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Thank you, brothers and sisters of the two of the most important branches of the Brotherhood. Its good to see all of you here under one roof for this plenary session. There is a growing interrelationship among the industries that you represent so it makes sense that we are here together at the start before you spilt off into your separate workshops.

I dont follow sports as much as I used to. I do know that our members in Canada and the U.S. and focused on the hockey playoffs or the basketball playoffs or the baseball season. But the rest of the worlds eye are on Japan and Korea where the soccer World Cup is taking place the most popular and most watched sporting event in the world. Teams from 32 nations, including the USA are vying for the big prize.

I mention this because if you want to watch a game live, youve got to be up very early. The first matches of the day come on as early as 2:30 a.m. local time. But the fact that satellites are beaming the games across the globe and millions more will be following on the Internet is yet another reminder as if we needed one -- about the importance of telecommunications and the power of television in our world today.

If I could sum up the watchword for this meeting in one word, it would be "innovation." You folks know a thing or two about innovation. You work with some very advanced technology. You understand that standing still is, in reality, moving backward in a world of constant and rapid change. Only through continuing innovation can we hope to survive and grow in this climate.

Change brings peaks and valleys, and right now the telecommunications industry is in a valley. Technology has actually caused a decline in value of many products and services. Prices wars have crippled the long distance carriers. The so-called benefits of the deregulation era have yet to materialize for companies, workers and, to some extent, consumers. It was just a few years ago we were looking at high employment levels and bright, high-tech futures for many of our members and potential members. Now, layoffs, called "surpluses," are everywhere in the industry. Yet, who is to say that next year or two years from now, companies wont be begging for skilled people once again?

Workers in the broadcasting industry have also been affected by change. How many of you can say that the industry looks anything like it did when you first started? Technology has streamlined the work at many stations, and the economics of the entire industry is vastly different. Despite the massive amounts of money being tossed around in the corporate suites, workers are being squeezed on the front lines.

In the past, we may have taken the view that tough times mean we go into our bunkers and keep our heads down until things get better. If we tried doing that today, we might as well just stay buried because we would be dead.

Todays telecommunications and broadcasting industries call for a different approach one that is more aggressive, more innovative, more willing to take risks. When the status quo doesnt suit us, we cant afford to wait for the cycle to shift we need to challenge the way things are and change them to our liking.

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to say that I am talking to an audience where many have taken that message to heart. Im looking at room with many organizers in it many people who are taking the fight to the companies rather than let employers dictate the rules of engagement.

I applaud the tremendous work done by our bargaining teams at AT&T and for several of our Verizon locals representing workers at the old GTE footprint. At both companies, you negotiated strong agreements that give our members a much-needed dose of security and stability in this turbulent industry. These contracts are proof once again, as if we needed it, that collective bargaining remains the very core of our mission and the reason we stand together as working people to improve our lives.

The other task at the core of our mission is to give more workers the opportunity to bargain collectively over their wage sand working conditions in other words, organizing. In January of this year, we held an organizing conference in Washington, D.C. Many of you here were in attendance. In two days of frank and open discussions, we faced the facts about the modern telecommunications industry. The core telephone business -- regional and long distance -- is important and not going away anytime soon. But it is not the source of growth these days. It is now only part of the multi-faceted telecommunications industry of the 21^st century. The explosive growth of cell phones and other wireless devices and the continuing expansion of broadband are vital parts of the industry and offer the best opportunities for expansion. As we said at the conference, if we are not part of that growth, we will be condemning ourselves to being bit players in telecommunications, abandoning more than a century of IBEW involvement. I pledged then that I would put the resources of the International to work in organizing workers in all facets of the telecommunications industry. But I also said that these resources must be matched by a local union and rank and file commitment to go after unorganized units.

Now, I would love to stand here and say that we have thousands of new members in our ranks because of that, but that would not quite be accurate. Instant gratification only happens in the movies. In real life it takes hard work and persistence and patience before the rewards can be gained, especially in organizing.

But what I find most satisfying is to see the level of effort that I see out there from coast to coast across the continent and beyond. There is energy. There is commitment. There is a determination to make the IBEW a more powerful voice in the telecommunications and broadcasting industries. We are not there yet. We have not accomplished what we want. But we are much closer to our goal today than we were just a few months ago.

Later in the conference you will hear a detailed report on organizing campaigns in telecommunications. Let me just say that I couldnt be more pleased and encouraged to see the explosion of activity in New England and the greater Chicago area. I am happy to see reports of strong campaigns in Baltimore, in Florida, Montana, Iowa, and Hawaii. From call centers, relay operators, technicians, wireless and broadband, we are going after the work and the workers.

And were doing all this in less than ideal circumstances. The neutrality agreements we have negotiated are useful in some places, but are gone in others. We are organizing broadband in the face of tremendous opposition from employers born of a longstanding anti-union hatred that had its origins in TCI and other cable companies. But were not making excuses and waiting around for conditions to get better. Were fighting.

This is only the beginning. We are not going to win every fight far from it. We will have a tough time maintaining our energy as campaigns drag on with the inevitable setbacks and delays. But none of this will ultimately matter if we have the will to succeed. None of this will make a difference in the long run if we continue to show the same will, the same desire and the same courage that we have shown as a Brotherhood in recent months.

And we are still only scratching the surface. There are hundreds more organizing targets out there, some within the jurisdiction of locals that have yet to be heard from. We will be distributing a list of targets at this meeting, and we expect a strong effort to win over as many of them as humanly possible.

Let me turn to broadcasting. Here too the core mission of bargaining and organizing are the paramount concerns. And here too, innovation will be the key to our future.

Like so many other industries, broadcasting has undergone tremendous and rapid changes. Power in the industry is increasingly concentrated in a few hands, with even the networks now pawns up for grabs by the media moguls. So too, local stations are controlled by ever larger ownership groups. We are up against some very powerful figures.

That is all the more reason why we need new approaches to traditional issues. Last year, we convened a group of business managers from broadcasting locals to talk about key issues facing our members and discuss a strategy for the future. Out of that has grown the theme for the broadcasting part of this conference. We need to put everything on the table and share our collective experience and knowledge to chart a course for our future.

High on our list of priorities is bargaining strategy. The strike is a weapon that can be used only in certain circumstances in broadcasting as in every other industry. But that doesnt mean that we are without power, nor does it mean that creative approaches to bargaining and member mobilization cant offset the might of the employer during negotiations. We need an open and frank discussion of what aggressive bargaining tactics have worked for some of our broadcast locals and which ones can be used by others to strengthen our hand in the industry. This conference is the place for that discussion to happen.

The same is true of organizing. We meet employer resistance in broadcasting that is the same as it is everywhere these days. But we cant let that deter us. In recent years, we have seen the growth of two new networks on broadcast television and hundreds of cable stations. There has always been a large per diem work force in broadcasting, and it is growing every year. We need to find new ways to extend the benefits of union representation to these workers. We are also seeing traditional lines of work blurred between the technical and newsroom operations at stations. The writers, producers and on-air talent represent yet another population that needs representation, and I see no reason why the IBEW shouldnt take them into our ranks.

The point is that if we as union leaders are still approaching the broadcasting industry and your issue as a local union leader in the same fashion that we did ten years ago, we are way behind the times. If we dont recognize that the worker of today more independent, more educated and has different priorities than yesterdays work force, then we will not be able to develop a coherent or relevant message to those workers. If we continue to have a narrow focus of our goals and our mission as a union in broadcasting, then our days in the industry will be numbered.

Our days are not numbered not in broadcasting, not in telecommunications. I for one am very upbeat about our future in these industries. I see our presence in both as essential to our goals as a union. If we claim to be the union of the 21^st century on the cutting edge of technology, then we must build upon our membership base in telecommunications and broadcasting. Not shrink, not stand still, but grow. The founders of the IBEW did not wait until conditions were ideal. They knew in their gut that conditions for union growth and organizing are never ideal. But they pushed on, and so must we.

The time is ripe for growth. As I look out over this room, I see men and women who have the vision and dedication to make it happen. I can assure you that I and the International officers and staff will work with any and every local that has the heart and the determination to grow. We will work together, and we will succeed together. Count on it.

Before closing, I want to note that last twisted steel beam of the World Trade Center was removed from Ground Zero in New York City last week, marking the end of a long and emotional clean-up after September 11. Four of our 20 members who died that day were from Local 1212 in New York City. Two of them were working at the Twin Towers that day for local TV station and two from CBS. The other 16 were from Local 3, a local whose broad jurisdiction includes some cable and telecom workers. As we watched the end of the clean-up and, hopefully the beginning of the rebuilding, we cannot forget those who died while in the simple but noble act of doing their jobs. We continue to honor the memory of our fallen brothers and we will never forget them.

And we will also never back away from the challenge of carrying the IBEW forward and upward through all obstacles. We all of us together will settle for nothing less.

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