|
New York City
- CWA and IBEW Slam
Comcast Board Member
In
Rockefeller Center on May 19, an inflatable rat wearing a Comcast sign
was in place in the heart of New York City. While tourists took turns
photographing themselves with the rat, IBEW, CWA and AFL-CIO members
leafleted passers-by and the hotel ballroom where a member of the
Comcast board of directors presided over a society dinner.
“We had some
very energetic IBEW and CWA members who were able to get leaflets in
people’s seats in the ballroom,” said Terese Bouey, assistant organizing
director at the AFL-CIO.
The public
campaign against the cable giant has expanded to members of its board of
directors, whom the unions are painting as hypocritical. One such board
member, Judith Rodin, also serves as president of Rockefeller
Foundation, an organization that supports strategies to improve wages,
employment and economic opportunities for the working poor.
In a letter
to the Rockefeller Foundation’s trustees, New York City Central Labor
Council President Brian McLaughlin, who is a member of IBEW Local 3,
applauded those efforts, adding that the labor movement’s gains for
workers have contributed to those goals. “In the age of globalization
and ever-higher concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few, labor
unions are often the last and most effective anti-poverty program that
workers have,” McLaughlin’s letter said. “Attempts to
violate workers’ rights to form unions and to frustrate the collective
bargaining process are akin to denying workers the material means to a
life of dignity and respect.”
McLaughlin
urged the foundation’s trustees to convince Dr. Rodin to settle the
contracts in Pennsylvania and Illinois.
Get More Information about IBEW
Union Representation... (Online Form)
|
