Proceedings and Index of the 63rd Annual Convention - 2001 Communications Workers of America Minneapolis Convention Center Minneapolis, Minnesota July 9- 10, 2001 MONDAY MORNING SESSION July 9, 2001 The Opening Session of the 63rd Annual Convention of the Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, CLC, held at the Minneapolis Convention Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 9-10, 2001, convened at nine o’clock, a.m., Temporary Chair Kathleen Coleman, President, CWA Local 7200, presiding. TEMPORARY CHAIR COLEMAN: Good morning. We have a busy morning and a full schedule. Please take your seats as soon as possible so we can begin. My name is Katherine Coleman and I am the President of CWA Local 7200 here in Minneapolis. (Applause and cheers) I have the honor of serving as your Temporary Chair. We welcome you to Minneapolis, to District 7, and to the 63rd Annual Convention of the Communications Workers of America. This is the first CWA convention that we have had in Minneapolis, and we are very excited and proud to host this great event. Our Colors this morning will be presented by Troop 303, Girl Scouts of America, from St. Louis Park, Tern Newman, President of CWA Local 7214 will sing the United States National Anthem, Sande Grier, of CWA COPE staff headquarters office will sing the National Anthem of Canada and the National Anthem of Puerto Rico will be sung by Luis Quintana, TNG-Puerto Rico delegate. I want to remind the delegates to remain standing until the Color Guard has left the hall. We will now have the presentation of the Colors and the national anthems of the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. …The Colors were posted by the Color Guard of Girl Scout Troop 303, St. Louis Park, Minnesota, followed by the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Tern Newman, ‘O, Canada” by Sande Grier, and the National Anthem of Puerto Rico by Luis Quintana, Local 33225… (Applause and cheers) TEMPORARY CHAIR COLEMAN: I want to thank the Color Guard and our singers for their wonderful renditions of the national anthems. Please give them another round of applause. (Applause) I now would like to call upon Pastor Katherine Michael of Westminster Presbyterian Church of Minneapolis for the invocation. PASTOR KATHERINE MICHAEL (Westminster Presbyterian Church): Let us take a moment of reverence to come before God. If you are not at your seat, I invite you to stand where you are as we offer a prayer. …The delegates rose… O God, holy and merciful, we come before You this day with thanks and praise offering You our hearts and lives as we give You thanks for the gift of life, for the beauty of the creation around us, for the gift of work, and for the privilege that we have to gather in peace and in freedom. the economy work for working families, workers need to organize; (3) Workers’ fundamental freedoms of speech and association do not stop at the workplace door. We have a basic human and legal right to form and join unions without intimidation or interference from employers. (Applause) Sisters and brothers, that is the union message from Minnesota. Communicate it to everyone you meet here at home and wherever you go. Again, it is my honor and my privilege to extend you a warm and cordial welcome to Minnesota. We wish you a successful convention, an enjoyable visit, and a sate journey home. Thank you very much. (Applause) TEMPORARY CHAIR COLEMAN: Could everyone in the hall please turn off their cell phones and pagers? We would appreciate it. Thank you. (Applause) Our next speaker this morning is the Honorable Sharon Sayles-Belton, Mayor of Minneapolis. Mayor Belton was first elected in 1993, after serving for 10 years on the city council. Minneapolis has prospered very well under her leadership. Please welcome our Mayor, the Honorable Sharon Sayles-Belton. (Prolonged applause) HONORABLE SHARON SAYLES-BELTON (Mayor, Minneapolis, Minnesota): Thank you. Well, good morning to everyone, and welcome to the great City of Minneapolis, and I am delighted that you are here. I would like to begin first by thanking your National President, Morton Bahr, and your Local 7200 President, Katie Coleman, for inviting me to speak today. But before I do that, another very special thank you and congratulations to Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling for the wonderful job that she does and, as well, Vice President Larry Cohen. Let’s give our leadership a round of applause. (Applause) Now I understand that we have delegates from the Communications Workers of America from all over the world, and that makes me very proud that you have selected Minneapolis as the place for your convention. I understand this is the first time in 63 years that we have been honored by your presence. And one of the things that you will find out is that Minneapolis is a great city. We are a hospitality center, so I hope that many of you will come back many times. I also want to congratulate the CWA for another successful year of increasing your membership. We cannot get the work done without members, and I want to thank those of you who have signed up to be full-fledged contributing members of the CWA. With your support, the labor union will be strong. The City of Minneapolis would like to join many other communities from across the Twin Cities in welcoming you to our area, and we understand that you are some 700,000 strong — 700,000! (Applause) That’s a good number. That’s a great number. And you all are doing a wonderful job. And while I know you are here in the City of Minneapolis to work hard, and to make some pretty tough decisions about your future, I do want you to take just a little bit of time, just a little bit — otherwise I am going to get in trouble with Barbara and Morton — just a little bit of time to explore the great City of Minneapolis. Sisters and brothers, greetings and thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to bring fraternal greetings here today on behalf of the 400,000 working men and women of the Minnesota AFL-CIO. We welcome you to the great state of Minnesota. We wish you success in your work, making decisions and setting policies that will guide the Communication Workers of America in the future. In the next several days you will be addressing significant concerns of the CWA and its membership. You will also grapple with larger issues that affect not only CWA members but all working people and our families. As leaders of the union for the information age, you are well informed about the challenges facing working people in the global economy. You know how the unbridled pursuit of profit and the other excesses of capitalism are stealing the jobs and undermining the economic security of families and local communities everywhere. Corporate moguls and financiers are fashioning the world economy for their own enrichment. They disguise their relationships with complicated theories designed to persuade us that economic realities and outcomes are determined by impersonal, invisible forces beyond anyone’s control, and that we must bend ourselves to the inevitable rule of the invisible hand. Isn’t it funny that somehow that always seems to transfer income and wealth from the pockets and the purses of working people to the investment portfolios of the CEOs and the wealthy? The Golden Rule is in force. Those who have the gold make the rules. They are making them to serve their own narrow interests. But we in the labor movement are determined to change that. We are working for trade and investment policies that will ensure that the benefits of globalization are broadly shared; that the environment is protected; and that ordinary citizens of all countries can understand and participate in forming the policies that effect their incomes and their lives. We want a global economy that works for working families, and we demand seats at the table where the rules of that economy are made. We won’t get there, sisters and brothers, without a fight. And to win the fight, we’ve got to be organized. That’s where it all begins and ends: organizing. The trade unionists who came before us organized to win good wages, decent benefits, and the safe working conditions that we enjoy today. We have to organize so employers can’t use lower wages and benefits and conditions of the unorganized to undercut our standard of living. As Samuel Gompers, the founding President of the American Federation of Labor, once said: “The question propounded centuries ago, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ is being answered by the Labor Movement and the social conscience it arouses. Yes, you are your brother’s keeper. And unless you help lighten his burden, yours will be made so much the heavier.” End quote. But we can’t organize without a fight either. As workers at Verizon Wireless know all too well, our basic human and constitutional freedoms of speech and association and workers’ rights to form and join unions are often flagrantly violated by employers who harass and intimidate and retaliate against people who try to exercise them. Our work is before us, sisters and brothers. If we are going to succeed, we must all become communications workers, Communications Workers of America and communications workers of the world. Because organizing depends on effective communication. Our message is simple but vital to the future of working families and, indeed, the future of democracy. It has three parts: (1) The global economy won’t work if it doesn’t work for working families; (2) To make the economy work for working families, workers need to organize; (3) Workers’ fundamental freedoms of speech and association do not stop at the workplace door.