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Communications Workers of America (CWA) is the largest communications and media labor union in the United States representing about 550,000 workers in both the private and public sectors.[1] The union also has 27 locals in Canada via CWA-SCA Canada (Syndicat des communications d’Amérique) representing about 8,000 more members. CWA is headquartered in Washington, DC, and affiliated with the AFL-CIO, the Canadian Labour Congress, and Union Network International. The current president is Larry Cohen, a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council.
[edit] History
CWA's roots lie in the organizing of telephone workers into the National Federation of Telephone Workers, founded in 1938 and lead by Joseph A. Beirne.[2] After losing a strike with AT&T in 1947, the federation reorganized as CWA, a truly national union, which affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1949. In 1994 the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians merged with the CWA and became The Broadcasting and Cable Television Workers Sector of the CWA, NABET-CWA. Since 1997, it includes The Newspaper Guild, and since 2000 it includes Human Rights Watch's support staff. In 2004, the Association of Flight Attendants merged with CWA, and became formally known as the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, or AFA-CWA.
[edit] Further reading
- Bahr, Morton. From the Telegraph to the Internet: A 60 Year History of the CWA. Washington, D.C.: Welcome Rain Publishers, 1998. ISBN 1566499496
- Palladino, Grace. Dreams of Dignity, Workers of Vision: A History of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Washington, D.C.: International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 1991.
- Schacht, John N. The Making of Telephone Unionism, 1920–1947. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1985. ISBN 0813511364
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