Who is CWA?

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) is the largest Telecommunications and professional employees Union in the world. CWA represents nearly 750,000 employees, 95,000 of whom are at Verizon - including Directory Sales employees for all of New England and part of New Jersey. In addition to the telecommunications industries, CWA members also work in the newspaper, television, electronic, health care, airline, and high tech industries. CWA is a democratic organization where decisions for each company are made by a majority of the employees at the workplace. The basic idea of a union is that by joining together with fellow employees to form a union, we have a greater ability to improve conditions at the worksite. In other words, "in unity there is strength".

We the employees, are the union! We elect our representatives to the negotiating committee; we prepare the list of proposals for our contract; We elect and serve as officers and stewards, and; We ultimately decide whether to ratify a contract or not. It is an entirely democratic process.

The "union" remember, is made up of us, the employees. We can only guarantee ourselves one thing If all the employees in your location stick together, along with the support of the tens of thousands of CWA members throughout Verizon, we will have the resources, strength and unity we need to win the best contract possible. By using the contracts of other unionized employees, we can certainly learn about the bargaining possibilities, but we will decide how to address our issues in our own way.

Anything related to wages, hours and working conditions are subject to collective bargaining.

Since we have to ratify our agreement before it becomes a legally binding contract, the only way we could lose benefits is if we voted to give them up.

Yes, The law requires the company to bargain "in good faith" with the certified union.

Dues are set at 1.3% of base wages. It is important to note that no one pays dues until we vote to ratify our first contract and there are not retroactive dues nor any initiation fee.