A National Journal story published this morning highlights the reinvigorated feud between the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and Sprint, a company with a tattered, anti-union record.
The story gives some shine to the CWA's new Eye on Sprint campaign:
CWA launched a website and Twitter feed called “Eye on Sprint,” which aim to discredit the company’s arguments against the merger. But the website doesn’t confine itself to the battle over the merger, which the Justice Department is seeking to block on antitrust grounds. It takes aim at Sprint’s record on labor.
“Over the past four years, Sprint cut 20,000 jobs and closed 30 U.S.-based call centers,” the website states, citing a Wall Street Journal article; it tweaks Sprint for allegedly sending work overseas. But CWA also leaves the Washington realm altogether, assessing the results from Sprint’s earnings calls.
The piece gives the history of the feud:
CWA dates its tensions with Sprint to the 1980s, when the company had a landline business that employed many unionized workers. As CWA spokeswoman Candice Johnson tells it, management went head-to-head with union organizers during contract negotiations in a way that was more aggressive than in previous typically fraught talks.
“[Workers] really had to prevail against incredible antiunion attacks,” Johnson said. “Overall, there’s just the problem of Sprint’s basic attitude toward workers.”
In 1996, the acrimony led Sprint to court. Federal labor officials charged the company with illegally trying to prevent union organizing when it shut down a Spanish-language telemarketing firm that CWA tried to unionize. Sprint appealed and the courts sided with the phone company, which said it shuttered the firm for business reasons, not as an attack on labor. CWA contends that the appellate court erred in its judgment.
Sprint, naturally, is attempting to discredit CWA's claims by changing the topic, suggesting CWA is using Sprint's poor labor record as a "distraction" from the Department of Justice's attempt to block AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile.
Read the full article HERE.