Catherwood LibraryILR School

The Time Warner Cable strike that began in March 2017 continues to this day, leaving over 1800 workers still out of work. Prior to Time Warner Cable being bought out by Charter in May 2016, members of the New York City local 3 chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) had a beneficial contract with Time Warner Cable with good retirement and health care benefits. Charter’s attempt to switch employees to its standard contract resulted in the union’s refusal to accept it, countering that the health contract the union is fighting for would give members exceptionally low premiums on health insurance and far smaller medical bills than Charter’s offering. Charter has held firm, continuing to defend its employment package, and insisting that the IBEW is denying their employees the pro-offered 22% wage increase and a competitive health and retirement package that offers a 6% employer match rate. This lengthy stalemate in the private sector is as rare as union membership these days, bringing to mind a previous era when unions were more commonplace, with 35% of the private sector unionized in the 1950s, as compared to only 6.5% today. Public unions are in better shape, with 34.4% of employees in the public sector unionized as of 2016, but face continuing threats - such as Wisconsin’s governor Scott Walker passing a law in 2011 which damaged the collection of union dues, and the more recent case in front of the Supreme Court which would decide whether unions can collect fees from non-members, which union leaders fear that a negative ruling would drive down union membership. The decline of union power is theorized to have an impact on the results of the 2016 election, with the role of unions being more than an economic entity, often acting as a political organization in helping build coalitions of Democratic voters.