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IBEW Mounts Push For
Satellite TV Installers

June 1, 2006

It started with a call from a satellite television installer in Tampa, sick and tired of unfair treatment and egregious paycheck deductions.  Then the IBEW received a call from Georgia.  The stories, which snowballed in a few short weeks from across the country, are remarkably alike. 

Workers report widespread violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and other wage and hour violations, including no overtime pay and capricious and selective enforcement of company rules.  Workers for Mastec, an installer of DirecTV satellite dishes, are forced to buy their own parts and essentially rent the company-owned vehicles.  And now that the IBEW has moved in to help workers gain collective bargaining rights, the long list of nasty treatment has added surveillance, illegal firings and lying to workers about the consequences of choosing union representation. 

“They have been so badly abused, it seems to be common throughout the company,” said Special Assistant to the IBEW International President Buddy Satterfield.  “If there is any place that needs a union, this is the place.”    

Organizing efforts are under way in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia.  The total number of satellite television installers is unknown, but it’s at least 1,000 and possibly as high as 1,500. 

The first election is scheduled in Tampa for June 14, for a unit of 120 workers who were the first to call the IBEW.  The highly motivated workers signed authorization cards immediately and turned them over to organizers.  When management called the police on organizers meeting with workers, they moved their staging area a few blocks up the road and 40 trucks followed.  “This group came together and decided they were going to do this,” said organizer Carmella Cruse.  “They were united in their desire to form a union.”

After Tampa, organizers anticipate moving on to Miami – where the company has gone so far as to fire union supporters and search the cell phone records of others – and Fort Myers.  Elsewhere things are moving quickly. 

Workers across the country report massive efforts by the company to undermine the organizing activity.  In captive audience meetings, management has threatened that organizing would force DirecTV to drop Mastec’s installation contract, a direct violation of the National Labor Relations Act.  Unfair labor practice charges have been filed in Tampa and Fort Myers for those reasons. 

Despite the pressure, workers in Dallas are embracing the organizing effort. “It’s overwhelming at this point,” said Seventh District International Representative Ralph Merriweather.