CLEARLAKE — A couple dozen demonstrators representing the Communications Workers of America (CWA) gathered at the intersection of Old Highway 53 and Olympic Drive in Clearlake Thursday to protest the outsourcing of American jobs. Union members have been conducting similar demonstrations throughout the state and Nevada in effort to bring attention to not only the outsourcing of jobs, but what also the inflated salaries of communications industry executives and possible cuts to employee healthcare, retirement benefits and pensions.
AT&T workers, totaling roughly 18,000 in California and Nevada are currently bargaining for a new contract. The workers” collective bargaining agreement, which expired on April 7, has been extended as negotiations continue. Verizon workers, a union member said, have been working without a contract for more than a year.
CWA union members voted to authorize a strike if fair contracts can not be reached. According to CWA, more than 93.5 percent of the voting AT&T members in the combined units of four districts approved the strike authorization.
“So far, the public has been pretty dead-on in supporting us,” Shawn Heape, union steward Local 9400, said. “We understand the economy is bad. We just want decent wages and healthcare.”
Heape is among 20 Lake County residents who work locally for AT&T. He said he is facing the possibility of unaffordable health coverage. “For someone like me, I”d have to pay something like $1,300 a month,” he said.
According to CWA, AT&T made $31 billion in profits throughout the past two years. In 2010, AT&T allegedly paid its top five executives a total of $65.7 million. Heape said while inflated salaries and bonuses are exhausting revenues, the American economy suffers with the outsourcing of union jobs to non-union workers in foreign countries. According to CWA, Verizon has made tens of billions of dollars in profit and with its top executives walking away with $283 million in salary and bonuses throughout the past four years. “But when it comes to the 45,000 workers who have made their success possible, Verizon cries broke,” the CWA states. “Verizon has sent thousands of American jobs overseas and wants to outsource even more, gut pensions, charge current and retired employees thousands of dollars more for health benefits, even cut disability benefits for workers injured while doing their jobs.”
Heape said a strike is possible as union members continue to stand up against corporate greed and fight for the fair employment of the nation”s middle-class.
