Frank Mathews, Administrative Director of CWA District 4, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss a ratified four-year contract for approximately 300 DirecTV customer service workers across Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Minnesota and Colorado. The agreement delivers compounded wage increases of 13.4 percent over the life of the contract and preserves quality, affordable health care with prescription drug coverage.

Mathews also addressed the growing difficulty of protecting health care at the bargaining table, described a surge in organizing activity across the CWA since COVID and detailed a new political education program called Fighting Oligarchy that is training union activists across the Midwest to engage fellow workers in one-on-one conversations ahead of the November elections in Ohio and other key states.

• Approximately 300 DirecTV customer service call center workers across Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Minnesota and Colorado ratified a four-year agreement at the end of June after overwhelmingly authorizing a strike in April. The contract delivers compounded wage increases totaling 13.4 percent over its term and preserves quality, affordable health care, including prescription drug coverage, which Mathews described as often the most critical element of any contract because workers who trade wage increases to protect health care can fall severely behind on wages over time.
• CWA District 4 launched a day-long Fighting Oligarchy political education training class earlier this year that covers the history of working-class movements taking on concentrated wealth and power. It tries to equip participants with the skills to return to their workplaces and engage fellow members in one-on-one political conversations. Training events have been completed in Columbus and Milwaukee, with additional sessions planned in Indianapolis, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland through September. The program also supports CWA-endorsed candidates, including U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton, who is running for Ohio governor.
• Mathews described a tenfold increase in CWA organizing activity since COVID. He attributed the surge to workers seeing firsthand during the pandemic how much better union members fared compared to non-union workers, and to growing recognition in the current political environment that workers need the protection and collective voice a union provides, rather than depending on billionaires and CEOs to determine their wages and job security.

A Win for 300 DirecTV Workers

Frank Mathews opened with a contract ratification worth celebrating. Approximately 300 DirecTV customer service call center workers represented by CWA across Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Minnesota and Colorado ratified a four-year agreement at the end of June. The path to that agreement started in April, when workers voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if necessary. Mathews said that authorization was the real source of power going into bargaining, demonstrating to the employer that workers were serious and united.

The ratified contract delivers compounded wage increases of 13.4 percent over the four-year term. More importantly, Mathews said, it preserved quality, affordable health care with prescription drug coverage. That combination of wage growth and protected health care is what he described as the definition of a fair contract. Workers will be demonstrably better off at the end of the agreement than they were at the beginning, he said.

Health Care at the Bargaining Table

Mathews used the DirecTV win as a launching point for a broader conversation about how difficult it has become to protect health care through collective bargaining. The question his team asks before recommending any tentative agreement is whether members will be better off when the contract expires than they are today. The challenge is that health care costs are rising constantly, and workers who trade wage increases to hold the line on benefits can end up years behind on their earning power.

He described a pattern he has seen repeatedly: workers prioritize preserving health care over wage increases find themselves significantly behind on wages five or 10 years later. The answer, he said, is not to sacrifice one for the other, but fight for both, which is exactly what the DirecTV workers did. He connected this directly to the broader debate about Medicare for All, which had come up recently with National Nurses United. The ACA has been significantly weakened, and insurance companies continue to operate without sufficient constraint, Burga said. At the bargaining table, that pressure lands squarely on workers and their unions.

Fighting Oligarchy: Training Workers for Political Action

Earlier this year, CWA launched a new political education program called Fighting Oligarchy. It is a one-day training that explores how concentrated wealth and power have taken hold of American politics and how working-class movements at home and abroad have successfully challenged similar concentrations of power in the past. The training is designed so participants leave with the skills to go back to their workplaces and have one-on-one political conversations with fellow union members about what is at stake in upcoming elections.

In CWA District 4, which covers Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, the training schedule is well underway. A first session in Columbus on June 25 brought about 15 activists through the day-long program. A Milwaukee session followed. Additional training is planned in Indianapolis, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland. CWA is supporting endorsed candidates in Ohio, including former U.S. senator Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton, who is running for governor, and Mathews said the one-on-one conversations these trainings produce are one of the most effective tools the labor movement has for turning political education into political action.

Organizing: A Tenfold Increase Since COVID

Mathews described an organizing environment he called “unbelievable,” using that word to describe what he sees in the gaming industry specifically and across the country more broadly. He attributed the surge in organizing, which he said has increased roughly tenfold since COVID, to two converging forces.

The first is the direct experience workers had during the pandemic of seeing how much better union members fared compared to their non-union counterparts. That visibility made the value of union membership concrete and immediate for workers who had previously not given it much thought.

The second is the current political environment. Workers are recognizing that with billionaires and CEOs exerting growing influence over government policy, the workplace is one of the few places where organized workers can exercise real collective power over their own circumstances. Mathews said the choice is stark: depend on a billionaire or a CEO to decide your wages and job security tomorrow, or belong to a union and have a voice in those decisions yourself. More workers, he said, are choosing the union.

He added that the AFL-CIO's campaign around the theme of being better in a union is resonating, and he expects the Federation to not only reach its goal of 2 million new members by 2032 but also surpass it, as the previous 1 million-member goal was.

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