Communications Workers of America

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) is America's largest communications and media union. The CWA represents employees in telecommunications, broadcasting, cable TV, journalism, publishing, electronics, and general manufacturing. It also represents employees in airline customer service, public safety, government service, health care, and education.

The CWA is headquartered in Washington, D.C. It is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, the Canadian Labour Congress, Communications Workers Union and the Society of Telecom Executives in the United Kingdom, and the worldwide Union Network International.

As of 2005, the CWA represents more than 700,000 men and women in both private and public sectors who are party to 2,000 collective bargaining agreements on wages, benefits, working conditions, and employment security provisions for its members. Among the major employers of CWA members are AT&T, GTE, the Regional Bell telephone companies, Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs, General Electric, NBC and ABC television networks, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, US Airways, the University of California System, and the state of New Jersey.

Attempts in the early 1900s to unionize the communications industry by groups such as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Women's Trade Union League were largely unsuccessful because of the monopolistic powers of the Bell Telephone Company and the nature of the industry, for example, geographically dispersed and transitory workers, and changing technology, that is, the introduction of dial telephones. The ability to unionize grew stronger with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (commonly known as the Wagner Act) signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935. The Wagner Act had three provisions: It prohibited the employer from engaging in certain activities that were defined as unfair labor practices; it protected union and collective activity, protected workers who took part in grievances, on-the-job protests, picketing, and strikes; and it established an agency, the National Labor Relations Board, to enforce the provisions.

The CWA arose from the collapse of The National Federation of Telephone Workers (NFTW). This loosely federated group benefited from stagnant wages and deteriorating working conditions during World War II, which stimulated telephone worker solidarity and union amalgamation, and held a successful strike in 1946, which led to the first national agreement with AT&T. The NFTW could not repeat its success in subsequent years and disbanded. In 1948, the CWA was born. Throughout its history, the CWA has focused on unionizing workers in the telecommunications industry, fighting for wage increases, comparable pay and benefits, fair working hours, and the right to strike. In the 1980s, the CWA began to expand beyond telecommunications. It created a Public Employees Department, which successfully organized 34,000 New Jersey state workers. It merged with or absorbed other unions, including the International Typographical Workers Union, the National Association of Broadcast Employees, and the Newspaper Guild.

At the turn of the 21st century, the CWA enters a critical period. Union membership, particularly in the [Page 369]private sector, has declined in recent decades. Since 1970, the percentage of the U.S. workforce that is organized has dropped from 30% to 12%. The decline in membership comes at a time when managements argue for lower wages and benefits and eliminate job security in the name of efficiency and flexibility and there are threats to jobs from deregulation and global competition. The current issues that the CWA is concerned about include the health risks of working with lasers, for example, in fiber-optic communications systems, telecommunications reform, and consolidation of media ownership.

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