Oral Histories from CWA: Stories of a Changing Union

Over the past several years, CWA has been building an oral history project, interviewing members and leaders who were instrumental in the transformation of the union throughout the early 1970s to 2024.

This was a period of dynamic change within the union and the nation. Within the larger society, these decades were characterized by a period of deregulatory, anti-government free-market public policies; aggressive anti-union employers; and wage stagnation for working people. Over these years, private sector union rates dropped from 24 to six percent.

Within CWA, the union changed from one representing Bell telephone system employees working in a relatively stable monopoly industry to a union representing workers in highly competitive sectors in airlines, manufacturing, broadcasting, news media, gaming, telecommunications, health care, and state and local government. The CWA membership and leadership became more diverse as women, people of color, and LGBTQ leaders and staff rose to the top ranks of the union. During these years, CWA adopted mobilization programs to build membership activism and power at the bargaining table, in contract enforcement, organizing new members, electing pro-worker legislators, and promoting a progressive public policy agenda.

The interviews in CWA Oral History Project 2024 were conducted by Debbie Goldman, retired CWA Research Director, Jeff Rechenbach, retired CWA Secretary-Treasurer, and oral historian John McKerley in 2023 and 2024. Hannah Aliza Goldman served as producer. A grant from the Joe Beirne Foundation supported the production.

Interview subjects include our own CWA District 1 Vice President Dennis Trainor and President Emeritus Chris Shelton who began working for New York Telephone in the late 1960s; National President Claud Cummings who began his career as a Southwestern Bell technician in 1973; District 1 Area Director Debbie Hayes who organized her fellow nurses at Buffalo General Hospital in 1982; CWA Local 1180 President Gloria Middleton who began working for the City of New York in 1972; and many more.

Click here to see the full list of oral histories.