Rhode Island Fiber Solutions Center Builds IBEW and Verizon

September 19, 2006

Linking ground-breaking bargaining and political lobbying, Cranston, R.I., IBEW Local 2323 has teamed up with Verizon to develop one of five U.S. centers to support its emerging cable products market. Since last February, the Providence center has hired 100 new IBEW members and provided transfer opportunities to 65 current members to fill two new highly-paid technical positions. Verizon anticipates hiring an additional 200 employees over the next year and one-half.

"Copper dial tone jobs are dying on the vine," says Craig Duffy, Local 2323 organizer. "With the new center, IBEW members will have opportunities to migrate to where the jobs are." The IBEW-Verizon agreement provides for the company to match each new hire with the posting of an internal bid for current members of Verizon Systems Council T-6, covering New England. Already, some IBEW members from New York and former CWA members have been hired at the center, after the requirements covering T-6 members were satisfied.

Local 2323 Business Manager William McGowan led efforts to convince Verizon to invest in the center, lobbying for state tax credits to help finance work force training. International Representative Robert Corraro, Second District organizing coordinator, says, "McGowan's reputation for fairness and hard work with Verizon and his membership were critical to Verizon's decision to locate the center in Rhode Island."

Workers filling the new IBEW positions--fiber network technician and fiber customer support analyst-- will test and activate new internet/cable installations and help customers who are having trouble.

The R.I. center is one of several IBEW-represented facilities. Fiber support operations in California, Texas, Virginia and New York are organized by CWA.

IBEW Local 2323 has already demonstrated the benefits of unionism to new members who have had no experience with organized labor, or held negative impressions. IBEW has negotiated pay increases for most of the first wave of workers hired and arbitration is planned on other issues.

While the bargaining relationship between IBEW and Verizon is complex, says Duffy, Verizon needs the union's political clout in New England to increase its cable presence which depends upon securing local franchises.

While looking ahead, Local 2323 is waging an aggressive organizing campaign covering dial-tone workers at Cox Communications in Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Labor climate spurs Verizon growth

Union makes bid for Cox technicians

A Cox Communications official says the company's employees are not interested in unionizing.

01:00 AM EST on Saturday, March 11, 2006

BY TIMOTHY C. BARMANN
Journal Staff Writer

The union that represents telephone workers at Verizon Communications has begun a drive to unionize technicians at Verizon's chief competitor in Rhode Island, Cox Communications.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 2323, has distributed union authorization cards to about 150 Cox workers in Connecticut, and plans to mail them to about 900 workers in Rhode Island beginning Monday, according to William McGowan, business manager of the local.

"We've heard from a number of Cox employees in Connecticut and Rhode Island who want to be represented by the union," McGowan said.

But Cox said that's not what the company is hearing from its employees.

"Thus far, our employees continue to tell us they don't want or need a union to speak on their behalf," said John Wolfe, vice president of government and public affairs for Cox. "We think that's because we work hard to create a pro-employee environment."

The organizing drive is taking place at a time when union membership in the United States is at a 23-year low. Membership peaked in 1983, when 20.1 percent of wage and salaried workers Belonged to a union, compared with 12.5 percent last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The telecommunications industry remains one of the most unionized. But even there, unions have had a difficult time maintaining membership levels. About 56 percent of telecommunications workers were unionized in 1983, compared with 24 percent in 2001, according to a 2003 academic paper by Harry Katz and Rosemary Batt of Cornell University, and Jeffrey Keefe of Rutgers University.

Last year, 22.6 percent of telecom workers were represented by unions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The decline is closely tied with the dramatic changes in the industry since the breakup of AT&T in 1983, according to the authors. Those include mergers and job cuts by the Baby Bells, the birth of new competitors such as wireless phone companies, and the expansion into telephone and Internet services by cable companies. Most of the new jobs created by this expansion have been nonunion.

Cox's Wolfe said that the union has been trying to organize the company's workers to bolster its own membership levels.

"Obviously, they need to continue to find new members, new sources of revenues," he said. "They consider our employees a potential target."

But Local 2323's McGowan said it was the Cox workers who sought out the union.

There is an "overall level of discontent," McGowan said, about increases in employee health-care benefit costs, disparate wages compared with Verizon workers, and a lack of job protection and seniority rights.

McGowan said that previous efforts to unionize Cox workers were mounted by IBEW Local 99, an electrical contractors' union. Local 2323, which represents about 1,000 telephone workers at Verizon, is a better fit for Cox employees, McGowan said.

"It seems to be resonating with the employees of Cox that our members do the same type of work they're doing."

The union has held rallies at Cox locations, including one on Thursday at a facility in Manchester, Conn. The local plans to bolster its organizing efforts in Rhode Island over the next couple of weeks, McGowan said.

Local 2323 has also posted a Web site, gotunion.org, which offers a comparison of wages and benefits offered by Cox and Verizon. According to the chart, a technician with five years' experience is paid $17.40 an hour by Cox, and $31.18 per hour by Verizon.

Asked if Cox pays less than Verizon, Wolfe said he didn't know. "I don't know if you can do an apples-to-apples comparison." He said that wage information was not the type of information the company would release publicly.

Wolfe also questioned the union's motives in trying to organize Cox, given that the union represents workers from a company that competes with several of Cox's services.

(Verizon recently applied for permission to offer cable television service in Rhode Island, while Cox has been offering telephone service for several years.)

"Clearly, the IBEW has said they support Verizon's efforts to compete with us," he said. "We don't believe they necessarily have the best interest of Cox or its employees at heart. They've aligned pretty tightly with our largest single competitor."

Wolfe said that internal surveys of employees suggest they are happy. The most recent survey, taken about 18 months ago, found that about 90 percent of employees "would recommend Cox as a great place to work to their family and friends," Wolfe said.

Even so, Cox has mobilized to oppose this most recent organizing drive, holding meetings with employees and giving them fliers and company memos that question the union's motives, and whether union representation would really be in the employees' best interest.

For example, one flier that the union said was distributed by Cox suggested the union wasn't providing employees with all the facts.

Wolfe said the company is encouraging employees "to approach this with an open mind."

Regarding the union's claim of providing job security, he said that Cox has been growing and hiring employees, unlike most traditional telephone companies.

"This company has no history whatsoever of layoffs or work-force reductions," he said.

If the union is able to collect signatures from at least 30 percent of the workers, it can ask federal labor regulators to hold an election to determine whether employees want to be represented by Local 2323. The union would be authorized to represent workers and to negotiate a contract if more than 50 percent of the votes cast are in favor of unionization.

tbarmann@projo.com / (401) 277-7369