CWA District 1 Leadership Conference 2022 - VP Dennis Trainor speech

Thank you, Gladys, thank you Reverend Boyer, State Senator Polistina and thank you, Jeanette, for getting us started today

Good morning union family!

Welcome to the 2022 District One Conference. 

It is great to be with all of you here today. It has been 4 long years since we last came together in Atlantic City. So let me say it again: IT IS GREAT TO BE WITH ALL OF YOU HERE TODAY, LIVE AND IN PERSON!!! 

Before I talk a little about the state of the nation and the state of our union, let me start by thanking all of you for everything you do every day.

It takes perseverance to keep going in these most challenging times. Our members kept this country running during the height of the pandemic, our members kept everyone connected, our members cared for those struck down with Covid. We were called “essential” because that’s what the working people of this country are. Essential. I salute you and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

It is the honor and privilege of my life to be your Vice President and to be the leader of this great District. The best District in the best union in the country!!! 

You all know what makes this District so great. It is the great people in this room. First and foremost my Assistant, Gladys Finnigan who I rely on for everything we need in this District.  Gladys takes care of everything and everyone. She knows what our Locals need and what our members need and makes sure everything runs smoothly. She always has a smile on her face and a kind word (well almost always). This conference takes a huge amount of time to prepare and Gladys worked on every detail to make sure that nothing was forgotten and at the same time making sure the DIstrict ran smoothly.  I do not know what I would do without you, Gladys - thank you for everything you do. Please give her a round of applause. 

Also with us today are our five great Area Directors, Billy Gallagher for the New York and New England Verizon locals, Mid-State and Downstate New York, and Pat Telesco for Mobility, and Fran Ehret who took over for Hetty Rosenstein in New Jersey, who retired after 40 years with the union,  and our newest addition, Hae-Lin Choi who took over the political department when Bob Master retired this year, after 36 years with the union. Debbie Hayes, our Area Director for Upstate New York, could not be with us today. Debbie finished up a year of bargaining and has taken a well deserved vacation. Last but not least, I’d like to acknowledge our great District Counsels, Steve Weissman, and Amy Young. I have the best Administrative Staff in CWA- no one works harder for our members than these people. Let’s give it up for them!

Let me please also recognize ALL of the District One staff - Could our staff reps, our organizers, our attorneys, our senior campaign leads, our campaign leads,our Senior Campaign Communication Coordinator please stand up - this is the staff at District One who are out there every day, hearing the grievances, bargaining the contracts, meeting with locals, organizing the unorganized, building our political power—they make this District work, I am so proud of the work that they do for CWA and this District -  from organizing to representation to political action and communications - we have the best here in District One. Let’s thank them for all they do every day - building power for our union so will you please give them a round of applause.

But more than anything, I want to thank all of you here today. You are the lifeblood and backbone of this organization: local officers, board members, business agents, organizers, and mobilizers. You lead, all day every day, all hours of every day. Members trust you, members believe in you, and members know you’ll fight for them tooth and nail. Your leadership and your dedication make this union strong and I thank you for all you do. Please give yourselves a round of applause.

And last but certainly not least, I’d like to thank our retirees. For showing up at the picket lines, the rallies, and protests. Can the retirees here please stand up and be recognized? We will always fight for you - and we appreciate that you still keep fighting with us.

Let’s take a look back at the last couple of years.

Before I get to the state of this union, let me first talk about the state of our nation. 

There are no good words to describe the extreme, unprecedented times we live in. 

Consider everything that has happened since the last District 1 conference in 2018. When we were last here, Donald Trump was president. We were midway through one of the most corrupt, chaotic, anti-worker, dangerous, and destructive presidencies in American history. Trump’s only actual legislative accomplishment in 4 years was a gigantic tax giveaway for big corporations and the wealthiest Americans. His other accomplishment was appointing three anti-worker judges to the Supreme Court, who with a stroke of a pen destroyed public sector union rights with the Janus decision. He gutted the NLRB and the Department of Labor. Trump was a disaster for our union. 

And to top it off, Trump posed the greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War. He refused to accept the results of a free and fair election that he lost by 7 million votes. He tried to prevent officials in Michigan and Arizona and Pennsylvania from counting every single vote. He undermined the American democracy we fought so hard to build for the last 250 years. Remember when we were all prepared to drive to Pennsylvania to protect the results? Never in my life did I expect to have to fight in the streets to protect our democracy against an American President who simply refused to accept a peaceful transition of power.  

And then, when all else had failed, Trump incited an angry mob of insurrectionists to storm our nation’s Capitol. They wrapped themselves in Confederate flags and chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” and threatened to kidnap our elected leaders. 10 Americans died on January 6, 2021, including 5 law enforcement officers. 

Unreal. Simply  Un. real.

And if all that were not enough, we were also facing a deadly worldwide pandemic that has killed more than a million Americans. The economy crashed, millions lost their jobs and lined up at food pantries. The murder of George Floyd led to the biggest protests for racial justice we have seen in a generation and a much overdue reckoning on race. Wars, mass shootings, and historic climate catastrophes like floods, heat waves, and wildfires. 

Never before have we faced so many challenges.

These past 4 years feel like 4 decades, don’t they?

Let us also take a moment to acknowledge the devastating impact of Covid. 6.6 million lives lost across the world. Over 1 million in the U.S. Words cannot describe this tragedy. The unimaginable pain families across this country went through. Many of those, CWA families. Over 120 CWA members have lost their lives to COVID19 - and many more have lost family members. Our hearts go out to all of you.

Tomorrow, we will spend some time honoring our Covid heroes.

We live in frightening political times. No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, we all agree that political violence has no place in this country. 

• Storming the Capitol waving Confederate flags, 
• assaulting and even killing police officers, 
• attacking family members of politicians, 
• deadly fascist marches,
• gunning down worshipers at synagogues and black churches,
• people out for the night at LGBT nightclubs, like this month at Club Q in Colorado, 
• Or shopping at Walmart, like in Chesapeake, Virginia a few days ago 

- this is unacceptable. 

This is un-American. 

And yet more and more Americans across the country are becoming numb to this insanity. Just a few weeks ago a Siena poll found that Americans overwhelmingly believe democracy is under threat but don’t care enough to do something about it. 

But we at CWA have never been afraid of a righteous fight. We will stay vigilant and we will not become numb to attacks on our cherished democracy.

My friends, let me ask you this: 

Are we going to let a fascist mob destroy our democracy? 

Are we going to let them take our freedoms? 

Are we going to accept mob rule? 

That’s right.

We will never normalize this extreme behavior. Never. 

Throughout history, unions have defended democracy and freedom against fascism and dictatorships, often with their bodies in the streets. I was proud to lean on that tradition knowing you all were ready, willing, and able to go into the streets and fight to protect our democracy.  

Are we going to fight like hell to protect our democracy?

Earlier this month the midterm elections showed a victory for democracy and a rejection of right-wing extremists and election deniers. I’m not gonna lie, I was relieved to see that the majority of American people rejected the anti-democratic, right-wing agenda.

By now you have all heard how Democrats exceeded all expectations. We kept control of the Senate and lost the House by the slimmest margin. There was no red wave–just a tiny ripple. That’s a major victory - except for us in New York.

Our work is not done yet! We still have to fight so that Rev Warnock wins the Georgia runoff next week. We did it last time - and we can do it again! Can I get everyone here to commit to signing up for a phone bank on Thursday to help out in Georgia?

CWA is hosting a virtual phone bank on Thursday at 6 PM. You can sign up at the District 1 website at CWAD1.org 

And while we lost the House, we are so proud to have our dear friend Hakeem Jeffries become the next House Minority Leader. We invited him to speak today - but it turns out he is having his own election today - but he sends his greetings. 

The fight for control of the House in 2024 begins now. We must relentlessly expose the pro-business, pro-rich, anti-democratic agenda of the House Republicans. We know Republicans want to cut Medicare and Social Security - they just said so! They will never support the PRO Act, instead, they will defund the NRLB, cut taxes for the ultra-wealthy, and when Wall Street CEOs say “jump” they will say “how high”.  President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Schumer need to send the House Republicans bill after bill expanding Medicare and Social Security, and have them show their true colors. 

The Republicans have always been the pro-business, anti-union party - but now more and more they have turned into an anti-democratic party. A party that not only condones but calls for political violence. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene called for the execution of Nancy Pelosi. And when Pelosi's 82-year-old husband was bludgeoned with a hammer in his own home, what did Republicans say? There was NO universal condemnation of this horrible attack as you would expect it. But some of them made jokes, some mocked the attack. Is this really what we have become? 

These right-wing, white nationalist nutjobs will be major players in the House and we have to do everything we can to defeat them. 

So, where do we go from here? They say every crisis is also an opportunity. An opportunity to analyze what went wrong, and to do better. The COVID pandemic laid bare the cracks in the foundation of this country. The shortcomings of our healthcare system, the deep racial and economic divisions in our country, and the fragility of our political system. We need more than a patch job. We need a wholesale renovation to build a sturdier, foundation. And I am confident, that we as a union and we as a country have what it takes to rebuild a stronger foundation. 

And we’re already doing it. 

Two years ago, we elected the most pro-worker president of our lifetimes and a pro-worker Congress that has already created 10 million jobs -, and passed more pro-worker legislation, than any other president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In fact, the very first thing that President Biden did when he took office, literally on day one, was to fire the Trump-appointed Union Buster Peter Robb who was General Counsel at the NLRB. And do you know who President Biden appointed to lead the NLRB? 

CWA’s very own Jennifer Abruzzo. 

Jennifer served for four years as Special Counsel to President Chris Shelton. Now she leads the NLRB, fighting to ensure that workers’ rights are protected and expanded - and not rolled back. 

One of the biggest actions she took so far was to issue a memo saying that workers cannot be forced to attend anti-union meetings, so-called captive audience meetings. That is a HUGE deal. Do you know how many union campaigns we lose because of those forced meetings and other anti-union employer tactics? About 40%. 

40% of workers who said they want a union are too afraid to vote “yes” - after they’ve been subjected to one of those captive audience meetings. Banning captive audience meetings would be a game-changer for the labor movement and the reason we have a shot - is because elections have consequences.

The list of pro-worker accomplishments under the Biden administration is long - but unfortunately, most people don’t know about them. 

Has anyone here heard of the American Rescue Plan - ARPA? 

ARPA provided almost $2 trillion to provide relief for American workers and rescue the economy through direct-cash payments, expanding unemployment benefits and cutting child poverty in half through the child tax credit.

Raise your hand if you heard about the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law 

The infrastructure bill provides a once-in-a-generation, $65 billion investment into broadband buildout and affordability - but also much-needed infrastructure funding to fix our crumbling roads and bridges, energy grid, and waterways.

And just a few months ago the Inflation Reduction Act. Who knows what’s in that bill? 

The Inflation Reduction Act lowers the price of certain prescription drugs and limits price gouging by big pharma, something we know CWA members strongly care about. I mean, who wants to pay ripoff prices for the medicines they depend on?? The Inflation Reduction Act is also the largest climate bill in US history and will create over 9 million climate jobs over the next decade. It finally acknowledges that the climate disaster requires big bold action.

And it also includes major tax reforms, closing several of the biggest corporate tax loopholes. It creates a 15% minimum corporate tax so companies like Charter, FedEx and ConEd can't get away with making billions in profits but paying no taxes.  And the bill also passed a 1% tax on stock buybacks - something CWA’s Take On Wall Street campaign has been fighting for years. You all know that companies buy back their own stocks to enrich themselves and line their CEOs' pockets - instead of investing in their workers. 

In 2017, AT&T received a $21 billion windfall from Trump’s tax cuts. Did our members get a raise? No, some of us got a meager one-time bonus while they got a permanent tax break. Did they invest in our workforce? No. They bought back their own stock and laid off over 12,000 workers, many of them our members. Instead, they shipped those jobs offshore because Trump even further cut taxes on offshore profits by 50%. 

Those were the 3 big bills - The American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Bill, and the Inflation Reduction Act. 

But there are also smaller bills that are just as important for CWA members: the PACT Act to address service members’ exposure to burn pits and other toxins. The CHIPS, and Science Act strengthened American manufacturing and innovation in semiconductor manufacturing with the goal of expanding and strengthening the domestic supply chain. 

CWA-IUE represents the only unionized semiconductor company in the US - this is a huge deal and a huge opportunity for our union. We are talking about the creation of jobs now and into the future. Now we just need to make sure those jobs are union jobs.

Yes, there is still a lot to do - and yes, the labor movement’s biggest priority, the PRO Act, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act has still not been passed. But we can’t give up! It is our job to hold each and every Member of Congress accountable and press them to support the PRO Act. If they don’t - it is our job to replace them with someone who will. 

Because workers in America need the PRO Act!

Because even though it is harder than ever to organize, workers are joining unions in droves! Amazon, Apple, Chipotle, Starbucks - every day brings a new, surprising organizing breakthrough. Against the odds, workers are organizing at some of the most well-known, most profitable, companies in America. Is there anything more hopeful than this? In my entire 50-plus years in the labor movement, I have never seen so many news headlines about workers unionizing than in the past 2 years. Unions are on the rise again - and young workers are driving this trend, baristas, warehouse workers, and retail workers - joining together for respect and a voice at work. Against the biggest corporate bullies out there. And they are winning! 

In the first half of this year, unions won 641 elections - the most in nearly 20 years.

And there’s more to come. Petitions for future elections were up nearly 60 percent in the first nine months of the year. So expect more elections — and union victories — to come.

But we all know, winning a union is just the beginning, then comes the hard part - winning a first contract. We all know companies use every legal and illegal trick in the book to stall, delay, and to bargain in bad faith, trying to break the union.

To push companies to do the right thing, workers are responding with labor’s most powerful weapon - the strike. 

And here’s another piece of good news: not only were there 180 strikes in the first half of this year, up by 76% over last year, but those strikes involved three times as many people as last year. 

All that leads me to my favorite statistic for today. 

Over 70% of Americans approve of unions. The last time union approval was that high was in 1965 when union membership rates were more than two times higher than they are now. Building worker power is “in style” and it’s our job to make the most of it. 

And that brings me to the state of our union.

I am proud to report that the state of District 1 is strong! 

We continue to win on all 3 sides of the CWA triangle: 

Our organizing program is strong, our bargaining and representation have won historic contracts and our political power continues to grow. 

I’m proud to say that CWA is one of the unions driving the rise in organizing. Since the last conference in 2018, we have organized over 8,240 new members into CWA District One.  These are some of the biggest numbers we’ve organized in decades.

We are expanding into new industries. Over 1,000 Google workers have joined Local 1400, The New York NewsGuild won a huge election for nearly 800 tech workers at the New York Times. Local 1180 organized non-profits like the Audubon Society, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Sunrise Movement. In June, CWA won a groundbreaking neutrality agreement with Microsoft covering their upcoming acquisition of gaming giant, Activision Blizzard, covering almost 10,000 workers. Already, Activision Blizzard workers in Albany are organizing with CWA. 

Workers are outraged by corporate America – making record profits and expecting workers to put their lives on the line. They are inspired by each other - each win in tech, retail, communications, in journalism, each of those wins inspired more people to pick up the mantle and organize too. 

These new members are winning good new contracts that lift the standards in their industries and inspire more people to organize. 

Local 1400 just won the first contract for our members at EveryAction, the largest tech company with a union in the country. Local 1180 just won a great contract with the climate justice organization Sunrise Movement. Local 1101 negotiated a strong contract for tech workers at Blue State Digital - and there’s so much more, I can’t possibly mention all.

It makes sense that more and more workers are joining unions. The pandemic made it clear a union can make the difference between life and death on the job. I wish I was exaggerating but I’m not. It’s always profit over people with these greedy bastards - and without a union, workers don’t have the power to push back.

When COVID hit CWA members in waves, we fought like hell to protect members and to push our employers to put people over profits. I am so proud of the work-from-home agreements we negotiated for workers who were able to work from home. For those who could not stay home, we negotiated accommodations like home garaging and an adequate supply of PPE. Because of our paid sick and paid leave agreements, our members were not forced to choose between their jobs and their health. No worker should ever have to make such a choice. 

In New Jersey, we had a number of big contract wins, we got contracts for Social Services workers in several counties throughout New Jersey, including Middlesex and Union Counties and workers in the City of Camden.

Some of these contract wins included big wage increases, like the one we bargained at the Ocean County Board of Social Services where some workers got as much as a 40% increase. During the height of the pandemic we negotiated a No Lay-Off agreement with the State of New Jersey that provided job security to over 35,000 state workers.

At Verizon, we negotiated an excellent contract a few months ago that includes major gains in wages and pension benefits, adds new CWA-represented jobs, and includes a continuing Work-from-Home agreement. This contract extension is a direct result of the militancy and determination our members demonstrated during the seven-week strike in 2016. That battle has now produced three contracts. Our members should be proud of what they have accomplished. 

We also reached a groundbreaking contract at AT&T Mobility that includes significant raises, better healthcare, and paid-leave policies. It also includes a first-time requirement for at least 20% of AT&T stores to be company-owned. 

Local's 1111, 1122, 1170, and 1298 got a great contract with Frontier after a tough fight. 

And last year, over 2,000 CWA 1133 healthcare members at Catholic Health in Buffalo made history when they went on strike over safe staffing and patient safety. They kicked off what was dubbed “Striketober” and for a few weeks, the Mercy hospital strike was the biggest strike in the country. 

Local 1133 members walked the picket line for 40 long and hard days - and won an amazing contract with some of the strongest staffing ratios in the country. 

That was one hell of a strike and a great Union Victory for all of our members that produced a great contract.

The contract was so strong that when Local 1168 started bargaining for our members at Kaleida Health in Buffalo, there was a headline in the news in Buffalo: “Kaleida and workers agree that Catholic Health contract is the goal.”

I’m happy to report that we reached that goal at Kaleida - and just a month ago our members overwhelmingly ratified a groundbreaking contract.

Congratulations to all our members for their determination, and militancy to win strong contracts. Will the members of Local 1133 and Local 1168 please stand up 

But the fight continues. We’re currently bargaining so many big contracts, I can only name a few: We’re bargaining several first contracts at our new units at tech companies Mobilize, ActionKit, ActBlue, at nonprofits like the Audubon Society and the Open Society Foundation, and many other employers.

Next year our contract for over 35,000 of our state workers in New Jersey is up. We have come a long way in this fight, my friends. Remember how under union buster Chris Christie, we couldn’t ever get a meeting with the man, while he stripped us of our right to bargain over healthcare, we worked 31 months without a contract, and he starved our pensions? Now, I know that things are not perfect with Governor Murphy, he is still the boss of our members and we don’t always see eye to eye with the boss but one thing is for sure, under his pro-worker leadership, we were able to win big - and I’m confident that we will continue to win big for our state workers here in New Jersey. 

Because, when we fight??

WE WIN!

Let’s give it up for our hard-working bargaining committees!

Speaking of the Mercy hospital strike… Our members at 1133 were the first in the state to receive Unemployment Benefits after just 2 weeks on strike! And you know why? Because in 2019 we passed a bill that shortened the UI waiting period for workers on strike from 7 to 2 weeks. And do you remember who was on strike for 7 weeks in 2016? 1 day short of receiving UI benefits? We were! 

Our members at Catholic Health receiving unemployment benefits, allowed us to stay out as long as we needed to in order to get the contract we deserve. 

THAT is the power of our political action. 

THAT is the power of electing people who will enact bills that help working people. 

Since our last conference, we have done some of the absolute best political work we’ve ever done! 

In 2018, after 30 years of fighting, we flipped the New York State Senate from pro-corporate Republican to pro-worker Democratic! In the blue wave that year, we also won a pro-worker majority in Congress! Our members hit the phones and hit the doors and worked tirelessly for this major victory for CWA. We also flipped the State Senate in Connecticut and elected Governor Ned Lamont in 2018. And of course, in 2020 we did more work than we ever did to elect President Biden. 

In 2021, we elected New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy to an historic 2nd term, one of the most pro-worker, progressive Governors anywhere in the country. No New Jersey Democratic Governor has been re-elected to a second term in over 44 years.  (Oh, and by the way, did I mention that last year we finally got rid of that traitor Steve Sweeney, former President of the NJ State Senate!) 

And earlier this month, despite major losses in New York, we defended all our pro-worker champions in New Hampshire and Connecticut, we elected pro-worker champion Pat Ryan to Congress in the Hudson Valley and we helped elect the first female Governor in New York, Kathy Hochul.

Elections! have! consequences! 

We work on elections not because we love politicians so much, but so that we have pro-worker champions who will help us move our CWA agenda.

And boy did we move our agenda.

In 2019, after we flipped the New York State Senate, we passed the first bill CWA ever passed in New York: the call center bill. In 2021, we did the same in Connecticut. In District 1 we have now passed the call center bill in Maine, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. We made the call center bill a priority because it protects call center jobs from outsourcing. And now we are in great shape to pass it in Massachusetts. No district in CWA has passed the call center bill in more states than we have. 

In 2020, we increased the State Senate majority in New York to a supermajority - and ever since we have passed so many bills I can’t even name them all: 

We passed:

• Groundbreaking staffing committees for healthcare workers 
• We raised state revenue in NY by $4.5 billion by raising rates on ultra-wealthy 
• We won the strongest labor standards in the country attached to the billions of dollars in federal broadband funding 
• And much more

In New Jersey, we passed the Responsible Collective Negotiations Act that expanded collecting bargaining rights and ended the practice of contract imposition for state workers. Governor Murphy also included the full state worker pension payments for two years in a row in his state budget. No Governor from either party has done that for over 25 years.

We can only win big because we have people power - and the power of our Political Action Fund. These wins are YOUR PAF contributions at work!

ALL of this is only possible because we show up and fight. Our member trainers have trained more members than ever before with our Bootcamps and our Reversing Runaway Inequality training. We have built and strengthened more Legislative Political Action Teams (LPATs) in more states. In addition to New York and New Jersey, we have LPATs in Connecticut and in Massachusetts. And in 2020, during the presidential election, we broke all records with our members’ volunteer work having over 300 people on zoom phonebanks each night, several times a week. Since our last conference, thousands of CWA members have volunteered in our political action program.

We live in extraordinary times. More difficult times lie ahead. Years of austerity and a global pandemic have wreaked havoc on the lives of poor and working people. Big corporations and the wealthiest few among us have stacked the deck against us. We are dealing with an anti-worker majority on the Supreme Court. We are facing a divided congress, with a House Republican majority dominated by ultra-MAGA, Trump-loving, election-denying extremists. 

And let’s be honest, we are also dealing with a divided membership. Americans have rarely been more polarized than we are today - our workplaces are not immune. But we can and we must–overcome the division. We have to be crystal clear about who the real enemy is - the 1%. And we have to be clear about the fact that they are trying to divide us. We can’t let them do it. 

We have to find ways to come back together. We have to talk to our members, reconnect and rebuild our unity. We have to keep organizing, we have to keep mobilizing, and we have to keep fighting to save the labor movement. 

The labor movement has survived way worse. We’ve been through tough times before. But we are not giving up. We will never give up on building worker power. Union power. There’s way more that unites us than divides us. 

Now I just have one last question for you.

Can we do this?

Are you with me? Are you ready to rebuild worker power? 

Stand up if you are ready to fight like hell to save the labor movement!

Stand up if you are ready to do whatever it takes to fight for this union!

Stand up if you are ready to kick some ass for the working class!

Because when we fight - we win. 

There is Power in the Worker

There is Power in the Union 

And Power in CWA 

There is Power when we Stand Up and Fight Back

Let’s Keep Up the Fight 

This is the greatest union in the labor movement! 

Thank you, Union family!

Let’s have a great conference.

Solidarity Forever!