Sharholders’ Meeting Action

On May 23 in Philadelphia, Union members from throughout the country took over the Comcast Corporate Shareholders’ Meeting.  Representing Local 9415 were shop stewards James Wilson and Sergio Larios, along with shop steward (out of at&t) and Local Organizer, Yonah Camacho Diamond.  There were union-represented Comcast workers from Chicago, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and CWA staff from Washington DC.  There were also religious leaders who presented a letter to request setting up an Ethical Monitoring Committee to try to change Comcast’s anti-union behavior.  We worked here locally with the Central Labor Council, the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, and the Progressive Jewish Alliance to get local faith leaders signed on to that letter.

All workers in attendance at the meeting addressed Brian Roberts (CEO) and David Cohen (Executive VP).  We hit them from various different angles: stalled bargaining, company interference in decertification campaigns, health and safety violations, Code of Ethics violations, and Comcast’s law breaking anti-union behavior, including discrimination against union shops and the termination of union activists Will Goodo and Rich Schwartz (from PA). 

Sergio asked “if Comcast ‘cares’ so much, how come I and my union brothers and sisters make less than techs who work 2 miles away from us, even though we do more lines of work and our productivity in Oakland is higher?  I’m a Comcast employee like them, but I feel like I’m being discriminated against because I’m union.”

James Wilson talked about the decertification campaign and about how in the two previous decertifications that he was around for (under different employers, TCI and AT&T Broadband), the company stayed out of it, members got to figure out what they wanted and the union won both times easily.  Then came this year, with Comcast in charge, and there were free breakfasts and lunches, management making promises and telling lies and directly telling people to vote against their union.  James also raised the productivity issue, saying that Oakland is more productive than the surrounding, non-union systems, yet makes less.

Yonah jammed up Exec VP Cohen over how management intimidated members into withdrawing their Code of Ethics Complaint filed on behalf of Will Goodo and about how the “investigation” was handled.

In general, Roberts and Cohen were shaken by the strong union showing.  We truly took over the meeting.  Good contacts were made amongst the Comcast members from throughout the country.

Here is the Philadelphia Inquirer story about the event:

Comcast faulted over pay

Some union members at the annual meeting raised questions about executive compensation.

By Miriam Hill

Inquirer Staff Writer

Scenes of class warfare dominated Comcast Corp.'s annual meeting yesterday as union members complained about what they say is poor pay, especially compared with the multimillion-dollar packages of senior company executives.

Unions represent just 2 percent of Comcast's 90,000 employees, but their members constituted the majority of questioners at the meeting at the Convention Center in Philadelphia.

"I find myself fighting for my family the way I fought in Iraq," said Chicago employee Jose Hill, who said he served in the Army in 2003.
Hill, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, complained that Comcast pays union workers less than nonunion workers. Hill said he earns about $17 an hour, compared with $24 an hour for a nonunion worker in his job.  He can't afford a house in a Chicago neighborhood that would be safe for his children, he said.
Chicago IBEW Local 21 is trying to negotiate a contract with Comcast that expires at the end of this month.

Comcast spokeswoman D'Arcy Rudnay said pay varies with the type of job and where the employee lives. Union membership does not play a role, she said. She added that the unions had agreed on the wages during collective bargaining.

Comcast chief executive officer Brian Roberts, whose pay package totaled $27.8 million last year, thanked Hill for his service but then said the annual meeting was not the place to discuss pay negotiations. That answer disappointed some in the audience, who occasionally booed or muttered "answer the question." But one shareholder, whose name was not available, agreed with Roberts and accused the unions of badgering management.

The IBEW and the Communications Workers of America said they had the right to speak because they owned shares. They also said Comcast executives had failed to answer questions in other forums, an allegation the company denied.

Harry Arnold, a representative of the CWA, said Comcast had engaged in anti-union practices, including the firing in April of an employee who had tried to organize a union at the company's Levittown facility. Comcast said the employee was dismissed because of poor performance but could not discuss details.

Several shareholder proposals, including one that would have given stock owners a say in corporate pay, failed. Comcast will not release vote figures on those proposals until the end of the second quarter.

Contact staff writer Miriam Hill at 215-854-5520 or hillmb@phillynews.com.