House Subcommittee Takes on Cablevision Union Fight
A Cablevision field technician from Brooklyn, N.Y., slammed Cablevision’s alleged anti-union practices Thursday before the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions. Several Brooklyn Cablevision workers voted to join the Communications Workers of America in January 2012, which has sparked friction and a war of rhetoric in the months since. Clarence Adams, who has worked for Cablevision for 14 years, faced difficulties, he told lawmakers.
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"Company management viciously opposed our efforts,” said Adams in written testimony. “I was forced to attend literally dozens of meetings where Cablevision management told me CWA was corrupt. They lied to me about the cost of dues and the likelihood of strikes. They threatened that my wages and benefits would actually go down if we joined together into a union.” After the group unionized, Adams found “management had no intention of bargaining with us in good faith,” he said. “They continued their campaign of pressure and intimidation. As a union supporter, I felt like I was under a microscope every day I went to work."
A National Labor Relations Board hearing began Monday on Cablevision and is expected to take several weeks, CWA’s spokeswoman told us. A Cablevision spokeswoman declined comment on the Thursday hearing. “The law isn’t supposed to enable unions to organize every workplace,” said subcommittee Chairman David Roe, R-Tenn., in an opening statement. “And the law isn’t designed to help employers obstruct union representation. Fundamentally the law exists to protect the right of workers to freely choose to join or not join a union."
"Cablevision has an unlimited amount of resources,” Adams said during questioning. “They have 60 lawyers already working on this [NLRB] case. They've spent [a] countless amount of money just trying to stop something -- I can’t understand why.” He said CEO James Dolan could be “manipulative” with workers. Adams said he wanted simply “better structure” between management and workers and said the workers could have had a contract for more than a year now, had Cablevision cooperated.
"So Mr. Dolan can be as arbitrary and capricious as he wants to be as long as you don’t get a contract,” said House Education and the Workforce Committee ranking member George Miller, D-Calif. “You need a union. This is about as arbitrary and capricious as a company can be.” The situation is “really unfortunate for you,” he told Adams.
In response to subcommittee questions, Adams elaborated on the company’s “favoritism.” Two employees were let go because they “weren’t able to recover in time from their injuries,” he said. Cablevision gave about 10,000 workers “significant raises” and improved worker health plans, except for those unionized workers in Brooklyn. “And then, right before my coworkers in the Bronx held a vote on joining the union in late June, James Dolan personally visited them and stated that they shouldn’t make the same mistake we did in Brooklyn,” said Adams in written testimony. “He told them that Cablevision would now ‘abandon’ Brooklyn.” Those workers then voted against unionizing. Adams and several dozen other workers expressed frustration about stalled bargaining negotiations in January as part of Cablevision’s open-door policy, which led to Adams and 21 other technicians being fired, Adams said. “Thanks to a massive pressure campaign, the company has been forced to hire all of us back.” He called the termination illegal and said Cablevision showed “utter contempt” for law.
The union workers are struggling to form a contract and have waited over 600 days. “Hopefully we'll be able to get a contract -- hopefully,” Adams said. “Six hundred days is ridiculous,” testified National Small Business Association General Counsel David Burton. “Ten days is also ridiculous.” He called for a good middle ground.
Adams’ story is stunning in that he was “prepared to put your life on the line as a Marine and to come home and really have the system just trample on your rights,” said Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., referring to Adams’ time in the corps in Iraq. The United Nations recognizes the rights to collectively bargain, said Courtney. “You still do not have an outcome that the law claims to offer.” Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., emphasized that “strengthening labor means strengthening our economy.”
"I've looked at this pretty closely,” said Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., pointing to the “millions” of dollars Cablevision has spent in fighting this. “What we see in the Cablevision instance is a textbook example of what has come to be known as union busting.”