IBEW Tries Mass. Organizing Of Comcast Workers

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6544084.html

Electrical Union Rallies, Sets Up Web Site Targeting Largest Cable Operator
By Linda Haugsted -- Multichannel News, 3/23/2008 5:22:00 AM

Comcast is in the crosshairs of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which has vowed to demonstrate nationwide at Comcast facilities in an effort to organize the company’s employees.

Members of Local 2222 in Massachusetts passed out literature at work sites around Boston last week to convince workers to consider union representation. The union has also set up a Web site specifically for the cable company’s workers at comcastworkersunited.com.

There, workers are greeted with a video by the union’s international president Ed Hill, who notes that over the last few years, there has been a boom in telecommunications businesses and Comcast has become the largest cable company in the country.

Hill also says that last year, Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts earned $27.8 million in compensation, in part, because of the “protection and security” of an employment contract. Hill said workers should have the option of the same protection.

The unionization drive comes at a time when union membership growth is generally stagnant, according to a January report by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unions represent approximately 12% of the nation’s workforce, a level that has held steady since at least 2006, according to the agency.

Frank Snyder, an organizer for the AFL-CIO who was designated by the IBEW to speak on its organizing effort, said Comcast is the fourth-largest U.S. telecommunications company. “It didn’t become that without talented workers,” he said.

FULL story at link.

The greedy bastards who back Bush and the GOP have been driving the bus straight into the ditch, and now some of the people riding have woken up with empty pockets and an ever growing pit in the stomach ....

Those at work whom I talk to (and I know are right wing-ish) are a little sheepish regarding economic issues .... They agree that wage increases are necessary, but they still kinda flinch when I mention unionization .... But they are flinching less of late ....