Steve Early was an organizer, strike strategist, labor educator, lawyer, and a national staff member of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). CWA-represented telephone workers in the Northeast participated in national, regional or statewide strikes in 1983, 1986, 1989, 1998, 2000, 2004, and 2011. During these struggles the CWA cooperated with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which also represented some telecommunications workers. As many as 60,000 workers in New York and New England were involved in the anti-concession strikes during this period at NYNEX and other major telecommunications employers. The four month NYNEX strike in 1989 defeated health care cost shifting. The CWA also struggled against employers' give-back demands, including the demand for forced overtime, and struggled to defended defined benefit pensions and retiree health coverage. The CWA also fought for card check unionization, and for employer neutrality during organizing campaigns, especially at Verizon Wireless, the company's fast-growing and almost entirely non-union cellular subsidiary.
As a CWA representative in this region and telecommunications industry strike coordinator, Early was involved in local contract negotiations, helping to publicize strike issues, organize mass rallies and marches, pressure company and public officials for favorable settlements, and generate grassroots community-labor support. Early is also the author of Embedded With Organized Labor (2009) and his articles, reviews, and op-ed pieces have appeared in labor, progressive and mainstream periodicals and newspapers.
From the guide to the Steve Early Communications Workers of America Papers, 1987-2007, (Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive)
