Reformers Take Over CWA Local 1400

Don Trementozzi had 25 years of experience in the labor movement as a rank-and-file activist and union official when he got a job at a Verizon call center in Worcester, Massachusetts and became a member of CWA Local 1400. The local has nearly 2,000 members working at 12 call centers in four New England states.

After settling into the job, Trementozzi looked to get involved in the union and was immediately appointed steward because of his experience. But the more he learned about the local, the less he liked what was happening, or rather, not happening.

“When I became a member of the local, I read the bylaws and the constitution,” says Trementozzi. “The by-laws were vague. Most unions have membership meetings with the right to vote on policy. These bylaws called for a district meeting every quarter and a general membership meeting twice a year. The district meeting was an informational meeting. But the union didn’t do the district meetings. We were lucky to have a meeting every year or two. And they never put out notices for the general membership meetings or they did it just a week in advance. Our local is spread across four states, so people need notice to make it to a meeting. Melissa [Moran, the local president] didn’t want a quorum.

“I started reviewing executive board minutes to see what they were doing. Some things piqued my interest and I would ask more questions, but then they stopped sending out the board minutes and the treasurer’s statements. I didn’t think they were right. For example, Melissa had retired December 31, 2001, but she was still president, as a retiree. The by-laws said she should get paid the difference between her pension and the top rate in the local, but the local was paying her the top rate.

“As steward, I would file grievances, but I never heard what happened, if they were denied or sustained. And when I questioned the local offices I could not get a straight answer. We won grievances at the local level because I had experience, not because we got steward training. They didn’t do any training. We had one grievance about Saturday work and Melissa told us flat out she would not pursue it, without any explanation.

“When we finally had a district meeting, after I had been on the job nearly two years, Melissa would not let us make motions or vote on anything. I said to myself, ‘This ain’t right.’ There were 70 people at that meeting. They were disenchanted. People knew me in my district and they encouraged me to run for office.”

On his days off, Trementozzi started visiting call centers, talking to workers on their breaks and lunch hours. “When I started talking to people at other locations I found out they felt the same way I did,” says Trementozzi. “So we put a team together that was almost a full ticket; we got candidates for a majority of the executive board.”

“We traveled to every location, four states, for a year straight, campaigning, driving on our own time, passing out flyers, talking to people, getting them worked up,” says Kerri Quinlan, then a shop steward in Hyannis. “We were really just a few pissed-off stewards who thought it was time for a change. There was no information coming from the local whatsoever, no help at all. Our grievances were not being heard.”

“We worked as a team,” says Trementozzi. “We sacrificed our days off. We went out once a week to different locations, the four officer candidates and a district VP candidate. On one trip, we worked Monday, drove to Burlington, Vermont that night, and visited the location the next morning. We left by noon and went to Bangor, Maine. We visited the center the next morning and left at noon, drove to Portland and visited the workers there. Then we went to Somerville, Massachusetts, where we represent a non-Verizon call center, which opens at 5 pm, so we saw them during their evening breaks.

“At each place we passed out literature with pictures of ourselves, a website address, and our phone numbers. The members would say, ‘I’ve seen you more than Melissa.’ The phone company did a lot of hiring in 1998-2000. Many of Melissa’s friends had retired and she did not get out to meet new-hires. That put us on even ground.”

“As we went around, we listened to workers’ grievances,” says Quinlan. “In Hyannis, where I’m from, we were paid less than workers doing the same thing in other locations and we could not get a straight answer from the local when we asked why. We knew people in Hyannis wanted equal pay. But we never promised we would bring them up. We said we would try.”

SUPPORT LABOR NOTES

BECOME A MONTHLY DONOR

Give $10 a month or more and get our "Fight the Boss, Build the Union" T-shirt.

“We had a flyer announcing our candidacy in June 2002, but we had been working since the previous November,” says Trementozzi. “Our second flyer was titled ‘Wheel of Misfortune,’ and it had a picture of a big wheel. Each slice of the wheel had a different issue, like ‘3 years backlog of grievances,’ ‘doesn’t call you back,’ ‘lied about no-layoff contract,’ ‘no quarterly membership meetings.’ That hit home. It was a funny flyer. We faxed it out, too, to the different locations. Another flyer had ‘Top 10 Reasons It’s Time for a Change.’

“We had t-shirts and buttons that said ‘Team Trementozzi.’ We used my name to build name recognition around the local. It got to the point where there were more Team Trementozzi shirts than Verizon shirts. But we campaigned for so long into the fall that the t-shirts turned to sweatshirts.”

Contested Election, Then Victory

Before the election, the incumbent-controlled election committee tried and failed to disqualify Trementozzi. Moran tried to get Verizon to fire him for a campaign-related incident. Then the election committee tried to steal the election by changing the results of a very close vote that they had initially certified. Team Trementozzi had to file an appeal to CWA District 1, which ruled that the election committee’s actions violated local bylaws and the CWA constitution. The District ordered a new election, to be conducted by the American Arbitration Association under national union supervision.

In the end, Team Trementozzi won three of the four officer spots and several of the District VP spots, and now runs Local 1400. The difference in the local is obvious.

“Right after the election we went around to every location to unite the members, to put all the battles of the election behind us. We included the entire executive board, even those who were not on our slate, and brought them all into bargaining.” says Trementozzi. “We had a backlog of 450 grievances from 1995, which we settled with thousands of dollars in back pay. We overhauled the website and implemented stewards training. Every district VP has gone to seminars, conventions, and training. In Verizon contract negotiations we had members in bargaining. If you are part-time and we were discussing part-time, we invited you to come down and give testimony during local bargaining. We sent bargaining reports out constantly.”

“During our local contract negotiations, we updated the website every day,” says Quinlan. “Members knew every proposal we made and every company response.”

Asked for advice for other rank-and-file activists, Trementozzi says, “You have to know what you are doing. If I didn’t have the experience with unions, if I didn’t know contract language, bylaws, constitutions, procedures, and if I didn’t appeal correctly, the vote might not have been overturned.

“We also had to work together. There were times that we didn’t feel like campaigning, but if you let down for one second, it’s over. And you must have a plan and do it for the right reasons, not for yourself, but for the membership, because you believe you can make a difference.”

Says Meg Collins, executive VP, “You have to meet the membership. That’s the most effective way to run a campaign. Get out there and learn their issues. The second is, be truthful. Tell people everything, even if it is bad news. They will weather the truth.”

[Aaron Brenner is a labor historian, researcher, writer, and editor in New York City. He has written about international labor solidarity, union reform movements, and rank-and-file rebellions by Teamsters, telephone workers, and postal workers, and is the editor of "The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History."]

This article originally appeared here on the Troublemaker's Handbook website, a companion to Labor Notes' best-selling book A Troublemakers Handbook 2.