CWA National Women’s Conference

By Amber Holland

Myself, Naiela Long along with Terry Mitchell attended the bi-annual conference March 23-25 2007 in Washington, DC. We heard from a variety of speakers from the CWA National Executive Board included President Larry Cohen, Executive Vice President Jeff Rechenback, Secretary Treasurer Barbara Easterling and our District 7 Vice President Annie Hill.

We also had the pleasure of hearing from AFL/CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson. She spoke about how we need to organize more women into CWA. Linda stated that we don’t just talk about solidarity; we need to know it and think it all the time. She said that 60 % of workers would form a union if they had the chance. She made a great point that people can worship where they chose, but can’t organize a union in the work place. Employees deny that right. We need to help them exercise their right and support the Employee Free Choice Act. Linda also said we need to offer more women the option to join unions. Women are the first ones to be laid off, the first ones that are denied raises and promotions. Women are the first to be discriminated against.

Some other great speakers and workshops were on domestic violence, retirement planning, personal safety and how to run for public office. We also broke up into our own districts. Susan McAllister is our own CWA National Women’s Committee Representative from District 7. We talked about what we want our district goals and plans to be:

~ To have a links on our website on domestic violence, retirement, health care and any other harassment.

~ Tutoring programs to promote education in the work place and unions. Labor education

~ Scholarships

~ Women organizing

~ Mentor programs to promote women to run for union positions

~ Educate approximately 1 time a year on important issues breast cancer etc

~ To establish women’s committees in each local and to get more active

~ To hold quarterly conference calls or face to face meetings

~ To build an email activist list for district 7 for women

~ Also training on public speaking

There was also some talk about a proposal that will be made at the National Convention, to add four at-large Executive Board members to the National Executive Board. This is the time to act to show a great diversity on our National Executive Board.

I am very please and excited to have experienced this conference and I can’t wait to see what we are able to do with this information. How we can grow and make a difference. Thank you for letting me attend this conference.