We lost the Employee Free Choice Act and the Repeal of the Reverse Morris Trust in the last congressional session. By losing those acts we also lost our opportunities to increase Union membership and to stop a sale of telecom plant.
The filibuster rule must be changed and The Senate can do so through a majority vote on its first day of new legislative session. With the filibuster rule changed, we will have a far better chance of winning the bills we need.
Our Successes
CWA played a major role in passing historic health care reform. Of foremost concern to our members, we fought back efforts to tax health care benefits. We advanced the argument that it hardly makes sense to tax health care benefits to pay for health care – and we won. CWA was proud to have been part of the Health Care for America Now coalition, an unprecedented collaboration that included more than 1,000 groups.
As the current Congress wrapped up its work, we successfully defended funding for the F136 Joint Strike Fighter Alternative Engine Program. We cautioned Senators that votes taken on this issue will be counted as part of CWA’s legislative scorecard. The fight is by no means over – we will have to remain vigilant when the 112th Congress convenes.
General Electric/Rolls Royce, which is developing the alternative engine, employs thousands of CWA members. Eliminating the program could force these highly skilled workers into unemployment in the midst of the continuing economic crisis. The engine is built by about 2,500 members of IUE-CWA, members of Local 81201 in Lynn, Mass.
CWA helped persuade President Obama to make two key recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. The appointment of Craig Becker and Mark Pearce to the NLRB means that the board is now once again fully functional and able to resolve disputes between workers and their employers.
“Pearce and Becker are both highly qualified, well respected labor lawyers,” said CWA President Larry Cohen. “There is no reason that their nominations should not go forward, except for the obstructionist tactics of the Chamber of Commerce and their Senate allies.”
The National Mediation Board passed a new rule that allows workers to organize when a majority of those casting ballots vote to do so. The previous rule – tilted heavily in employers’ favor – required a majority of all workers to vote for representation. Under the new rule, only a majority of those actually casting ballots need vote for representation.
The rule will help workers in the airline and railway industries. Already, we’ve seen how the rule allowed for customer service agents at Piedmont Airlines to join CWA and many other customer service agents in the airline industry are preparing to join CWA through these democratic election procedures.
Toward the end of the year, the Federal Communications Commission proposed new rules to ensure an open Internet and to encourage development of broadband networks. CWA hailed the initiative, proposed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, and said it will provide incentives for investment, economic development and the creation of quality jobs and sustainable communities.
CWA’s “Speed Matters” campaign, a 2010 priority, is aimed at encouraging broadband buildout and making the U.S. competitive with other developed nations when it comes to Internet speed.
CWA was a member of Americans for Financial Security, which proved to be the go-to coalition when it came to passing the American Financial Stability Act of 2010, which now protects our our pocketbooks, our homes, our neighborhoods – and, most importantly to CWA members, our pensions.
Finally, in one of its last actions before leaving town, Congress passed the 9/11 Responders Bill. This measure provides first responders with five years of health care coverage and gives them fresh access to a compensation fund for people who became ill because of exposure to harmful inhalants at ground zero.
Our Disappointments
One of our top priorities for 2010 – the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act – died in the U.S. Senate in December, despite having secured 55 votes for passage.
It was yet another sign of the need for comprehensive rules reform in the Senate. And it was a sign of Republican hypocrisy: even Republican cosponsors of the measure failed to allow it to be brought to the floor for a chance of debate and a yes-or-no vote.
“We lost a huge opportunity in the U.S. Senate to extend bargaining rights to our public sector members,” Cohen said. “Currently it’s up to each state whether there’s an opportunity for bargaining for public sector workers or not. And more than half the states in our country don’t even provide an opportunity for bargaining for those who work in the public sector.
The measure would have expressly forbidden public safety officers from striking. But it would have allowed police officers, firefighters and others to form and join a union and engage in collective bargaining.
Another top priority that failed to move was the Employee Free Choice Act. Free Choice had strong support in the House and Senate but, once again, could not muster the 60 votes necessary under the Senate’s obsolete and antiquated rules.
Still pending when Congress adjourned for the year was the nomination of William J. Boarman to be the 26th Public Printer of the United States. Boarman is vice president of CWA, and president of our Printing, Publishing & Media Workers Sector.
The Public Printer serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Government Printing Office (GPO), the agency charged with keeping the American people informed about the work of the federal government. GPO is one of the world’s largest printing plants and digital factories and is one of the biggest print buyers in the world.
Also dying in the 111th Congress was an effort to close the Reverse Morris Trust tax loophole (RMT). RMT is a Wall Street scheme most recently utilized by Verizon in sales to Fair Point and Frontier, that allows big businesses to avoid paying taxes on the sale of company assets. These company assets are usually more unprofitable ventures that are dumped on to smaller and struggling companies which are loaded up with debt from this transaction. In turn those companies find themselves having to slash employee costs through layoffs or drastic wage and benefit cuts.
CWA argued that the RMT loophole is bad for workers as well as consumers and even constitutes a threat to public safety and the ability of first responders to respond to emergencies. We also reminded Congress that many tax loopholes created by and for Wall Street are not beneficial to employees, communities or consumers.
Another measure that failed to see the light of day in the 111th Congress was the DISCLOSE Act, drafted in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United vs. FEC decision, handed down in January. DISCLOSE would have resulted in a number of election reforms, including better transparency and reporting requirements and restrictions on the ability of corporations and CEOs to, in effect, purchase the outcome of elections.
Other measures that died, in part because of the U.S. Senate’s 60-vote super majority requirement:
- The DREAM Act, which would have offered a pathway for citizenship for children of illegal immigrants who came here through no fault of their own and have attended college or served in the armed forces.
- A bill to provide a one-time, cost-of-living payment of $250 for Social Security recipients whose COLA will not go up next year, but whose basic costs will.