2009 Pittsburgh Convention Stories: Union Busting

Standing up for Pittsburgh-area cable workers

What happens when your union-friendly employer merges with an antiunion company? If you were a Pennsylvania CWA cable worker, it meant a five-year battle to get a first contract and a continuing fight to get another one. That's if you weren't fired or laid off after cable operations shifted from AT&T to Comcast. Interview by Leo Canty. Video by Randy Croce.

Pittsburgh's surviving metropolitan daily is positioned better than most, but that's not saying much. Joseph Moliner, a longtime International Brotherhood of Teamsters official in Pittsburgh who also heads the IBT’s national newspaper division, says, "Since 1992 every settlement has been concessionary. We keep losing jobs and those that remain are asked to do more for less.”

When Pittsburgh's GM stamping plant closed its doors earlier this year UAW Local 544 workers came to the end of a long and traumatic road. A "triple whammy" of the Great Recession, corporate "free trade" policies and high gas prices devastated the lives of hundreds or hard-working people who had given decades of dedicated service to a great American industry. Listen to their voices and you can hear the Death of The American Dream - but listen closely enough and you can also hear a fierce determination to fight hard for its revival.

For young men and women growing up in southwestern Pennsylvania coal country, the job options boil down to working in the coal mines or working in the state prison. Third-generation coal miner Travis Hartley says "Anything less than union isn't good enough."

Comcast Cares - Not!

Comcast works hard to be the company everyone – but shareholders – loves to hate.

Closed plant, shut down lives

"Everything I had counted on went away"

When Jeff Hall came to work at the General Motors Pittsburgh plant on Feb. 27, he faced a series of tasks that would have once been unimaginable.

GM plant closure rips community

By Doug Cunningham, WIN radio

When Pittsburgh’s GM stamping plant closed UAW Local 544 workers felt its gut-wrenching devastation – the result, they believe, of U.S. global trade policies coming home to roost. It’s a story that’s been sadly playing out for a couple of decades now nationwide, not only in the auto industry but for the whole American manufacturing sector. Local 544 Financial Secretary Jeff Hall was one of the last few to leave the plant in an emotional goodbye.

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2009 Pittsburgh Convention Stories: Union Busting