The House of Representatives has renewed its decades-old attack on the 40-hour workweek. Once again, some members of Congress are pushing so-called “comp time” legislation that would allow employers to stop giving workers any extra pay for overtime work.

H.R. 1406, the so-called “Working Families Flexibility Act” would take away “Overtime Pay” and replace it with “Comp Time”. This bill is not about providing employees with greater flexibility, but rather about providing employers with greater flexibility to not pay overtime!

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) established the 40-hour workweek to allow employees to spend more time away from work and encourage employers to hire more staff when workloads increase. The “Working Families Flexibility Act” however would encourage employers to demand longer hours because it would allow employers to receive the benefits of overtime work at no additional cost. Employers could pay workers nothing at all for overtime when the work is performed, and schedule “compensatory time” only at their convenience. Under H.R. 1406, mandatory overtime would become cheaper for employers and result in more unpredictable work schedules and higher day care costs for workers.

Send a letter to your congressperson today (click here).

Local 1101 members turned out in big numbers again to garner Community Board 1’s support in the fight to keep the workers at 140 West St. 250 CWA members packed the auditorium at Murry Bergtraum High School in anticipation of the Board’s vote on a resolution urging Verizon to keep its workforce at 140 West Street.

Julie Menin, former President of Community Board 1 and currently a candidate for Manhattan Borough President spoke in favor of the resolution. She said that when she was on the Board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Verizon got hundreds of millions of dollars after 9/11, it was specifically to keep jobs downtown. 1101 Vice President Al Russo also spoke in favor of the resolution, emphasizing why the Community Board and elected officials support is so critical.

The Community Board passed the following resolution unanimously.
WHEREAS:
Several hundred members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) attended the Community Board 1 (CB1) monthly meeting on March 27, 2013 to oppose a plan by Verizon to move 1,100 workers and CWA members out of the Verizon building (“The Building”) at 140 West Street and transfer them to a location in Brooklyn; and
WHEREAS:
Several owners of small businesses located in the vicinity of the Building spoke at the CB1 meeting on March 27, 2013 and over two hundred people signed petitions to express concern about the potential net loss of many hundreds of workers on their businesses, many of which are already precarious due to other challenges such as the effect of the recent Superstorm Sandy and the major construction projects underway nearby; now
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT:
CB1 urges Verizon and all local businesses to not significantly reduce the number of workers in their Lower Manhattan buildings at a time when the local economy remains fragile due to the post-9/11 recovery still underway and the effect of the recent storm; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT:
While CB1 takes no position on labor management issues between CWA and Verizon, CB1 urges local elected officials to work with Verizon and the CWA towards a solution that would not involve a significant reduction of the number of workers at 140 West Street and to do the same with any other business contemplating a comparable reduction in the number of employees at a building in Lower Manhattan.

Source: Local1101.org

Following are the steps to file a medical claim through Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield for out of network health care services:

1. Go to this site and DO NOT log in: http://www.anthem.com/verizon/

2. On the right/top is a menu – click on CLAIM FORM (link below).
http://www.anthem.com/member/noapplication/f1/s0/t0/pw_b135776.pdf

3. Print & save the form to your computer for future use.

4. If you have multiple doctors, it’s best to use one form for each doctor.  You can put up  to three appointments for the same doctor on each claim form.

5. Make a copy of your provider’s bill (you will attach a copy to claim form you mail).

ALL CLAIMS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY THE PROVIDER’S BILL

Service provider’s bill MUST include the following information:

• Name, address, phone for provider, lab or hospital
• Name of patient
• Service provided
• Date of Service
• Amount charged for each service
• Diagnosis code
• Procedure code
• Tax ID #

6.  Claim Form Sections:

1. Patient information
2. Subscriber member Information (name & info on Medical card)
3. Where services were rendered (office, outpatient, lab etc.)
4. If claim is related to an accident, workers comp. etc.
5. Date of Service, Diagnosis Code, Procedure Code, Doctors Tax ID number, amount of bill.
6. At bottom of claim form, sign your name, print your name and date.
7. FOR YOUR FILES:  Make a COPY of the signed claim form and attach the provider’s ORIGINAL bill.  Keep record of date of mailing.
8. MAIL TO ANTHEM BC/BS:  Make a copy of the PROVIDER’S BILL, staple to your COMPLETED & SIGNED CLAIM FORM and mail to:

Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield
P.O. BOX 105187
Atlanta, GA  30348-5187

Contact numbers and links here: Medical, Dental,Vision, Health

If you have any tips to share please send them to webmaster@cwa1101.net and they will be posted.

Today is Tax Day, and while working families gathered around the country to highlight growing wealth inequality and to call for a fair tax system, the AFL-CIO launched its annual Paywatch site today, showing that the gap between the wealthiest Americans and working people remains high.

Locally, CEO annual pay averages $5.6 million in Maryland (while worker pay averages $45,880), $4.6 million in Virginia ($45,464 for workers) and $5.9 million in DC ($68,581 for workers)… click here for full story.

Also see the story below:

A Tax System Stacked Against the 99 Percent

By Joseph E. Stiglitz, NY Times
April 14, 2013

LEONA HELMSLEY, the hotel chain executive who was convicted of federal tax evasion in 1989, was notorious for, among other things, reportedly having said that “only the little people pay taxes.”

As a statement of principle, the quotation may well have earned Mrs. Helmsley, who died in 2007, the title Queen of Mean. But as a prediction about the fairness of American tax policy, Mrs. Helmsley’s remark might actually have been prescient.

Today, the deadline for filing individual income-tax returns, is a day when Americans would do well to pause and reflect on our tax system and the society it creates. No one enjoys paying taxes, and yet all but the extreme libertarians agree, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, that taxes are the price we pay for civilized society. But in recent decades, the burden for paying that price has been distributed in increasingly unfair ways.

About 6 in 10 of us believe that the tax system is unfair — and they’re right: put simply, the very rich don’t pay their fair share. The richest 400 individual taxpayers, with an average income of more than $200 million, pay less than 20 percent of their income in taxes — far lower than mere millionaires, who pay about 25 percent of their income in taxes, and about the same as those earning a mere $200,000 to $500,000. And in 2009, 116 of the top 400 earners — almost a third — paid less than 15 percent of their income in taxes.

Read the full story here.

Both Democrats and Republicans agree that our immigration system is broken and needs reform. Our immigration laws allow unscrupulous employers and recruitment agencies to exploit workers who lack legal status. That hurts all workers.

On Wednesday, April 10th, tens of thousands of union members, immigrants, supporters, faith leaders and community advocates will be sending that message to our lawmakers. Starting at 3 p.m., the Rally for Citizenship will be held on the West Lawn of the Capitol Building.

We will educate, march, rally, pray and knock on the doors of Congress until commonsense immigration reform that includes a realistic path to citizenship gets to President Barack Obama’s desk for signature.

For too long, our communities have suffered under a defective and outdated immigration system that depresses wages for all workers, makes political scapegoats out of immigrants and tears families apart. Once undocumented workers are covered under labor laws, together we can build a united movement of working people to raise the living standards and fight those who want to drive wages down for all working people in America.

CWA joins our partners CCC, CASA de Maryland, SEIU, CARECEN, NEA, UAW and many others in supporting this event.

Register at www.citizenship-now.org/register-fo-a10/.

And to learn more about the labor movement’s new proposal for a W-Visa, check out this fact sheet.