Tape Release 3/25/22

Membership Updates:

Last night myself and five of your Union Stewards participated in a CWA District 1 Town Hall Call in regards to a once in a lifetime opportunity on Fiber buildouts impacting CWA Members at Verizon and Frontier.

Congress passed a historic infrastructure bill earlier this year which supports the largest investment in our generation in Broadband, Airports, shipping ports in our Country.  75 Billion dollars has been allocated to the states with NYS getting 1.6 Billion dollars for investment.  Where this money is invested will be determined by the State and Local Municipalities.  Our CWA Vice President has already reached out to Verizon and Frontier executives to meet regarding this program.  CWA is going to fight that this money goes to employers that have bona fide Safety programs, workers that put out high Quality work, and a direct local labor force.  These conditions help every single one of our members, because we are the safest, best trained, most experienced workers in this community.  We ask that when you come across low quality, unsafe work by contractors to take pictures with your personal phones and document the locations.  We will be reaching out to our members with further communications on the matter.

In other business, the first two fiber splicing classes that we negotiated for Sales and Service techs will be happening very soon, with the first class taking place between April and June and the next July thru September.  Eight technicians will be going thru the 1-week class.  Technicians who filed grievances that allowed us to get this agreement have been prioritized first and then will go by seniority by quad.

The five construction positions negotiated, we’re waiting from the Company to identify the number of Lineman and Splicers as well as work locations.  Once determined we can poll for show of interest.

This is your President John Pusloskie thanking you for your Solidarity and We Are Union Strong.