This week, a majority of bank workers at Beneficial State Bank chose to join CWA, becoming the first U.S. bank workers in decades to win union rights. The bargaining unit of 113 includes bankers, consumer loan servicing representatives, loan processors, underwriters, file clerks, and custodial staff.

The financial services industry, which is plagued by systemic problems of discrimination, low wages, extreme sales goals, and whistleblower retaliation, has the country's lowest percentage of union representation. While union membership in the financial sector is the norm in other countries, with over 3 million bank workers who have union representation globally, in the United States almost no bank workers are represented by a union. No private bank employees have successfully formed a union in over 40 years.

"After nearly two decades at big banks, I was proud to join Beneficial State Bank because of its commitment to invest in its communities," said Desiree Jackson, an Assistant Vice President in Oakland, Calif., and member of the Committee for Better Banks, a CWA project to demand better labor standards and consumer protections in the banking industry. "With this historic move to form a union, we're seeing that commitment to community in action – and I'm proud to be a part of it. All workers should have a voice on the job to advocate for themselves, their colleagues, and their customers. It's the right, and fair, thing to do."

CWAers from Alabama and Georgia joined the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival – We Must Do M.O.R.E. Tour in Alabama to fight against inequality last weekend. Members marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to commemorate Selma's Bloody Sunday March, a 1965 protest during which hundreds of nonviolent participants were confronted and brutally attacked for fighting for the right to vote. The Bloody Sunday March commemoration was especially powerful for CWA members as they work to fight against strict voter ID requirements and voter suppression legislation aimed to silence the voices of minority communities.

Mass meetings in Mobile and Birmingham brought faith leaders, advocates, and labor activists together to organize, strategize, and build power to fight back against systems that support economic injustice.

The Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival - We Must Do M.O.R.E. Tour will meet in Washington, D.C., on June 20, 2020, for a national assembly of over 40 states and thousands of moral activists and advocates. Find a Poor People's Campaign chapter in your state to join the fight. Contact the CWA Human Rights Department ([email protected]) for more information!

Above: CWAers from Alabama and Georgia joined the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival - We Must Do M.O.R.E. Tour in Alabama.

Below: Members of CWA Local 3204 in Atlanta sent a bus full of CWA members down to Selma to fight against inequality.

This week, CWA joined a coalition of major labor unions representing a combined 5.3 million workers to file a petition calling on the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into anti-competitive behavior by Amazon. The petition is available at InvestigateAMZ.org.  

Amazon's multiple roles as marketplace, retailer, and provider of logistics and cloud computing enable Amazon's anti-competitive practices, CWA, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers, Service Employees International Union and Change to Win argue in their petition.

"American families and businesses have become dependent on infrastructure that Amazon controls," said CWA President Chris Shelton. "It goes way beyond buying and selling merchandise. Look under the hood of the software that powers supply chain management, government services, banking, utilities, healthcare, and hundreds of other industries and you will find Amazon Web Services. Regulators are behind the curve with this company, and an FTC investigation will shed needed light on the scope and impact of Amazon's anti-competitive behavior on workers and consumers."

Read more here.