roundtable: Draft Minutes 1-95 TPR General Meeting

roundtable: Draft Minutes 1/95 TPR General Meeting

Draft Minutes 1/95 TPR General Meeting

Center for Media Education (cme@access.digex.net)
Tue, 7 Feb 1995 16:46:58 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 16:46:58 -0500 (EST)
From: Center for Media Education <cme@access.digex.net>
To: roundtable@cni.org
Subject: Draft Minutes 1/95 TPR General Meeting
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950207164537.11489B-100000@access4.digex.net>


            Telecommunications Policy Roundtable
                              
               January 3, 1995 General Meeting
                    *** DRAFT MINUTES ***
                       Washington, DC
                              
--------------------------------------------------------------
The meeting was chaired by Lynn Chadwick of the National
Federation of Community Broadcasters.
--------------------------------------------------------------

L E G I S L A T I V E   B R I E F I N G

The Alliance for Community Media has created draft legislation
for the 104th Congress.  The legislation builds upon the
provisions included in last year's S. 2195, the public right-
of-way bill.  Jeff Hopps and Barry Forbes, both of the
Alliance presented the draft legislation and called for
reactions and comments.  The Alliance may be reached by
calling (202) 393-2650.

Andrew Schwartzman, Media Access Project, stated that the
Republican side of the House will be focused on the Contract
with America, the regulatory reform piece of which will affect
telecommunications policy.

Brad Stillman, Consumer Federation of America, explained that
the 104th Congress will be the first Congress in some time in
which the Speaker, Newt Gingrich, is directly involved and
interested in telecommunications.  He advised TPR groups to
meet with telecommunications legislators and to join the ad
hoc consumer coalitions forming to counteract the anti-
consumer provisions in the Contract with America.  For further
information, contact Pat McDermott at the OMB Watch (202) 232-
8494.

--------------------------------------------------------------

M E E T I N G S   A N D   C O N F E R E N C E S

Ruth Holder at the Alliance for Public Technology announced
that the Alliance will be holding its annual conference
February 23-25. Holder also circulated comments made by
Alliance President, Mary Gardiner Jones, describing the impact
of Video Dialtone on consumers.  For more information, contact
the Alliance for Public Technology at (202) 408-1403.

Roanne Robinson of the Department of Commerce's National
Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) announced
the IITF State Local Telecommunications summit to be held
January 9th.

Patrice McDermott of OMB Watch announced a meeting of the
Information Redlining Working Group, to be held Tuesday
January 10th, from 12-2PM at 2040 S Street, NW.  For more
information about the ongoing meetings of this working group,
contact Patrice McDermott at (202) 232-8494.

Brian Harris of the NTIA's TIIAP grant program - the
Department of Commerce's program making government funds
available to communities working on innovative uses of
advanced telecommunication systems - announced that the NTIA
is drafting the notice of availability of funds for the next
grant cycle.  After the draft is released, organizations will
have 60 days to apply for these funds.

--------------------------------------------------------------
G U E S T   S P E A K E R

"Telecommunications from Labor's Perspective" - a presentation
by Debbie Goldman, Research Economist for the Communications
Workers of America.

Ms. Goldman presented a general overview of union efforts and
accomplishments in organizing within the evolving
telecommunications industry.  Key highlights from her
presentation:

*    CWA represents 500,000 workers in the converging
communications industry -  most in traditional telephone.
Despite the RBOC's (Regional Bell Operating Companies) efforts
to maintain a division between labor relations policy in
telephone and labor relations in other subsidiaries such as
wireless.  CWA has major organizing taking place in wireless.
CWA also has union organizing projects going on in cable, too.

*    CWA's soon-to-be-approved merger with the Newspaper Guild
will make it a union for workers servicing networks and also
workers providing information to the networks.

*    CWA's major union contracts with AT&T and the RBOC's
expire this year.  Thus, in the midst of tremendous change in
the telecommunications industry, CWA will be renegotiating
these contracts.

*    Convergence is bringing together very different work 
forces.  The wireline telephone industry is approximately 75%
unionized, publishing and printing industries are only 35%
unionized, and the percentage in the broadcast industry is
even lower.  The wireless industry is less than 1% unionized.

*    For wireless, the current major organizing project
involves Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems. Three or four units
have been organized.

*    Goldman made available two reports to the TPR,
"Preserving High-Wage Employment in Telecommunications" and
"Changing Information Services - Strategies for Workers and
Consumers."  Copies of these reports may be obtained by
calling CWA (202) 434-1194.

*    CWA's president, Morty Bahr, is one of several public
interest representatives on the Administration's National
Information Infrastructure Task Force's (NII) Advisory Council
and has been advocating the bedrock principle of universal and
affordable access to communication networks and services.

*    Ms. Goldman shared several graphs with the TPR which:

     - showed that while overall workers' wages have fallen
since 1973, unionized telecommunications workers have been
able to maintain a stable standard of living; non-unionized
telecommunications workers, however, are compensated
significantly less for the same work.

     - showed the disparity in how companies treat their
workers.  For example, unionized Bell Atlantic pays a
technician an hourly wage of $18.93 (or $35,000 per year) and
provides a comprehensive, paid health plan and pension.  In
contrast, TCI pays about $10 per hour; workers must pay their
own health insurance premiums; and TCI provides no pension -
"In fact TCI makes it a policy that any place that CWA gets a
contract, they refuse to negotiate a 401K plan - (they do
often offer that as an incentive to their workers where there
are no union contracts.)"

     - compared Sprint (a nonunion company) with AT&T (a
unionized company) showing Sprint paying workers in positions
predominantly filled by females, far below the union wage,
"effectively reversing what 50 years of collective bargaining
has done for women in the telecommunications industry. We are
the only majority female service industry in the private
sector, in which women earn what you would call an average
wage in our society.  We have been able, through collective
bargaining, to overcome historic labor market based pay
inequity.  Sprint has brought it back."

     - traced the cash flow of the RBOC's.  After paying all
of their operating expenses these telephone companies in 1984-
1993 had an operating profit of 74.8 billion dollars.  Those
moneys flowed "up the ladder" to the parent holding companies
- the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC's) - which then
took 5.5 billion from the profit and reinvested it into the
Bell Operating Company POTS (plain old telephone service),
leaving 59 billion.  51 billion of those dollars were
distributed to stockholders as dividends leaving 18.3 billion
to invest in nontelephone investments.  This 18.3 billion is
made possible by the ratepayers and telephone employees.
"Thus, both ratepayers and employees have a joint interest in
making sure that these profits will be used to ensure that
good jobs don't disappear and service doesn't decline."

*    Ms. Goldman described the various aggressive anti-union
tactics employed by companies such as TCI and Sprint - from
face to face confrontation and intimidation to anti-union
video and pamphlet campaigns.  "In this market, people have to
be enormously courageous to stand up against this kind of
(industry) pressure."

*    Goldman described telecommunication companies efforts to
cut costs by firing employees and hiring subcontractors to do
the same work, at lower pay, without benefits, and no job
security. "You see many instances (usually with the managers)
where an employee is hired and fired on day one then rehired
back as an independent contractor.  But they are not counted
in the employment numbers."

*    At CWA we recognize that having an experienced well paid
workforce that does not have high turnover, that stays on the
job, that has good training, is key to service.  Corporate re-
engineering is affecting that.  "At US West, for example, the
company plans to go from hundreds of local exchanges down to
14 megacenters: engineering of the new network is being done
out of one place for 14 states - 1/3 of the US
geographically."  In eliminating positions and centralizing
operations, telephone service is in decline.  In one study,
USWEST failed to answer 70% of the calls placed to it by
customers by a standard metric given, 25% of the customers
received busy signals, and 8% were on hold so long they hung
up."

*    CWA is working to negotiate agreements with the RBOC
employers ensuring job retraining and placement for employees
let go as companies downsize and industries converge.  Thus,
when companies start up new services, they would rehire former
telephone union employees.

--------------------------------------------------------------
The meeting was adjourned at 2:00 PM.  The next meeting will
be held February 7, 1995 at 1800 Massachusetts Avenue, NW from
12-2PM.

Respectfully Submitted,
Emily Littleton
TPR Secretary
EMILYL@CAP.GWU.ORG

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