Questions, Answers and Other Information

April 19, 2021

Brothers and Sisters,

Members have been asking questions lately to the Vice Presidents and Secretary/Treasurer.  Some of the questions could not be answered and have been referred to me to get some answers.  I will answer them the best I can at this time.

1)      How many people are in the Union? CWA represents 700,000 workers in private and public sector employment in 1,200 chartered CWA local unions. CWA members work in telecommunications and information technology, the airline industry, news media, broadcast and cable television, education, health care, public service and education, law enforcement, manufacturing and other fields.  Our Local is one of eleven locals in the Installation Bargaining Unit.  When we were in bargaining with Nokia there were approximately 201 installers that were represented by their locals, and the Installation Bargaining Unit.  After the new contract with Goodman and the ESTP with Nokia was ratified approximately 179 installers agreed to take the job offer with Goodman.  Since then some found employment elsewhere before starting with Goodman and some have left after they started.  As of now we are down to approximately 150 represented installers in the Installation Bargaining unit working for Goodman.  Our local, CWA Local 7590, has approximately 23 represented employees working for Goodman.  Even though our numbers are small we benefit from being part of such a large union.  Do you think we would have been working while bargaining for 2 ½ years with out the financial backing of 700,000 members?  If we relied only on the financial backing of eleven locals of the Installation Bargaining Unit, we would have been lucky to last 2 ½ weeks.

2)      How many are working 40 hours?  Since we have been working for Goodman, Goodman has been at about a 50% to 60% utilization rate.  This means Goodman has enough work to support 60 to 70 installers with 40 hours a week.  This varies each week and unfortunately the forecasted work for the next month or two remains at about a 50% to 60% utilization rate.

3)      Where is the work happening?  Unfortunately, at this time I cannot provide very specific information on what areas (base locations) have work.  What I do know is that there have been a lot of temporary transfers from base locations within the local, and this is from what our locals Vice Presidents report to me.  When we were under Nokia and our old contract the locals were provided force reports from Nokia Management.  These force reports showed the Installers Name, Base Location, and Work Location for each pay week.  Since we have moved over to Goodman and have been working under our brand-new contract, I have not received any documentation like a force report from Goodman Management. Nor to my knowledge have any of the other ten Locals Presidents within the Installation Bargaining Unit received any type of force report.

4)      What are installers working on?  To my knowledge currently most everyone is working cell type work for various customers.  All this cell type work as I understand, is work for Nokia coming through SAC Wireless.  There is also been work for Nokia Fixed Networks, but this has been very little work thus far.

5)      How many are on unemployment?  I cannot answer this question because I do not know.  To my knowledge CWA Local Officers and CWA National Staff Reps and Officers to not have access to any of the States Unemployment Records.  This means that unless one of our members reports to one of our Local’s Officers that they are on unemployment we as Officers for the Local would not know.  Not one of our members has reported to me that they are on unemployment.  To my knowledge at this time, none of the members have reported this to their Area VP or the Secretary/Treasurer.

Hopefully these answers help our members with staying informed, however these answers may lead to further questions.  I can only encourage our members to continue asking questions like these with the Officers of this Local.

I would also like to share some other information with all the represented employees of CWA Local 7590 that I know at this time.   

To start with, and since the ratification of the brand-new contract all of the 11 Locals Presidents within the Installation Bargaining Unit were tasked with an internal organizing effort of getting Union Dues Authorization Cards completed, signed, dated, and returned to the 11 Locals Secretary/Treasurer by the CWA National T&T Office.  I am happy to report at this time our local has had the majority of the membership return a completed, and signed Union Dues Authorization Card to our Secretary/Treasurer, Michelle Ramirez.  I would also like to report that the other ten locals within the Installation Bargaining Unit have completed or are in the process of wrapping up this internal organizing effort.  I would like to thank each and everyone of you that has returned your Union Dues Authorization Card.  To the very few in the “Right to Work” State of Utah that have not returned a Union Dues Authorization Card, I would like to extend your opportunity to do so, CWA Local 7590 would welcome your card at any time.

In this article, I have stated several times that we have 11 locals within the Installation Bargaining Unit, however there are two of these locals that are in the process of merging with other locals.  On local is CWA Local 4390, they are in the process of merging with another local in CWA District 4.  The other local is CWA 1290 and they are in the process of merging with CWA Local 1090.  This means that soon there will be only nine locals within the Installation Bargaining Unit.

Moving forward the Installation Bargaining Unit and the CWA National T&T Office will be looking to fill the committees as outlined in our brand-new contract.  These will be joint Union and Company committees at the National level.  This means that the CWA National T&T Office will appoint these positions to current Presidents within the Installation Bargaining Unit.  I look forward to working with both the Installation Bargaining Unit and the CWA National T&T Office in accomplishing this task.

Since we transitioned over to Goodman the Installation Bargaining Team has been working with the company and has been able to make sure that represented employees are accruing vacation days even if they are currently not working, getting paid for at least four hours if you are on temporary transfer and sitting in a hotel room with no work for that day, making sure the company is asking for volunteers first. Speaking of volunteers, I recently added a news article in which the company was seeking volunteers for permanent transfer in base locations that everyone is on temporary transfer.  To my knowledge three have volunteered for this permanent transfer. 

Goodman has also recently hired a new Director of Sales to start working at getting more work from other customers besides Nokia.  So far Goodman has been dependent on work coming from Nokia and they realize that they need to get work from other sources.  Hopefully the new Director of Sales will help with this effort significantly.

In Unity,

R.K. Ferdinandsen

President

CWA Local 7590