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Adelphia Workers Win IBEW Representation

April 16, 2005

An unrelenting and bitter organizing campaign ended in a National Labor Relations Board election win for Adelphia Communications Inc. cable technicians in western Massachusetts on April 8.

Nine workers will now be represented by Boston Local 1228. Despite lengthy and frequent captive audience meetings held by a Jekyll-and-Hyde corporate management team that alternated between making promises to workers one day and profanity-laced threats the next, a majority of the workers voted for the IBEW.

"These workers suffered some of the most intense and venomous treatment by company representatives that I’ve seen in any union campaign I’ve witnessed in the last 25 years,"

said Local 1228 Assistant Business Manager Fletcher Fischer, the lead organizer. "The workers should be commended for bravely exercising their right to form a union in the face of hostility."

Local 1228 Business Manager Kenneth Flanagan said workers could not have gotten much work done in the week leading up to the vote, given the number of meetings scheduled by management.  Workers present at one captive audience meeting reported a corporate manager said, "This union thing is a cancer that needs to be stopped right now and not let spread throughout Adelphia." Flanagan said the money spent in the intense anti-union campaign could have generated significant improvements in the unit's wages.

The victory comes amid uncertain times for Adelphia, which is under federal court bankruptcy protection. Cable television giants Time Warner and Comcast (in a combined bid) and Cablevision are competing to purchase Adelphia. During the representation campaign, the company promised it would pursue decertification if the workers voted for the IBEW, and warned the union would be unable to negotiate a contract. Management also suggested that the technicians would not be protected during the sale of the company.

The main issues for the employees were pay, working conditions and fairness on the job, Fischer said. He predicted the pending sale of the company is likely to discourage good faith bargaining, but said he was confident the local could negotiate a meaningful agreement. Until a contract is in force, the National Labor Relations Act protects the workers’ step wage increases, benefits and working conditions, such as they are. That will prevent retaliatory moves by management, he said.

Local 1228 is also fighting to renew a contract with an 80-worker Adelphia unit in Waterbury, Connecticut.

Despite the challenges of organizing cable companies, opportunities abound in an ever-expanding industry moving into growth areas like high speed Internet and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP), which is telephone service via the Internet. "Cable companies are trying to become de facto telephone companies," Fischer said.