Communications Workers T-shirts Too Much for AT&T; Hundreds Suspended in Connecticut (photo)

I posted about this in LBN last week.

http://labornotes.org/node/2416

— Mischa Gaus

When AT&T demanded Communications Workers (CWA) members in Connecticut take off T-shirts announcing they were the company’s “prisoners,” they took a day’s suspension rather than back down.
About 200 members were suspended Tuesday.

“Nobody took them off. It was a mass exodus, a single-file line walking out of the room,” said Dan Coffin, a Local 1298 business agent. “The bosses just sat there with a deer-in-the-headlights look.”


About 200 CWA members took a day’s suspension Tuesday rather than back down when AT&T demanded they remove T-shirts announcing they were the company’s “prisoners.” The union is fighting deep concessions in bargaining with AT&T, which made $12.9 billion last year. Photo: CWA Local 1298.


After seven months of hard bargaining—in which the company has proposed to triple the amount workers pay for health care—AT&T workers in the Northeast are still without a contract. Since their fellow CWA members at AT&T in the Midwest and West Coast settled with the company in recent weeks, they’ve been taking a more confrontational stance. Members crashed a company-sponsored showcase at the Pilot Pen tennis tournament in late August, and the local has dispatched a plane around Connecticut with a banner denouncing the company’s greed.

The T-shirts, which fewer numbers have worn previously with far fewer suspensions, are printed with technicians’ identity codes on the front—and “prisoner of AT$T” on the back, a jab at an employer that booked a $12.9 billion profit last year.

“It’s sad they leave customers out of service over a shirt,” said Howie Coling, a Local 1298 business technician.

Some managers threatened workers with a week’s suspension. Bosses, on the hunt for any reason to fire union members who make waves, termed their refusal insubordination. Bob Cullen, a Local 1298 vice president, said sympathetic managers have warned the union the company is looking to use discipline to fire 10 to 20 percent of workers by year’s end.

FULL story at link.

women in this union.

I posted a story yesterday (Sunday) about the CWA in Massachusetts and Ted Kennedy. There are more women than men in that photo.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=367x22793

told me to take off my shirt, I'd get an attorney.

Is the company losing money? Then let's talk concessions.

Otherwise, you have a right to keep your present compensation.