New York City - CWA and IBEW Slam
Comcast Board Member
June 12, 2005
In Rockefeller Center on May 19, an inflatable rat wearing a Comcast sign was in place in the heart of New York City. While tourists took turns photographing themselves with the rat, IBEW, CWA and AFL-CIO members leafleted passers-by and the hotel ballroom where a member of the Comcast board of directors presided over a society dinner.
“We had some very energetic IBEW and CWA members who were able to get leaflets in people’s seats in the ballroom,” said Terese Bouey, assistant organizing director at the AFL-CIO.
The public campaign against the cable giant has expanded to members of its board of directors, whom the unions are painting as hypocritical. One such board member, Judith Rodin, also serves as president of Rockefeller Foundation, an organization that supports strategies to improve wages, employment and economic opportunities for the working poor.
In a letter to the Rockefeller Foundation’s trustees, New York City Central Labor Council President Brian McLaughlin, who is a member of IBEW Local 3, applauded those efforts, adding that the labor movement’s gains for workers have contributed to those goals. “In the age of globalization and ever-higher concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few, labor unions are often the last and most effective anti-poverty program that workers have,” McLaughlin’s letter said. “Attempts to violate workers’ rights to form unions and to frustrate the collective bargaining process are akin to denying workers the material means to a life of dignity and respect.”
McLaughlin urged the foundation’s trustees to convince Dr. Rodin to settle the contracts in Pennsylvania and Illinois.
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