Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Unions Look to the Wireless Sector

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 16:02:07 -0400

Unions Look to the Wireless Sector

Verizon Wireless recently reached an agreement on union contracts for 51 of its
workers. As the wireline business declines and the wireless business grows, unions
must look to organize largely non-union wireless and high-tech companies in order
to secure their futures.
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Labor's Wireless Call-Waiting
Sat Sep 6,12:30 AM ET

By Yuki Noguchi, Washington Post Staff Writer

Union devotee Ernestyne Matthews has toiled as a technician for Verizon
Communications Inc. for 30 years, making sure the fiber-optic cables and other
wires running into and out of the phone company's network hubs are in working
order.
She has noted that more calls move wirelessly, instead of through the underground
lines that made up the guts of
the telecommunications business for a century. So now she and colleagues in her
Washington office want to act before their union jobs are supplanted by nonunion
ones at Verizon Wireless (news - web sites).

"What we want is to be able to get into Verizon Wireless and get jobs, because in
five to 10 years, there will be no land lines," said Matthews, who wants the
wireless unit to open its doors to the union. "I have a lot of years to work, and
I would like to find something that will give me promotion potential. This is the
future of the business. I can see where it's going."

That kind of thinking helps explain why Verizon and its unions struggled for more
than a month after the old labor contract expired to reach a new five-year accord.
Only 51 out of the 40,000 people working for Verizon's wireless unit are members
of a union, but disputes over their benefits and work rules are what held up a
settlement on a much larger contract covering 78,000 union workers in the rest of
the company. When agreement on the wireless contract finally was reached on
Tuesday, negotiators took only two days to wrap up the larger deal.

The future of labor unions such as the two representing Verizon workers -- the
Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers -- rests on their success at organizing cellular phone companies and other
high-tech workplaces.

Verizon Wireless officials say they don't discourage workers from joining a union.
Nevertheless, what is true at Verizon is largely true across all high-technology
businesses: The union foothold, never firm, remains shaky. And as Verizon's
traditional business erodes at a rate of 2 million to 3 million lines a year lost
to competitors, unions and the workers they represent fear that they will lose
ground, too.

The issues at Verizon "were at the heart of what unions are about, and that is
organizing," said Harley Shaiken, a professor of labor issues at the University of
California at Berkeley. "For the union, simply getting a good contract in the
existing unionized sector left that to be undermined as growth takes place in the
wireless industries."

Of the six major wireless phone companies, only Cingular Wireless, the nation's
second-largest wireless carrier, is unionized, with roughly half its 35,000
workforce organized. Most of the Silicon Valley and telecommunications companies
that boomed in the 1990s are not unionized. And among the cable companies -- the
main rivals of Verizon and other local telephone companies in selling potentially
lucrative high-speed Internet service -- less than 5 percent of both Comcast
Corp.'s 55,000-person workforce and 5.5 percent of Adelphia Communications Corp.'s
14,000 workers are members of a union.
It's typical for wireless and high-tech spinoffs to break with their unionized
pasts.

"The new companies start up as separate subsidiaries, and it takes some time for
[unions] to organize," said Susan Kalla, an analyst with Friedman, Billings,
Ramsey & Co. And Wall Street offers no incentive for businesses to unionize.

"Wall Street doesn't want to see Verizon Wireless unionized [because] unions are
inefficient and hamper a company's ability to downsize in a difficult period,"
said Patrick Comack, an analyst with investment firm Guzman & Co.

But unions plan to redouble efforts to drum up support for organizing the rest of
Verizon Wireless. Despite the small scope of union representation at Verizon
Wireless, it was critically important to the unions that they win key provisions
at Verizon Wireless -- 3 percent annual wage increases, $1,000 annual cash
bonuses, and a stipulation requiring the company to lay off by taking seniority
into account -- because appealing contracts are the unions' best organizing tool.

Union pressure to make a good deal for the wireless workers apparently held up
agreement on the larger contract at Verizon Communications, said Peter J. Hurtgen,
director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, who oversaw contract
negotiations. "It's important for the unions, of course, because that's a lot of
the future development in communications -- wireless, broadband and Internet
[services]," Hurtgen said.

Now, only 8.5 percent of the overall, private, non-agricultural workforce is
unionized, and as fewer industries organize, companies fight harder to keep unions
out so as not to be at a competitive disadvantage with their nonunion rivals, he
said. "You have the employer fighting unionization voraciously."

He said that unionizing high-tech workers "is a tall order, because the generation
of employees in those industries don't view unions the same way" as their
predecessors, Hurtgen said. "They think about mobility more, they think about
getting ahead on their own," not collectively through bargaining.

Indeed, unions are targeting a new kind of technical worker -- one who is paid
more and has a white-collar job. While blue-collar installation and cable repair
jobs make up well over half of Verizon Communications' unionized workforce, the
vast majority of Verizon Wireless workers have desk or retail sales jobs.

That includes Teresa Susi, a customer service representative at Verizon Wireless.
She said she makes a good salary, and gets yearly and performance bonuses, a
retirement plan and other benefits without a union.

"I believe we don't need a union for the things we already get," said Susi, who
has worked in the wireless company's Wallingford, Conn., office for four years.
Hundreds of wireless workers like Susi have said they make plenty of money, and
it's been hard to sell some of them on the idea of organizing, conceded one union
negotiator involved in recent bargaining with Verizon. That is why the union
fought hard for a contract that included a layoff clause that would appeal to
those people, he said.

Some workers, however, say the company is fighting the unions' efforts. "We can't
talk about a union on the job; anyone who mentions a union will be fired," said
one New Jersey-based Verizon Wireless salesman, who was questioned by managers
several weeks ago after a group of colleagues met outside of work to discuss
whether to support the union.

The salesman didn't support the union until recently when the company cut his
salary and sliced his commissions in half, while raising his sales quotas to
near-unreachable levels -- threatening to fire him if they aren't met for three
months in a row, he said.
"The most critical thing [in the talks] is the ideological battle" to unionize
wireless, CWA President Morton Bahr said in an interview last week. "Verizon
Wireless, with the obvious concurrence of the parent company, is fighting against
the union."
Verizon Wireless spokesman Jim Gerace denied that the company has an anti-union
policy, and disputed the unions' allegation that it threatens employees who
attempt to meet with organizers. The unions have a card-check agreement that
permits them to organize wireless workers, but employees are simply not interested
in joining , he said.

"I think the best barometer is the lack of interest that the union has been able
to generate to join the union," Gerace said. "In the wireless industry, given its
fast growth and given the competitive aspects, we are concerned that a union or a
third-party representative limits our flexibility to run the business."

But Verizon Communications technician Dewayne Coleman disagrees. He believes
unions protect jobs like his, and wants both the old and the new businesses to
enjoy the same benefits. "It's a brotherhood. They're our brothers," Coleman said.
"Besides, you never know where your career path will take you. This could be our
fight one day."

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