WASHINGTON-The Communications Workers of America said progress is being made unionizing Cingular Wireless L.L.C. ‘s workers in the South, particularly former AT&T Wireless Services Inc. employees.
Larry Cohen, chosen to succeed Morton Bahr as long-time president of CWA at the union’s annual convention in Chicago earlier this week, said Cingular Wireless agreed to honor its workers’ rights to form a union by agreeing and living up to neutrality and card-check recognition provisions.
CWA said it has won representation of more than 2,100 new wireless members at Cingular Wireless during the past two months, primarily in Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma, with several hundred in New York and New England.
CWA said some 22,000 Cingular Wireless workers, or nearly all of those eligible to be represented by CWA, have joined the union. Another 20,000 employees work at Cingular locations previously operated by AT&T Wireless, before the latter was acquired by Cingular last year, and those workers now have the opportunity to become union members.
In contrast to Cingular, according to CWA, AT&T Wireless had been strongly anti-union and systematically intimidated workers who tried to organize.
“The results are absolute proof that workers want a union voice and will choose union representation when the fear imposed by management is removed from the workplace,” Cohen said.
However, outside of Cingular, CWA has not made significant inroads organizing workers in the $100 billion mobile-phone industry.
