Earlier this week, Flight Attendants aboard Delta Endeavor Flight 4819 sprang into action, once again saving lives in their role as the first responders of the skies. The flight, scheduled to land at Toronto Pearson International Airport, made a crash landing, rolling onto its roof and bursting into flames.

In dramatic footage taken at the scene, Flight Attendants instruct passengers to drop everything and exit the plane.

AFA-CWA International President Sara Nelson spoke to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about the heroic actions of the flight crew. “What we do know very well is that they [Flight Attendants] performed their jobs perfectly today and went through extraordinary conditions to do that. Finding that hole, getting everyone out of the plane, a burning aircraft—there’s only seconds to do that—to make sure everyone is safe. We’re incredibly proud of them, but we need to get support around them now to be able to deal with this incident and recover from it.”

General President of the International Association of Fire Fighters Edward A. Kelly said in a Facebook post, “Dozens of passengers walked away from Flight 4819 without injury thanks to the professionalism and preparation of the Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l and Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) crew. It’s a testament to their training, and it made a difference today in Toronto.”

You can watch the entire CNN interview, posted to the AFA-CWA account on Bluesky.

Twenty thousand University of California (UC) healthcare, research, and technical professionals have voted by an overwhelming 98% percent margin to authorize an unfair labor practice strike. The strike will occur February 26–28 across UC campuses and medical centers. The workers are members of the Union of Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE-CWA Local 9119) providing patient care and student support, as well as conducting lifesaving research, including critical testing of the nation’s poultry and livestock for communicable diseases like bird flu.

Workers cite several issues for the strike announcement, including the university’s refusal to disclose essential information about staffing vacancies, its unilateral decision to impose healthcare cost increases on members, and the implementation of speech-restrictive policies that make it harder for workers to blow the whistle on the ongoing staffing crisis. UPTE-CWA Local 9119 members have been participating in bargaining since June 2024, with all contracts expiring at the end of October 2024.

"UC has refused to engage in meaningful dialogue or provide substantive counterproposals to nearly all of UPTE’s proposals,” said UPTE-CWA Local 9119 President Dan Russell, an IT worker at UC Berkeley. “Instead of engaging with us, UC is silencing the patient and research advocates blowing the whistle on a staffing crisis that threatens patient care and critical research.”

The workers preparing to strike include physician assistants, optometrists, pharmacists, RN case managers, rehabilitation specialists, mental health clinicians, clinical lab scientists, staff research associates, IT analysts, and more—professionals who support UC students, provide world-class patient care at all UC hospitals and medical centers, and drive cutting-edge research on critical issues like cancer, food safety, and virology.

Read more about the crisis leading to this strike from the L.A. Times.

CWAers turned out across the country to take action against a plan that would tax our hard-earned health benefits and raise healthcare costs for working families. In a Valentine’s Day action, CWA activists visited dozens of congressional district offices to demand that our representatives pledge to stop a health benefit tax that would force cuts across all our health plans, making healthcare less affordable.

Project 2025, the House Republican Study Committee, and conservative think tanks are calling for increased taxes on our health benefits in order to provide the wealthy and corporations with tax cuts.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the vast majority of employers are expected to shift costs to their workers by increasing deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, and maximum out-of-pocket limits. Preliminary research estimates show that health benefit tax proposals currently under discussion could cost CWA members as much as $4,800 per year.

A previous version of this tax was signed into law in 2010, but thanks to the work of CWA activists, it was repealed before ever going into effect. During that time, employers used the threat of the tax to demand preemptive plan cuts and other givebacks at the bargaining table.

“I’m a single father with a child—I can’t afford for my medical to go up any more than it already has,” said CWA Local 9510 member Brian Bell during a visit to the offices of Rep. Young Kim. “With the tax breaks that are going to be given to corporations and billionaires, the burden is going to be deferred to us as the working class. So we’re out here to stop it.”

Watch CWAers speak out to protect our healthcare.

Last week, CWA grassroots political activists from across the country made calls to their senators and representatives asking them to sign a letter to President Trump demanding that he reinstate former National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member Gwynne Wilcox. This outreach was extremely successful, as 265 bipartisan members of Congress ultimately signed the letter, including every Democrat in Congress, both Independents, and Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, a longtime supporter of labor.

When companies bargain in bad faith, change the terms of our employment without bargaining, or do other things that interfere with our ability to join or participate in our union, we file charges with the NLRB. By illegally firing Wilcox, Trump made it harder for us to enforce our contracts by leaving the NLRB with only two board members, preventing it from ruling in most cases.

Send your own message to President Trump asking him to reinstate Gwynne Wilcox so we can protect our contracts.

CWA President Claude Cummings Jr. is asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reject AT&T’s plan to abandon rural landline customers in 18 states. Instead of replacing copper lines with high-speed fiber internet connections, the company intends to leave many of them with lower-quality wireless or satellite service options.

In his comments to the FCC, President Cummings noted that on the same day that the company announced plans to retire most of its copper-based network by 2029, it said that it expects to return over $40 billion to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends over the next three years.

He said that instead of enriching wealthy investors by cutting service and eliminating good union jobs, AT&T should increase investment in fiber deployment to rural communities.

“While AT&T’s corporate executives and investors are insulated from the impacts of these cuts on the communities they serve, frontline workers bear the brunt of customers’ frustration with poor service quality, long wait times, and other harms from understaffing and outsourcing of critical functions,” President Cummings wrote.

While AT&T is trying to force rural customers onto second-class internet service, Elon Musk has been pushing the Trump Administration to redirect public funding intended for fiber buildout in rural areas to his own Starlink satellite internet service. Satellite internet is unreliable and has limited bandwidth, which leads to a reduction in speed as more users connect to the service.

CWA members and retirees are fighting to ensure that public funds continue to be used to build reliable, high-speed fiber internet connections and create good, union jobs in our communities. Click here to sign the petition.

CWA Local 7777 members at the Alamo Drafthouse theater in Denver, Colo., walked off the job on Valentine’s Day in response to the company’s unfair layoffs and bad faith bargaining. The workers, who are bargaining their first contract, returned to work on February 18.

International media giant Sony acquired the theater chain last year. CWA members at the Denver theater contend that the firings have no financial justification and that during past slow periods workers accepted reduced hours rather than layoffs. “The company’s own financial data contradicts the need for these layoffs,” said Claude Grossi, who is a member of the bargaining committee. “Their outlook is optimistic, and box office projections show significant industry growth. This is not about economic hardships. It’s about corporate interests overtaking worker rights.”

Workers were terminated with little to no warning and neither severance, due process, nor opportunity to appeal. Since returning, workers have been denied their regular shifts, throwing personal schedules into disarray. CWA Local 7777 has filed a separate unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board over the blatantly retaliatory scheduling.

Alamo Drafthouse workers at two UAW Local 2179-represented locations in New York City also went on strike last week and have filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board citing bad faith bargaining during negotiations. The UAW members remain on strike.

You can send a letter to Alamo Drafthouse and owner Sony Pictures Entertainment via a worker-led letter-writing campaign and support fired union siblings through their GoFundMe page.

CWA Local 1400 Customer Service Representatives at Consolidated Communications/Fidium Fiber shared the love this Valentine’s Day by ratifying a new contract, securing big gains over the next two years.

Members will immediately receive a 1.5% raise, followed by a 3% raise in August and another 3% increase in August 2026. The contract also includes improved job security language with a 6-member cap for transfer of work over the life of the agreement and an enhanced voluntary exit offer. There will be no increases to the cost-sharing of healthcare premiums, and both active employees and retirees are now eligible for enhanced discounts on services for phone and internet.

"It was imperative, with the Trump administration and the dismantling of the NLRB and other Labor departments that protect workers' rights, to secure an extension of an existing agreement without any diminishments,” said CWA Local 1400 President Don Trementozzi. “Even though this contract did not expire until August 2025, we were able to negotiate an extension to protect and provide economic growth for our members for another two years. They are extremely happy with this agreement and have voted overwhelmingly to ratify it.”

Members of CWA Local 7250 working for Rove Pest Control in St. Paul, Minn., recently foiled an attempt by the company to decertify their union. The workers formed a union in September 2023 in response to a lack of dignity, stagnant wages, and a sometimes chaotic work environment due to the high turnover rate. Since December 2023, the workers have been negotiating a first contract even as the company launched an aggressive decertification campaign.

CWA Local 7250 President Kieran Knutson, speaking about the anti-union campaign, said, “Rove put the one anti-union worker in the unit in charge of training new employees. This person used the position to lobby and vet the new employees in terms of union support. One young woman was laid off after she twice declined to sign the petition calling for a decertification.”

During the lead-up to the vote, CWA Local 7250 representatives and pro-union workers held conversations with the new employees, explaining the tactics the company was using and the benefits of collective bargaining. The final vote tally returned only a single vote against the union, demonstrating the power of organizing and solidarity.

A CWA bargaining committee made up of workers from the unit and CWA Local 7250 representatives has now returned to the table to complete the contract.

CWA Local 7250 is also engaged in a battle at Activision Quality Assurance in suburban Minneapolis, where a union organizer was unjustly terminated. Allen Junge, a key worker/organizer who helped win union recognition for the Activision Quality Assurance group in 2024, was fired after the company accused him of violating company policy via the company Slack communications app.

In a press release, CWA Local 7250 noted, “We believe that Allen's termination is not about safety but about retaliation for his key role in standing up for co-workers and unionizing Activision. The company has refused to engage in good-faith discussions about this discipline and lied about specific details of Allen's termination.”

Last week, representatives of the union filed an unfair labor practice complaint against Activision with the National Labor Relations Board.

You can help get Allen reinstated by signing the union’s petition.

CWA members have a long history of solidarity with workers in the Philippines. As CWA Secretary-Treasurer Ameenah Salaam notes in a video message celebrating Philippine Solidarity Month, nearly ten years ago call center workers in the Philippines reached out to CWA during our 49-day strike at Verizon and said they were receiving calls that normally would have gone to call centers in the U.S.

Members of the BPO Industry Employees Network (BIEN) held solidarity actions during our strike and even hosted a delegation of Verizon workers who visited the Philippines and investigated working conditions, forcing unwanted attention on Verizon’s complicity. That solidarity ignited a friendship between our organizations that continues to this day.

The global call center outsourcing industry is designed around the race to the bottom to find the lowest wages in the world. Workers in the Philippines face harsh conditions, and trade unionists and human rights defenders have been imprisoned and killed for standing up for their rights.

CWA is encouraging the U.S. Congress to reintroduce and pass the Philippine Human Rights Act. This legislation would end U.S. military aid to the Philippines until the government ends its human rights abuses and repression of union activity.

CWA President Claude Cummings Jr. (pictured back row, third from left) celebrated Black History Month in Houston, Texas, alongside members and officers from CWA Local 6222 and AFA-CWA Local 29011. President Cummings served as the Grand Marshall for the African-American History Month Parade, hosted by The Houston Sun.