wireless network. This means that the additional $8 billion in capital expenditures that AT&T has committed to invest in wireless broadband buildout will create up to 96,000 jobs. These jobs include work in building the network, manufacture of equipment and other jobs directly related to the wireless buildout. In addition, there will be thousands more jobs created through expansion of broadband-enabled services and energy savings. Read the EPI report at www.epi.org.
On Broadband Buildout
High speed Internet is essential to economic competitiveness, job creation, and quality of life. But these benefits remain beyond the grasp of tens of millions of Americans without an accelerated buildout of true high speed broadband.
As a result of the merger, AT&T promises to deploy next-generation wireless service to more than 97 percent of the country. AT&T’s commitment of an additional $8 billion investment for buildout over seven years, plus the compatibility of the combined AT&T and T-Mobile spectrum and wireless assets, means that 55 million more people will have access to 4G LTE service than prior to the transaction.
For residents of rural areas, whose futures in large part depend on the creation of sustainable communities connected to the rest of the world by broadband, this is a life changing development.
On Improving Wireless Communications and Ensuring Competition
How regulators define the wireless market is critical, and a new study by economist and Duke University professor Leslie Marx stresses that consumers make their purchase decisions based on their local markets. Many of these markets have five or more wireless competitors. And depending on how regulators classify some competitors, for example Clearwire, the number of competitors will likely increase.
A stand-alone T-Mobile is not an option for the future. Deutsche Telekom announced that it was seeking to sell T-Mobile USA, and in testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights, T-Mobile’s U.S. chief executive officer Phillip Humm made clear that DT “is not in a position to finance the necessary large scale investments for T-Mobile to remain competitive.”
Without a 4G network, this is no future for T-Mobile, its customers or its employees. Because AT&T has the financial resources to develop T-Mobile’s assets and because AT&T and T-Mobile utilize compatible technologies, AT&T can offer T-Mobile customers the latest in technology and innovation. The U.S. wireless market is highly competitive today. This will not go away after an AT&T/T-Mobile merger.
Overall, this merger, with regulatory oversight, will be a positive development for high speed broadband buildout, quality jobs, innovation and consumer benefits and in maintaining competition.
Memorial Day is more than a three-day weekend to celebrate the unofficial start of summer with a BBQ. It’s a day when we remember the service and sacrifice of the men and women who have served in our nation’s military.
Military men and women contribute to Social Security just like other working Americans, from their first paycheck at boot camp, to their last paycheck at the end of their career. As for any other working American who contributes, Social Security needs to be there for veterans and their families.
Veterans and military families gave their all for our country. It is our obligation to fight to ensure that they receive every benefit they deserve. This means reminding Congress that those who serve our nation, should never have to worry about any benefit cuts. After all, Social Security belongs to them – and to all of us.
Social Security- Serving Those Who Serve Our Nation
Our coalition is made up of over 270 national and state organizations representing over 50 million Americans, including the AFL-CIO. We are here to make sure that real people’s voices are heard.
Take Action! Click here and sign the petition
The Republican agenda to kill Medicare, trample workers’ rights and cut millionaires’ taxes at the expense of everyone else took a well-earned beating in upstate New York on Tuesday, as a Democrat comfortably won the special election for a U.S. House seat the GOP has held for generations.
CWA members in Buffalo and surrounding Erie County made phone calls and knocked on doors for winner Kathy Hochul, helping voters understand what was at stake. Local 1122 President Jim Wagner said that by Tuesday night, “We were feeling pretty confident.”
“Our local, all of CWA in western New York and the rest of the labor community stepped up big time,” Wagner said. “We had volunteers in here many nights working the phone bank, we did a labor walk last Saturday, and last week, on the 50th anniversary of our local, we had President Cohen here firing everyone up about the race and how important it was.”
Speaking to 300 CWA activists in Buffalo at the May 19 celebration, President Larry Cohen and District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton thanked the volunteers, telling them their hard work was already paying off: Polls showed the election closer than anyone had expected early on, and the national media were paying attention.
“The message is clear,” Shelton said. “America’s middle-class voters reject Republican and extremist plans to dismantle the programs and policies that working families and retirees count on. The question for candidates is simple: Whose side are you on?”
The special election was held to replace Republican Rep. Chris Lee, a married congressman who resigned earlier this year in a scandal over his shirtless photo and personal inquiries on an Internet dating site.
Republican Jane Corwin was widely expected to win the seat until she joined other members of her party in embracing a scheme to privatize Medicare. As proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), seniors would get a government voucher and attempt to buy health insurance on the open market, instead of Medicare.
The issue turned politics upside down in what has been one of the country’s most steadfast GOP congressional districts. It has nearly 30,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats, was one of only four New York districts to vote for John McCain in 2008, and one of six that voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. When Lee won his seat in 2010, he received 74 percent of the vote.
But after U.S. House Republicans voted in favor of Ryan’s Medicare-killing budget, polls shifted. In Erie County, one poll showed that Medicare was the single most important issue for 21 percent of voters. Among that group, 80 percent said they were voting for Hochul.
“We had the issues on our side,” Hochul said after her victory. “We can balance the budget the right way and not on the backs of our seniors.”
Tape Transcript, May 26, 2011: Executive Vice President Angel Feliciano;
“We have just received the Arbitrators decision on our Absence Control Plan case. In a split decision the arbitrator ruled that the Company violated the contract when they eliminated a seventh step and when they changed the definition of satisfactory attendance under the contract and UTP.
He however found no violation in the implementation of the rest of the plan. Copies of the decision are being sent to all Chief Stewards”.
Our negotiations with Verizon East will begin in less than 30 days. Are you ready?
This is going to be a tough round. Corporate America in general—and Verizon in particular—are on the offensive.
What will YOU do to fight a good contract? Click here.
Verizon is slashing union jobs, selling off access lines, cutting back its FiOS build, and neglecting the copper plant.
As we lose union jobs, we begin to lose power to protect and improve our standard of living. That’s why our slogan is: It’s All About Good Jobs.
A public forum in Lincoln, Neb., Wednesday, gave local leaders an opportunity to press the Federal Communications Commission to move forward on high-speed broadband.
The forum was part of an FCC workshop on universal service fund reform. The FCC is looking at how to modernize the USF, established by the rewrite of the Telecommunications Act in 1996.
CWA supports reforming the USF to recognize broadband and wireless as the critical telecommunications services of the 21st century, and to revise the program’s outdated goal of ensuring that all Americans had “plain old telephone service.”
CWA Local 7470 President Mike Arnold testified at the forum in favor of changes that would subsidize and support the expansion of high-speed broadband, and called on the FCC to take action now.
Arnold and Local 7470 members work at Windstream Communications, which provides broadband services to about 89 percent of customers. “The remaining 11 percent are in rural areas beyond the reach of current technology, mainly those living just 3 ½ miles outside the local telephone exchange office,” Arnold said.
He stressed that farmers and rural businesses could operate more efficiently with access to high-speed broadband. Further, “Children in rural areas should have the same opportunities that children in urban areas have,” he said. “Doesn’t everyone deserve the same education opportunities?”
More than 500 German workers descended on Deutsche Telekom’s global shareholders’ meeting in Cologne last Thursday to demand that the company respect the right of its American T-Mobile employees to unionize and bargain collectively.
The workers, members of the German telecommunications union ver.di, formed a human chain around the meeting venue and released black balloons in mourning for their U.S. coworkers’ lack of rights.
Union leaders warned Deutsche Telekom that its attitude toward American workers could jeopardize its pending sale of T-Mobile to AT&T. Noting political opposition to the sale, Lothar Schröder said DT needs the continued support of ver.di, CWA and their joint union, TU. Schröder is deputy chairman of the DT supervisory board and a ver.di national executive board member. “But that must ultimately mean an end to the opposition to union activities at T-Mobile USA,” he said.
Inside the May 12 meeting, Kornelia Dubbel pointedly asked Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann, “Will you from this point forward ensure that CWA has access to T-Mobile USA businesses so that they can introduce themselves to the employees?” Dubbel is a member of the T-Mobile supervisory board.
Dubbel suggested that the company consider the fact that T-Mobile workers favor the pending sale because they’d rather work for an employer, AT&T, that respects its workers’ union rights. “The employees and the CWA union both welcome the sale, and they put a great deal of hope in it, in terms of changes to the employees, to union rights, and to labor conditions,” she said. “Do you want to do justice to this and correct your anti-union course?”
CWA President Larry Cohen and many T-Mobile workers on social networking sites thanked the German workers for fighting for them, with the events at the shareholders’ meeting just the latest in ver.di’s show of solidarity.
The day before the meeting, Cohen testified on Capitol Hill in support of the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger. In addition to expanding high-speed Internet access, creating jobs and providing new benefits for consumers, he said the merger would give T-Mobile workers the long-sought opportunity to join a union.
But T-Mobile workers shouldn’t have to wait any longer, said Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation. “T-Mobile employees should not have to wait in hope for over a year for their union rights,” she said of the pending merger. “Deutsche Telekom should do the right thing by its U.S. workforce now.” Philip Jennings, general secretary of UNI Global Union said “responsible employers” don’t behave as Deutsche Telekom has. “We expect better from one of the world’s leading telecom companies with solid industrial relations in its home country,” he said.
Find photos, links to Facebook and Twitter to support T-Mobile workers and much more at the campaign website, www.loweringthebarforus.org