News

  • Class Action Bias Charges Target Facebook and 10 Employers for Excluding Women from Receiving Job Ads on Facebook
    WASHINGTON – The ACLU, Outten & Golden LLP, and the Communications Workers of America filed charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Facebook and 10 other employers for unlawfully discriminating on the basis of gender by targeting their job ads on Facebook to male Facebook users only, excluding all women and non-binary users from receiving the ads. The charges were filed on behalf of three female workers, CWA and the hundreds of thousands of female workers CWA represents, and a class of millions of women allegedly denied information on job opportunities due to their gender. As the charges allege, most of the employers' male-targeted ads highlighted jobs in male-dominated fields. "I've heard stories about when people looked for jobs in the classified ads and big bold letters read 'help wanted-male' or 'help wanted-female.' I was shocked to find that this discrimination is still happening, just online instead of in newspapers," said Bobbi Spees, a job-seeker and lead complainant in the case. "I shouldn't be shut out of the chance to hear about a job opportunity just because I am a woman." Facebook has come under heavy scrutiny regarding its paid advertising platform, and whether it allows and encourages advertisers to engage in prohibited discrimination based on protected categories like race, national origin, age, and now gender. The charges filed today allege that Facebook delivers job ads selectively based on age and sex categories that employers expressly choose, and that Facebook earns revenue from placing job ads that exclude women and older workers from receiving the ads. Targeting job ads by sex is unlawful under federal, state, and local civil rights laws, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. "Sex segregated job advertising has historically been used to shut women out of well-paying jobs and economic opportunities," said Galen Sherwin, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU Women's Rights Project. "We can't let gender-based ad targeting online give new life to a form of discrimination that should have been eradicated long ago." "The internet did not erase our civil rights laws. It violates the law if an employer uses Facebook to deny job ads to women," said Peter Romer-Friedman, an attorney at Outten & Golden, a workers' rights law firm. "The last time I checked, you don't have to be a man to be a truck driver or a police officer. But Facebook and employers are acting like it's the 1950s, before federal employment law banned sex discrimination." "Our members have been on the frontlines ensuring that women have opportunities to apply to and be hired for any job they're qualified to do," said Sara Steffens, Secretary-Treasurer of the Communications Workers of America. "Despite the progress we have made, stereotypes and biases clearly still influence corporate hiring strategies. Shame on these employers for targeting ads based on gender, and shame on Facebook for facilitating this practice." Although online platforms are generally not liable for publishing content created by others, the charges assert that Facebook can be held legally responsible for: (1) creating and operating the system that allows and encourages employers to select the gender and age of the people who get their job ads, including providing employers with data on users' gender and age for targeting purposes; (2) delivering the gender- and age-based ads based on employers' preferences; and (3) acting as a recruiter connecting employers with prospective employees. In the EEOC charges filed today, the ACLU and Outten & Golden represent Bobbi Spees of McKean County, Pennsylvania, Linda Bradley of Franklin County, Ohio, Renia Hudson of Chicago, Illinois, the Communications Workers of America, an international union that represents over 700,000 workers, and a Class of millions of women who were denied job ads by Facebook and employers. The employer and employment agency advertisers named in the EEOC charges are:
    • Abas USA, a global software developer
    • Defenders, a leading installer of home security systems
    • Nebraska Furniture Mart, a major retailer of home furniture
    • City of Greensboro, NC Police Department
    • Need Work Today, an employment agency that procures workers for farm, construction, trucking and aviation employers
    • Renewal by Andersen LLC, one of the largest window replacement and installation companies in America
    • Rice Tire, a tire retailer and provider of auto repair services with locations throughout Maryland and Virginia
    • JK Moving Services, the largest independent moving company in America
    • Enhanced Roofing & Modeling, a roofing and remodeling company based in the Washington, D.C. metro area;
    • Xenith, an athletics equipment manufacturer and retailer
    The charges are online here: www.aclu.org/cases/facebook-eeoc-complaint     — Sep 18
  • CWA to State Attorneys General: T-Mobile Sprint Merger Will Cause Massive Job Loss, Raises Significant Competitive Concerns
    Washington, DC – Last week, Christopher Shelton, President of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), wrote to all 50 State Attorneys General to express concern over the proposed T-Mobile and Sprint merger and to press for deeper investigations into the impact of the merger. The letter, which was first reported on by Reuters, included a detailed analysis of job losses in the top 50 metropolitan areas.  The analysis finds that the merger would result in the loss of more than 28,000 jobs across the country, contrary to the unsubstantiated claims of job creation from the merging parties. Approximately 24,000 job cuts will come from the elimination of duplicate retail stores and another 4,500 will be cut due to duplicate headquarters functions. Furthermore, the proposed horizontal merger will eliminate market competition and increase concentration in the national and local markets for mobile telephony, broadband services, and prepaid wireless services. As a result, consumers will see increased prices and less innovation. The letter points out that T-Mobile and Sprint's claims that the deal will accelerate the move to 5G wireless actually contradicts their statements to their own shareholders. Just last month, T-Mobile told Wall Street that "our advancements in network technology and our spectrum resources ensure we can continue to increase the capabilities of our network as the industry moves toward 5G." There is also zero evidence that rural Americans will benefit from the merger. The letter also raises national security concerns regarding the possible integration of Chinese government-owned Huawei and ZTE equipment in the T-Mobile and Sprint networks. Sprint, and its majority owner SoftBank, have used Huawei equipment in its network for years, and in 2012 Sprint was ordered by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to remove Huawei equipment from its network. However, three years later, Sprint admitted that it still had Huawei equipment in the network. Since 2015, SoftBank has partnered with the two Chinese companies to develop and deploy 5G wireless technologies in Japan. In a time when cyber-security is of utmost importance, this aspect of the merger should raise flags and certainly warrants a thorough inquiry to determine the nature of foreign involvement. "The proposed T-Mobile/Sprint merger proves to be a much greater threat than benefit to consumers and workers," says Christopher Shelton. "We hope that State Attorneys General will heed our calls for a thorough investigation in order to protect both jobs and the competitive wireless market." Read the letter in full here. Read the Reuters article here. — Sep 17
  • Bargaining Update
    Piedmont Airlines The CWA bargaining committee has reached a tentative agreement with American Airlines subsidiary Piedmont Airlines. The proposed contract covers more than 6,000 passenger service agents at Piedmont. Members have been mobilizing at their airports and at community events, putting pressure on the company to reach a fair agreement. After the company reneged on its commitment to include retroactive pay in a new contract, thousands of agents contacted Eric Morgan, Piedmont's Vice President of Ground Handling, demanding that retroactive pay and fair wage scales be included in the new agreement. In addition to having a formula for retroactive pay and wage increases, the agreement makes improvements to mandatory overtime notification, vacation time, and benefits. Details of the agreement will be provided to the members and a ratification vote will be scheduled in the coming weeks. ### Envoy Air On Wednesday, passenger service agents from American Airlines subsidiary Envoy Air rallied at Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport to step up their calls for sustainable, family supporting wages. The agents have been trying to negotiate a contract with fair, family-sustaining wages for years, leaving many to rely on public assistance to survive. The workers, joined by other airport employees, union leaders, and community supporters, talked with travelers about their concerns and asked for their support in standing up to American Airlines. "Any corporation that bases its success upon paying its workers less than a living wage has a bad business model," said Terry Meza, candidate for State Representative (Texas, 105th District), who joined the agents at the rally. Read more about the event here. In bargaining last week, the CWA Envoy Air committee continued to discuss issues with the company including protections for members, the drug policy and testing procedure, and more, but the real fight continues to be on livable wages. CWA's bargaining committee is committed to fight one day longer to bring back a contract that meets Envoy agents' needs. The next bargaining is scheduled for November 5-6. ### AT&T Midwest and AT&T Legacy T As part of their "Promises Broken" pickup tour, Good Jobs Nation held an event in Warren, Ohio, featuring CWA members at AT&T who are fighting back against the offshoring of U.S. jobs. The pickup tour's goal is to raise public awareness on how, despite his campaign promises, the offshoring of American jobs by U.S. corporations has increased to record levels on President Trump's watch.   At the event, Mike Sullivan, a member of CWA Local 4320 who works at an AT&T call center in Youngstown, said that his union job is one of the few good jobs in his community, and explained how AT&T’s offshoring and outsourcing is harming the company's quality of service, mentioning that he often hears from customers frustrated with the company's offshoring practices. "So far this year in 2018, AT&T has made over $10 billion in profit, and they're expecting billions more with the tax breaks they receive, and nearly a billion dollars in federal contracts. But still, they close so many of our call centers and outsource our work," said Sullivan. "The bottom line is, if my taxpayer dollars are going to line their pockets, they need to be held accountable, and they can't be allowed to keep sending our jobs overseas. We need those good jobs here to support our families and communities, and we need them now – not later." Read more about the event here. As part of their "Promises Broken" pickup tour, Good Jobs Nation held an event in Warren, Ohio, featuring CWA members at AT&T who are fighting back against offshoring of U.S. jobs. ### NBCUniversal Following a 10 week recess, negotiations between NABET-CWA and NBCUniversal resumed last week in New York City. At this point in the process, resolving all open economic issues is crucial to reaching an overall tentative agreement that the membership can properly consider for a ratification vote. The company's stingy stance is untenable, given the financial windfall NBCU received when Congress drastically reduced the corporate tax rate. The company continues to offer miserly wage increases amounting to less than a cost-of-living increase. ### Nokia As the CWA bargaining committee continues to negotiate with Nokia, the company has not backed down on their proposal to eliminate its union workforce, one of the oldest bargaining units in CWA. The unit has more than 100 years of history, originally as Western Electric, then AT&T Technologies, Lucent Technologies, Alcatel-Lucent, and now Nokia.  Nokia wants to move the work to a third-party service provider model that will cause hundreds of U.S. workers to lose their jobs. Future work would be subcontracted and, in some cases, outsourced overseas. The bargaining committee asked members to continue to spread the word encouraging as many people as possible to send an online letter to Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri and Nokia Bargaining Chair Steve Muscat, urging Nokia not to eliminate American jobs and benefits, to bargain in good faith with the union for a fair deal that allows Nokia to invest in the U.S., to keep its long-standing installation workforce, and to maintain the quality of service and secure telecommunications infrastructure for U.S. customers.  — Sep 13
  • New Report: Taxpayer Dollars Subsidizing American Airlines CEO's 12.2 Million Dollar Salary
    A new report by the Institute for Policy Studies sheds light on how our taxpayer dollars are subsidizing outrageous CEO pay at corporations that pay their employees low wages. The report highlights American Airlines. A CWA report from earlier this year found that 27% of the employees at American's wholly-owned subsidiary Envoy Air are paid poverty wages. Watch Senator Bernie Sanders' video on the pay report, featuring CWA member Heather Hudson. — Sep 13
  • Remembering September 11
    This year marks 17 years since the terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of thousands of Americans, including members of CWA, NABET-CWA, and AFA-CWA. Our members were doing their jobs, on planes and on the ground at the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and in Shanksville, Pa. On September 11, and every day, we honor their memory. To honor the memory of those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, the AFA-CWA's third annual Honor Guard attended services at our nation's three September 11 memorials in New York, Washington, and Shanksville. — Sep 13